What is Jungian Psychology?

The psyche in Jung’s model is the sum of, or totality, of all psychic processes and contents, conscious and unconscious, illustrated in the image of the psyche shown above. One way to understand the psyche is to describe it using metaphor; imagine the psyche as an interactive theatre with a conscious and unconscious stage in which many actors play a role. The conscious and unconscious stages are separated by a stage curtain.

At the apron of the conscious stage, we meet the first actor, the persona, turned towards the audience who represent social interaction in the world. Jung borrowed the term persona from Greek which means ‘theatre mask’, like an actor’s mask, it is the personal façade that we put on to create a desired impression to others. Jung described the persona as a complicated system of relations between an individual's consciousness and society, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual. It is a social attitude that an individual adopts, for example, because he or she belongs to a certain group, profession, occupation, social class, political party, tribe, clan or nation etc.

The actor behind the mask is the ego, the lead actor on the conscious stage. The ego exerts its influence as the lead identity of consciousness, influencing the behaviour of the individual, however, it does not constitute the unique person. The ego expresses the individual's consciousness using the attitudes [introversion and extraversion] and functions; sensation, intuition, thinking, feeling.

The conscious audience, the world at large or outer objects interact with the ego, like a theatre audience, sometimes applauding, sometimes booing, taunting, conversing, ignoring or supporting the persona and ego; the workplace is a representation of the outer objects.

Behind the ego is a vague psychic scrim, the stage curtain and the threshold of the unconscious realm, the personal unconscious. In a theatre, a scrim is a lightweight transparent curtain that conceals actors or objects behind it when they are not illuminated but reveals them if light is cast upon them. The personal unconscious contains an individual’s memories of the past, personal experiences which are forgotten and are therefore concealed from the conscious stage unless they are illuminated.

These are memories from our childhood or adult life, which with some effort, we can bring back into our conscious mind. However, some memories appear spontaneously and with no effort by the ego, these memories disrupt the ego which is often powerless to suppress them. These memories which cause disruption to the ego are known as complexes, they are autonomous, arriving uninvited and incognito in the conscious mind, growing in number and intensity as the ego engages with the outer world.

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Complexes consist of emotionally charged clusters of often long-forgotten content and may trigger compulsive urges or reactions, taking over or possessing the ego, forcing themselves onto the conscious stage. An individual possessed by an autonomous complex can appear to have irrational fears, disproportionate reactions, intense attractions or aversions to certain people. These behaviours often create interpersonal conflict in the workplace. 

Behind the personal unconscious, we now enter the deeper layers of the unconscious. Jung uses the term unconscious both to describe mental contents which are inaccessible to the ego and to delineate a psychic space with its own character, laws and functions. The unconscious is a mirror image of consciousness but it has a much quieter and ethereal quality. The conscious stage includes perceptions of, and interactions with, the world at large or outer objects. The counterpart in the unconscious, the inner objects, includes perceptions of, and interactions with, images from the archetypes of the collective unconscious.

There is another actor in the unconscious, hidden within its depths, the shadow. The shadow contains all the attributes the ego has not adopted. Whatever attributes the ego has adopted, the shadow adopts the opposite attributes. If the ego is emboldened with pride, the shadow is timid and incompetent. If the ego is productive, the shadow is reflective. If the ego is loving, the shadow is hostile. If the ego is oriented to the outer world, the shadow will be oriented to the inner life.

The shadow is autonomous and can wreak havoc if ignored or repressed, interrupting the ego’s role on the conscious stage. The ego typically projects the shadow onto others in the world at large, often such shadow projections have been the cause of discrimination, violent personal hatred, mass persecutions, and even genocide. The most severe aspects of the shadow are manifested in racial, social and national prejudice. The shadow contains the personal characteristics that the individual wishes to hide from others and from him or herself.

However, if the shadow is acknowledged progressive personal growth develops towards the emergence of the whole person.

The persona also has its counterpart in the unconscious, the soul, a term that Jung refers to as an inner personality. The soul plays a compensatory role to the persona on the conscious stage, which means that as the persona presents a sort of personality at the threshold of the outer world, the soul presents a personality of the threshold of the inner world.

Like the shadow the soul can also be projected onto the conscious audience. This is inevitable as long as the soul remains unconscious to the individual. While the shadow projects to the outer world in a negative way, the soul often projects a more positive, favourable aura onto others, projecting an idealised image onto some lucky beneficiary or individual, often creating a harmonising effect between individuals in the workplace.