Jungian psychology

Synchronicity: an acasual connecting principle
  1. Acausality. If natural laws were an absolute truth, then of course there could not possibly be any processes that do not deviate from it. But since casualty is a statistical truth, it holds good only on average and this leaves room for exceptions which must somehow be experienceable, that is to say, real. I [Jung] tried to regard synchronistic events as acasual exceptions of this kind. They proved to be relatively independent of space and time; the relativize space and time in so for a space presents in principle no obstacle to their passage and the sequence of events in time is inverted, so that it looks as if an event which has not yet occurred were causing a perception in the present. But if space and time are relative, then causality too looses its validity, since the sequence of cause and effect is either relativized or abolished.
  2. Synchronicity. By synchronicity I mean the occurrence of a meaningful coincidence in time. It can take three forms:
    1. The coincidence of a certain mental contact with the corresponding adjective process which is perceived to take place simultaneously.
    2. The coincidence of a subjective mental state with a phantasm (dream or vision) which later turned out to be a more or less faithful reflection of a synchronistic, objective event that took place more or less simultaneously, but at a distance.
    3. The same above, except that the events perceived takes place in the future and is represented in the present only by a phantasm that corresponds to it.
  3. Teology - a force from the future that pulls on us and shapes us.
The mind:
  1. Levels of the mind.
    1. Ego consciousness
    2. Personal unconscious- contents are individual acquistions or product of instinctive processes. Forgotten or repressed contents, and creative contents.
    3. Collective unconscious- shares with every other human being and which is inherited from previous generations in the distant past.
    4. Psychoid level- where the mind, in a sense, dissolves into or becomes at one with nature.
  2. Systems of the mind.
    1. Ectopsyche system- a system of relationship between the contents of consciousness and facts and data coming in from the environment.
      1. Sensation function- senses the environment around you and inside your body. This function works primarly with the present.
      2. Thinking function- analyzes, imagines, constructs theories, etc. Works primarly with the present, past and/or future.
      3. Feeling function- emotions, values. Works with the past.
      4. Intuition function- hunches. Works with the future.
    2. Endopsyche system- a system of relationship between the contents of consciousness and postulated processes in the unconscious.
      1. Memory function
      2. The subjective components of conscious function- we get an opinion of someone or something.
      3. Affects- feeling and emotional responses.
      4. Invasion- an involuntary flood of emotionally charged material from the unconscious. Same as an artistic inspiration.
  3. Archetypes in the unconscious.
    1. Definition. Inside the personal unconscious as containing complexes which are conceived as more or less independent classes of emotionally Laden memories and ideas. These clusters sometimes were thought of as separate subpersonalities.
    2. Attributes.
      1. Archetypes can do nothing wrong.
      2. They cannot be destroyed.
      3. They do not want to share the psyche.
    3. The Archetypes.
      1. The Shadow- a representation of some facet of your personality, partially or fully hidden or repressed from your conscious awareness, but still living and functioning.
        • Usually will appear as the same sex as a dreamer.
        • They may, and frequently do, appear in multiple forms in a dream.
        • They may be either positive or negative, constructive or destructive, complimentary or detractive.
        • They also manifest themselves in conscious life.
      2. The Persona - surface aspects of personality which people employed in their everyday social dealings.
      3. The Anima - the feminine aspect of the male personality.
      4. The Animus - the male aspect of the female personality.
        • They are not people of close relationship.
        • In the mainstream displays distinctive positive and negative female characteristics.
        • In a woman's dream displays distinctive positive and negative male characteristics.
      5. The Self - the supraordinant, organizing principle of psychic selfhood.
      6. Mother and Father
      7. Divine Child
      8. The Maiden - companion to the Divine Child, his feminine counterpart.
      9. The Hero - the motif of defeat, death, and rebirth.
      10. The Wise Old Man - knowledge, reflection, insight, wisdom, cleverness and intuition.
      11. The Trickster
      12. Conjunction- union of opposites.
      13. The Lover - receptiveness, affiliation, healthy dependency, embodied sexuality, empathy, intimacy.
      14. The Warrior- potentials for boundary foundation and maintenance, effective organization, action, vocation, and fidelity.
      15. The Spirit
      16. The Stoic
      17. The God
      18. The Magician
  4. Individuation- the process of coming into psychic balance where the conscious and unconscious, ego, and Self, have an ongoing relationship.
  5. Dreams and dream interpretation.
    1. Definition. Dreams don't speak in the verbal or logical language of waking life but rather find their voice in quite a different language, the language of symbolism.
    2. Dream interpretation.
      1. Jung would have the patient freely associate to the various symbols or images in the dream.
      2. Jung realized that each element of the dream had a symbolic individuality that could be best interpretated by the dreamer and no one else.
      3. Having gathered the dreamer's associations and made various tentative interpretations of the meaning and purpose of the individual dream, Jung then looked to archetypal parallels for understanding the deeper levels of the dream symbols.
  6. Principles operating within the psyche. 
    1. Eros- the feminine principle of relatedness.
    2. Logos- the masculine principle of knowledge.
  7. Schizophrenia- the expression of the intolerable emotional conflicts, upwelling of unconscious complexes have been swamped the individual ego and render the patient cognitively and behaviorally out of touch with reality.
  8. Child development and psychology - the normal child lives psychologically in a state of unconsciousness from which various isolated moments of consciousness appear, like islands in a sea, and that such islands of consciousness gradually grow larger and larger until the ego complex eventually crystallized and allows for more or less continuous conscious awareness of self and others. Most disturbances in childhood are due to the child's absorption of unconscious conflicts from the parents' repressed or denied unconscious material.
  9. Active imagination- a diaologue that you enter into with the different parts of yourself that live in the unconscious.
    1. The steps.
      1. The first step is what von Frannz calls "stopping the mad mind." The thoughts of ego-consciousness must first be set aside in order to give the unconscious a chance to enter.
      2. The unconscious begins to come in, usually in the form of fantasies, images, or emotions. These are written down or given some other external form at this point.
      3. The ego has a dialogue with the contents of the unconscious.
    2. Dangers.
      1. The possibility of becoming overwhelmed by the unconscious.
      2. In extreme form, the attempt to exploit the power of the unconscious for ego purposes is black magic.
      3. Emergent fantasies may be acted out in a literal way when their meaning is actually symbolic.
      4. The potential for inflation by, or identification with, or possession by, unconscious contents.
    3. Active imagination does not create dangerous contents, although by focusing on them, it can give them added power. The contents exist in any case, and they have an effect whether or not they are seen. Often it is more dangerous to remain unconscious of them than to meet them in active imagination.
  10. The unconscious is the creative source of all evolves into the conscious mind and into the total personality of each individual.
  11. When the conscious and the unconscious minds are out of correct balance with one another, neurosis or other disturbances result.
  12. The unconscious is the Original Mind of humankind, the primal matrix out of which our species has evolved a conscious mind and then developed it over the millennia to the extent and the refinement that it has today.
  13. Jung believed that every mortal has an individual role to play in this conscious evolution.