Modern Man in Search of a Soul

In 1933, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud’s most famous student, published Modern Man in Search of a Soul, a book of collected lectures which had a major influence on the theory and practice of psychotherapy. The book challenges Freud about the nature of the unconscious mind, which Jung believes is the source of basic wants and needs and not the roiling cauldron of anti-social urges pictured by Freud. Jung’s lectures suggest that people who come to terms with their conflicted yearnings can not only rid themselves of recurring psychological problems, but they can also develop a robust mental and spiritual vitality.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul brought Jung’s theories about personality types, the collective unconscious, archetypes, and the therapeutic benefits of Eastern religious philosophies to a wide audience. This study guide refers to the 2001 eBook format of the original English translation by W. S. Dell and Cary F. Baynes.

Summary

Patients visit psychotherapists to help them deal with behaviors that cause problems in their lives known as neuroses. These symptoms are powered by the deep mind, the unconscious. Dreams are a gateway into those depths. Dreams desires aren’t manifestations of the hidden, dark side of the human mind, as described in Freudian psychoanalysis, but simply a representation of wants and needs that a person has pushed away. Jung’s therapeutic technique uses dream analysis to bring to light these repressed desires so that the patient can learn how to fulfill them constructively.

Freudian therapy stresses the need for a confessional process in which the patient confronts conflicting urges that well up in the form of neuroses. Jung believes this doesn’t work well for everyone, and that some respond better to direct explanations of the unconscious. Another group thrives best when educated about ways to improve their social interactions, and some or all patients have the chance, not merely to regain normal behavior, but to transform into people with full access to their creative mental powers.

The purpose of psychotherapy isn’t to get people to conform to some standard based on psychological theory; it’s to assist them in accepting their deepest longings and guide them in manifesting those needs in productive ways. Each patient, though, is unique, and there is no theory that accounts perfectly for all of them. Instead, Jung helps patients understand the meaning of their dreams and fantasies. Patients let ideas arise through conscious free association. Some draw or paint images from those thoughts. Frequently, they make images correspond to recurring symbols from art and history.

Personalities are defined by two main attitudes: extraversion, or moving toward, and introversion, or hanging back. These affect the four functions of the mind—thoughts, feelings, sensations, and intuitions. Thoughts and feelings are the two parts of the psyche’s rational process, while sensations and intuitions are how the mind receives information about the world. A person can, for example, be very extraverted in thinking and less so in feeling. On the other hand, they can be introverted about sensations but somewhat more vigorous about intuitions.

Though Freud introduced the basic principles of the unconscious, he and Jung disagreed about the contents of the hidden mind. Freud believes the unconscious harbors selfish, anti-social urges, whereas Jung believes the deepest human yearnings are for protection and development and otherwise socially neutral. Jung suggests that psychotherapy can go beyond psychic normalization and help patients develop their spirits.

Freudians also assume too quickly (according to Jung) that pre-industrial societies are savage and ignorant. Instead, they hold different foundational assumptions about how the world works, and they regard chance occurrences as illusions behind which operate the deliberate plans of powerful beings. “Primitive” people are more open to the upwellings of the unconscious and more sensitive to small changes in their environment.

Like pre-industrial communities, creative artists are sometimes looked down on for their attention to unconscious forces; Freudian analysts tend to see them as glorified neurotics. Great artists, though, listen carefully to their inner visions, guided by them to create works that speak to all humans. Artists often sacrifice their private happiness to the demands made on them by their art. It’s possible to analyze the idiosyncrasies of their individual styles, but their completed works transcend analysis because they address, not garden-variety urges, but humanity’s deepest, most spiritual feelings.

Psychology can’t make progress if it assumes that consciousness is merely the workings of atoms in the brain. It is, rather, the unconscious that, as a form of spirit, inhabits the body, creates consciousness, and directs its activities in accordance with the massed knowledge of the collective unconscious. Therapy that regards the mind as a mere echo of material processes neglects the obvious reality of the entire psyche in both its conscious and unconscious forms. Therapists who discount non-rational experiences or dismiss spiritual yearnings risk overlooking vital clues and doing damage to their patients.

Modern societies suffer from a loss of spirituality. Psychotherapists tend to ignore the spiritual urge, regarding it as a fantasy, but the need for spirit wells up in patients and must be addressed. Therapists need to be alive to that urge: They can assist patients by helping them interpret archetypal images and symbols that rise from their unconscious minds; this can help them come to terms with crises of faith and find purpose in their lives.