Mind Matters (Psych #1)

I've been keenly interested in some of the theoretical aspects of psychology for close to a decade now, and it has now reached a point of near-absorption - this post has been brewing for a while. The affair had its beginnings in graduate school and University, thanks to well-stocked libraries lots of online reading at the cost of what I should have been studying for my actual degrees, and then, more recently, some happenstance perusal of works by Carl Jung and Viktor Frankl took it into high gear. For the past few years, I've been educating myself broadly about some of the core concepts of the subject and a little in-depth study has helped me get a sense of the main schools of thought - this post presupposes a basic understanding of some of these concepts. Once I started reading more, I had to rid myself of my previously held assumption that Freud's basic ideas (minus the overt insistent on  sexual drives and the related complexes) were unassailable. It seems rather obvious to me now, but while his tripartite personality theory was groundbreaking, it were also tightly wrapped in a very specific ideological and analytical cocoon which I believe is not adaptive or comprehensive enough to be universally applicable. Yet, the fact is that the classical version of psychoanalysis based on his assumptions IS the byword for psychiatric treatment today. All improvements and innovations that came after are peripheral, thought of as helpful comments to supplement the main activities of Freudian therapy.

Speaking of breaking away from Freudian theory, I became fascinated by some of Carl Jung's ideas, specifically those about 'the shadow', mental complexes, the ideas of extraversion and introversion, and the role of 'individuation' - the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy - in personality development. Of course, they draw heavily from the initial innovative ideas about the psyche, the unconscious, early influences, instinctual drives etc. That being said, I believe they describe the everyday workings of our minds - the subtle, daily dance between the conscious and the unconscious or the subconscious - in a more intuitive and logical manner than other frameworks of pscyhology. They seem, therefore, as capable of helping healthy minds grow towards their full potential as aiding unhealthy ones overcome their difficulties. His work seems to indicate that every psyche has to go through certain resolutive processes and gradually evolve to reach a kind of healthy, productive equilibrium. Only the study of how these concepts interact in a healthy mind will allows us to understand what triggers the maladjustment leading to psychosis or neurosis, and how to counterbalance these skews or aberrations that occur from time to time during this evolution. Thereby, they seem to underpin a broader psychological study than classical psychoanalytic theory, which at its core, seems to me a science of and for mental illness.

Jung, along with Freud and Adler, is considered to be among the three founding figures of depth psychology, which emphasizes the unconscious and psychodynamics. If one included Frankl in this hallowed panel, it could be said that Jung's system of thought focused on the ‘will to selfhood’, as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power, Freud's will to pleasure or Frankl’s Kierkegaardian will to meaning. In this quest towards selfhood, ‘individuation’ which I mentioned earlier has a key part to play. It involves a complex process of conversation between the many aspects of our conscious and unconscious, for example:

• The persona, or the outward face we present to the world - it conceals our real self and Jung describes it as the “conformity” archetype
• The shadow, or the instinctual side of our personality (like the id in Freudian theory) - it is the source of both our creative and destructive energies, and in line with evolutionary theory, it may reflect predispositions that once had survival value
• The anima/animus, or the mirror image of our biological sex - that is, the unconscious feminine side in males and the masculine tendencies in women (a controversial idea, but one which has nonetheless been adopted widely by modern psychology
• The self, or that part of our psyche which provides a sense of unity in experience, and in my interpretation, keeps the fabric of the psyche together by drawing from each of the other elements that which is core to the identity of the person and important to his or her self-actualisation, and resolving the aberrations which interfere with this integration.

While Jung calls these 'archetypes', I will stick to the general word 'aspects' because the former in psychological parlance has other more obscure and rather debatable ideas attached to it. The interesting thing is while the shadow’ has a parallel in ‘the id’ in Freudian theory, ‘the self’ is a far more unified and evolved construct than ‘the ego’, perhaps owing to Jung’s interest in Eastern religion and philosophy, and ‘the persona’ subverts the concept of ‘the superego’ by indicating that its predominance in its role as a ‘mask’ has elevated insincerity to a way of life which goes unquestioned by millions in their everyday life, and driven “man’s progressive alienation from his instinctual foundation”.

Clearly, Jung’s version of psychoanalysis is far more rooted in evolutionary psychology, anthropology and philosophical ideology than those of his contemporaries - the complexity of the framework and consequent difficulty in experimental analysis may explain why it has not been as popular, and why his ideas have often been dismissed as mystical and obscure pseudo-science. From the little that I have read, I believe that his ideas have immense universal applicability, especially in today’s world where so many people one meets seem to have fractured identities or lopsided personalities, and where thanks to our daily undertaking to manifest various aspects of ourselves all at once, many of us seem to be living confused mental and emotional lives. 

In likeness to the search for a Grand Unification Theory in physics that supersedes the central theories that attempt to explain our universe today, I believe we will need to try harder to marry the kind of scope and complexity that Jung tried to incorporate into his theories with relentless rational and scientific rigour to ultimately be able to arrive at a holistic theory of humanistic psychology. 

More on my thoughts on how the resolution and constant movement towards a constructive balance between the aspects of the psyche can be brought about, how it could possibly lead us towards psychological fulfillment, and how I believe all of this borrows heavily from, or endorses aspects of Eastern thought (Hinduism and Buddhism in particular), shall hopefully follow.