Jungian Therapy
Client and therapist relationships are one aspect of Jungian therapy that demonstrates its superiority over other therapy approaches. Jungian therapy allows for the client to be guided by the therapist to gain a deeper understanding about themselves and to become mature individuals that ultimately become productive members of society. The client and therapist relationship is unique as the client is not viewed as a client, or the therapist as the therapist to allow for the client to feel comfortable and trust the process. Approaching the situation using this form of therapy allows the client to speak freely and feel comfortable revealing private intimate details about themselves that may be both difficult and painful. Jungian therapists are people who help guide other people to delve into the unconscious and to create meanings in their lives (Dehing, 1992). The therapeutic approach allows for the client to reach a comfort level that allows for the therapeutic partnership to develop. This approach results in the client trusting the therapist which ultimately allows the client to become aware of aspects about themselves and the patterns that have influenced their interpersonal relationships.
The therapists have the knowledge of the interworking of the functions and structure of the psyche, and are experts. The knowledge possessed allows them to provide guidance and teach and provide the client with the necessary support while reflecting on the client’s experiences and or processes. Jungian therapy depends on a relationship between the therapist and client that is equitable, but for the relationship to successfully provide the client with the support needed, to allow for its existence the therapist cannot act as the superior being. The therapist has to abandon any feelings they may have of superiority and should not act in an authoritative manner, but should support the therapeutic process and not influence the process in any way. Jung further details that therapists should equally involved in their own self-realization process as their clients (Dehing, 1992).
The Jung therapy process has four levels confession, discovering problem origins, education, and transformation. Each of these stages are vital to the process to allow the client to heal and remove emotional blocks that could cause the problems to resurface. The confession stage allows the client to acknowledge their problems and limitations, and to provide the client with awareness of their weaknesses and humankind negative influences that should be avoided. During this emotional process, the client’s feelings are transferred to the therapist allowing for elements that may have been unconscious to begin to surface. The therapist provides the client with clarity in the information that is learned thru a process referred to as elucidation. This brings us to the next stage where the client begins to understand the origins of their problems and begins to deal with them directly. The third stage provides the client with insight into their personality and allows them to integrate the meaning from the information they have gained. The final stage allows the client to be transformed as a result of innovative changes and dynamics in the client-therapist relationship that go beyond the environmental realm and that create an active movement towards self-realization (Harris, 1996). Jung details the need for assessments to learn client histories and to understand how the client’s past history and conflicts can ultimately lead to maladjustments (Harris, 1996).
Jung made use of the different psychological profiles to properly assess human behaviors and created an outline that detailed which attitudes collectively determine the individual’s personality. The two fundamental attitudes that he analyzes are introverted personality, and extroverted personality with the latter characterized outgoing and social, and the first as introspective and shy. A variety of