Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were two influential minds of the “unconscious”
world with two very differing philosophies. One believed that the unconscious had two
layers, a personal unconscious which was located right under the conscious mind and a
collective unconscious right under that which held the experiences of all humanity, while
the other believed that the unconscious was a part of the mind under the conscious
containing repressed sexual feelings and rejected thoughts, events and experiences of the
resenting conscious mind. The first was Carl Jung, the latter was Sigmund Freud.
The ironic thing about the two is that the student somewhat surpassed the teacher.
Carl Jung was actually a student of Sigmund Freud at one time before he branched off
and created his own theories, especially when it came to dream interpretation. Freud
usually focuses on the object of a dream while Jung focuses on the subject or subjective
level. Jung believed that dreams reveal in a symbolic way a patient’s person
transformation and individual growth (individualism). Freud’s dream is retrospective,
meaning that it mainly deals with past events from childhood (usually psychological
trauma or sexual fixations), while Jung’s dreams were more prospective, again showing
what the dreamer can grow into. Freud’s dreams usually were regarded as a manifestation
of the repressed sexual urges of the unconscious. For example, if a patient dreamt about a
long object, Freud would most likely say that it represents the phallus and ultimately sex,
while Jung may say that it has nothing to do with the desire to have sex at all but rather
the phallic object could refer to strength or fertility. This is where Jung and Freud had
their greatest disconnect. Jung didn’t believe that everything was based so much on
sexuality while Freud did. However, this disconnect is not surprising as ultimately, all of
Freud’s students and most of his fellow peers didn’t agree with his strong emphasis on
sexuality ruling everything. Jung and Freud especially differ in that Jung makes humans
seem like beings that can advance and grow together, while Freud makes human seem
largely like barbaric beings whose only/main motivation is sex.
Freud, originally an Austrian doctor, is known as the “father of psychoanalysis”.
It is said that Freud always considered himself first and foremost a scientist “endeavoring
to extend the compass of human knowledge”, and to this end he enrolled at the medical
school at the University of Vienna in 1873. He initially studied biology and did research
in physiology for six years under the great German scientist Ernst Brunke, who was
director of the Physiology Laboratory at the University, and later specialized in
neurology. He got his degree in 1886 and later set up a private practice in the treatment of
psychological disorders which gave him much of the clinical material on which he based
his theories and his “pioneering techniques”.
Freud’s colleague and friend, Josef Breuer, made the observation that when he
talked with a woman who seemed to have hysteria, the symptoms went away. The
woman was experiencing extensive hysterical symptoms after the death of her father
(faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm,
shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and a "tendency to cause
trouble"), and after hypnosis didn’t work long-term for her, Breuer decided to talk to her.
She reminisced about various events from the past and about her daydreams, and as she
revisited moments from her past, which were associated with the onset of a particular
symptom, each symptom seemed to disappear with each emotional outburst.
Freud and Breuer published the case and others in their 1885 book “Studies in
Hysteria” and it was then that Freud’s philosophy of psychoanalysis was realized. Freud
stated that many neuroses (phobias, some forms of paranoia, hysterical pains, etc.) were
deeply rooted in traumatic experiences that the patient went through in the past. These
experiences were forgotten and hidden from consciousness. In order to “cure” the patient,
the patient must recall the experience so much so that it comes up to the surface and the
patient can then consciously confront their feelings and thoughts and etc. By confronting
their repressed/forgotten feelings, the patient can finally cry or yell or whatever it is they
need to do to discharge their feelings and thus, the underlying cause of the neurotic
symptom is removed.
Freud went on to hypothesize that symptoms of hysteria were most likely to occur
if the repressed feelings are related to traumatic childhood sexual experiences. This
theory was very unconventional at the time (early 1900s), a time in which society
shunned open sexuality and especially didn’t like the idea of childhood sexuality, and
society labeled Freud as controversial and, for awhile, ostracized him. Freud’s colleague,
Breuer, didn’t agree with his excessive emphasis on sex and neurosis and later left Freud,
who continued to work on the development of psychoanalysis on his own.
It is after Freud is somewhat already established that Carl Jung comes into the
picture. Jung was attracted to the theory of the unconscious mind and psychoanalytic
theory, but he too was put off by the excessive emphasis on sex. Jung thought that there
was more to humans than just libido or sex drive. Here is where Jung and Freud start to
branch off from the same path; Freud concluded that the human mind is made up of the
id, the ego and the super ego. The id is our unconscious drives (mostly sex), and knows
nothing of morality or reality. It exists only to serve our pleasure principle. Following the
id is the ego, which is our conscious perceptions, memories, and thoughts that enable a
person to deal effectively with reality. The ego serves our reality principle. The super
ego, or conscious, is always in conflict with the id and tries to partially fulfill id drives
through socially acceptable behaviors.
For example, let’s take the id’s biggest want; sex. Freud believed that sexual
pleasure began in early infancy (oral, anal and phallic stages, then Oedipus Complex by
age five) and that humans go through sublimation, where you take a want that can't be
fulfilled, or shouldn't be fulfilled, and turn the energy into something useful and
productive. Since humans can’t have sex all the time as that would definitely interfere
with our work schedules, we subliminate most of our desires for sexual pleasure and
channel that energy into something else, such as playing a sport or working on a project
for school. This is our super ego partially fulfilling id drives through socially acceptable
behaviors.
Jung also divides the psyche into three parts; the ego, the personal unconscious
and the collective unconscious, however Jung’s interpretations are more “positive” and
he draws a lot from Eastern philosophy/religion such as Buddhism and Hinduism. To
Jung the ego is the conscious, the personal unconscious includes both memories that are
brought to mind and memories that have been suppressed for some reason, but do not
contain the instincts that Freud spoke of, and the collective unconscious includes our
experience as a species, knowledge that we are born with/everyone just knows such as
love at first sight or déjà vu. We know what’s happening indirectly, but we can never be
fully conscious of it.
Jung also developed his own principles which varied greatly from Freudian
principles. The principle of opposites states that “every wish suggests the opposite”. For
every good thought you have, there’s also a bad thought inside of you. In order to have a
concept of good, you have to have a concept of bad. The second principle is the principle
of equivalence which states that the energy created from the opposition is "given" to both
sides (good and bad) equally. A person chooses which side they want (good or bad) and,
for example, if a person decides to return the lost wallet they found instead of keeping it
and acknowledges that they did think about keeping it and that they do have the capacity
to lie, cheat, steal, etc., then the person’s psyche will be okay and they’ll grow from it.
However, if a person denies that they do have the capacity to do anything that is not good
and thinks that they are good all the time, then they may end up developing a complex
and a “shadow” of your dark side will develop and could lead to “evil” on your
conscience or, an extremity, multiple personalities. This is how a person who is
“innocent” and thinks they can do wrong can end up turning into a party animal who does
illegal drugs. If the evil within is never acknowledged, then eventually the repressed evil
will want to be not only acknowledged but put into effect! Anyway, the third and final
principle is the principle of entropy, that over time oppositions will come together,
energy will decrease and everything will even out. This explains why children have so
much energy and adolescents live at the extremes (boys try to be macho, girls try to be
feminine, can be wild and crazy one moment and then finding themselves the next), and
why older adults are more centered, not trying to be super “macho” or “feminine’ or
anything, but settle down and become more balanced.
Another big difference between Jung and Freud is that Jung believed that
everyone had archetypes, an unlearned tendency to experience things in the same way
(part of the collective unconscious). However, it is kind of similar to Freud’s instincts as
they are both unlearned things we feel, but differ in that they are not biological like
Freud, but more spiritual things. Jung says that there is no set number of archetypes, but
some include the mother archetype, how everyone wants/relates to a mother figure, the
father archetype, a guide or authoritative figure, the shadow which is the “dark side” of
the ego or rather more animalistic side where sex and life instincts are, the persona,
which represents our public image, what we put out there (whether it be the real us or
not), and the anima and animus, the male and female aspects that each person possess.
The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men and the
animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women and together
they are referred as syzygy. Usually our roles are chosen by our gender, which is shaped
by society, as before we were born, when we were fetuses, we were neither male nor
female, and as newborns we didn’t know how to act! However, society depicts how
women should act and how men should act, and Jung thinks that because of this, we will
only develop half of our potential.
The psychoanalytic branch of psychology is one that is filled with different ideas
and theories, and the unconscious mind is still one that cannot be mastered. Although
Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud had very differing approaches to psychoanalysis and the
unconscious, they both agree on one thing in regards to our anima and animus; we are all
really bisexual in nature.
FREUD vs. JUNG

Though Jung's analytical psychology derives from Freud's psychoanalysis, there was
strife, disagreement and disappointment shared between these two great thinkers,
resulting in a rift between once great friends. Some key differences are presented below:
FREUD depicted the unconscious as a
receptacle underlying the conscious mind,
whose task is to contain rejected and unencountered events, feelings, thoughts and
experiences of the resenting conscious
mind.
JUNG postulated two layers of the
unconscious - a personal unconscious,
right under the conscious mind, taking in
personal psychic contents and down below
the collective unconscious, containing the
accumulating experience of all humanity.
According to FREUD the force of life is
driven by sexuality and the underlying
unconscious contains nothing but feelings,
thoughts experience and frustrations of
resulting unfulfilled sexual desires; hence
the unconscious is a bag full of pathology
and in fact, so is life in general.
There is much more to life than sexuality,
which is but a part of a greater wholeness,
which underlies the process of Individuation
and constant search for meaning,
according to JUNG. The unconscious has a
compensatory regulating function, aiming at
healing, growth and individuation.
For FREUD, a disturbance to the psychic
balance is a pathology stemming from an
unresolved sexual conflict, a complex
surrounding the person's sexual energy
(libido).
For JUNG it is not necessarily a pathology,
but rather a compensatory and regulatory
inclination of the unconscious to strive and
resolve the unbalanced equilibrium of the
psyche as a whole.

Although there is much divergence between the Master (Freud) and his ex-devotee
(Jung), there is much in common too. One may sometimes refer to psychoanalysis as
"materialistic" and reductive, while taking Jung to be the "spiritualistic" and holistic.
Taken from: http://www.hypnojung.co.uk/freud-jung.htm
Jung Vs. Freud:
A Look at the Clashing Theories of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud of
the Psychoanalytical School of Psychology
By
Roberta O. Roberts
Period 4
AP Psychology
Final Project
Mr. Presswood
APA Style Citations
1.
http://www.hypnojung.co.uk/depth-psyc.htm
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=743
&Itemid=54
http://www.carl-jung.net/dreams.html
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761562859_2/Sigmund_Freud.html
http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/freud.htm
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/freud.html