C. G. Jung about Dreams Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

C. G. Jung about Dreams - Essay Example Jung was Freud’s main collaborator and most probable successor as leader of the psychoanalytic movement, but his own researches led him away from Freud’s emphasis on the psychosexual origins of neurosis, founding his own analytic psychology in response to Freud’s psychoanalysis. This differed from the Freudian model in downgrading the importance of sexuality a childhood conflicts in the treatment of neuroses, and concentrating more on a patient’s current conflicts. Jung’s doctoral dissertation was entitled â€Å"On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called occult Phenomena† and was presented at Basel University in 1902. This stuffy sowed the seeds of ideas that became pivotal in the practice of Jung’s system of analytical psychology, namely that the unconscious contains â€Å"complexes† or part-personalities that can manifest in dreams and visions, and that personality development and integration (individuation) occurs at the un conscious level. A †complex† is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster-constellate-around a theme provided by some archetype (archetype will be explained further on). Jung describes a â€Å"complex† as a â€Å"node† in the unconscious; it may be imagined as a knot of unconscious feelings and beliefs, detectable indirectly, through behavior that is puzzling or hard to account for. Jung found evidence for complexes in the â€Å"word association test†; here a researcher read a list of words to each subject, who was asked to say, a quickly as possible, the first thing that came to mind in response to each word. Researches timed subject’s responses and noted any unusual reactions- hesitations, slips of the tongue, and signs of emotion. In Jung’s theory, complexes may be related to traumatic experiences or not. There are many kinds of complex, but at the core of any