One of the challenges Jung had to deal with was explaining how he differed from Freud’s psychoanalysis. In his lectures, delivered to about two hundred physicians at the Tavistock Clinic in London in 1935 and subsequently published in his book Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice, he provides an answer to this very question.
“I could not start from the same premises as Freud when he calls a certain part of the unconscious the ‘Id.’ Why give it such a strange name? It is simply the unconscious—something we do not know. Why should we call it ‘Id’? Of course, the difference in temperaments leads to different views.
I could not find the strength to interest myself so much in these sexual cases. It is natural that they exist—those are the people with a neurotic sexual life; one must talk to them about it until they are bored with it and this dull subject can be dropped. Naturally, given my own temperament, I hope we finish with it as quickly as possible.
It is a neurotic manifestation, and no sensible, normal person talks about it for long. It is not natural to dwell at length on such matters. Primitives are very reserved in this respect. For the sexual act, they have only one word, and that is ‘pst.’ Sexual problems are taboo for them, as they are for us if we are natural. But taboo things and places have always been very suitable for being turned into a vessel for all sorts of projections. Therefore, the real problem is not there at all.
Some people create unnecessary difficulties for themselves in the sexual sphere, while their real problem is of a completely different nature.” (p. 145)
I am reminded of the film A Dangerous Method: Freud and Jung. I was strongly intrigued to watch it, partly because of my professional interests, but I couldn’t. I would start and could not finish it. Everything seemed so brutally different from my experience of Jung the man through his books that I did not want to commit such violence upon myself. The quote above explains why—”taboo things and places have always been very suitable for being turned into a vessel for all sorts of projections.” Including the projections of the people who make films—because the real problem lies elsewhere.
“I know that what Freud says corresponds to the state of many people, and I accept that they are of exactly the psychological type he described. Adler, who presents entirely different views, also has many followers, and I am convinced that many people possess the psychological type described by Adler. For my part, I also have followers—not as many as Freud, who, I suppose, share my psychological outlook… but I have also had patients with whom I do Freudian analysis and follow all the details described quite correctly by Freud.
In other cases, I am forced to view things from Adler’s position because we are dealing with people with a power complex. Those who can adapt and find success probably possess a Freudian type of psychology, because a person in such a position strives for the fulfillment of their desires. On the other hand, the one who does not enjoy success has no time to reflect on any desires. He has only one desire—to reach the goal—and therefore will be classified under Adlerian psychology, because anyone who stands in second place for a long time surely develops a power complex.
From this aspect, I do not have a power complex, because I have had enough success and was able to adapt in almost every respect. It is completely indifferent to me whether the whole world rejects my views… From my point of view, it would be good to observe that there are obviously thousands of people who have a Freudian psychological type, and thousands with an Adlerian type. Some seek the fulfillment of desires, others the realization of the drive for power, and others want to see the world as it is and leave everything alone. We do not want to change anything. The world is good as it is.” (pp. 142-143)
In fact, for Jung, the world was not “good as it is,” because he suffered deeply from the wars and the fate of humanity. But due to his knowledge of the world of archetypes and the “dark face of God,” he possessed the humility and tolerance that arose from it.
“For Freud, the unconscious is primarily a receptacle for collecting repressed contents. He views it from the standpoint of the nursery. For me, it is a vast storehouse of historical material. I admit that I also have my nursery, but it is small compared to the vast expanses of time and space that have interested me much more since childhood than the nursery. There are many people like me—in this respect, I am an optimist. There were periods when I thought there was no one else, fearing that my way of thinking was perhaps a power complex.
Then I found that many people share my views, and I was filled with satisfaction, because I am probably a representative of a minority whose basic psychological facts can be more or less successfully expressed by my formulations. When one works with the analysis of such people, one understands that the viewpoints of Freud and Adler are inapplicable to them, unlike mine. I have been reproached for my naivety. If things are not clear to me with a patient, I give him books by Freud and Adler and make him choose, hoping we will reach a real clue. But it turns out we have been on the wrong path.
Generally, people who have reached a certain maturity, with a philosophical outlook, who have succeeded more or less in worldly life and are not too high-strung, share my views…”
C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice, p. 144
