Who was Carl Jung?

Photograph of Carl Gustav Jung with his pipe.

Carl Jung was an early 20th century Swiss psychiatrist. Along with Sigmund Freud, he is one of the pioneers of modern psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. While the unconscious plays a central role in both Freud's and Jung's work, the two had very different ideas about its exact nature and about what its role is. Freud viewed the unconscious as essentially negative and composed of repressed desires and traumatic experiences from which our conscious mind protects us.

Jung accepted that such repressed material does reside in our unconscious. But he took a much more expansive position. He believed that on the whole, our unconscious is essentially positive and that it is a vast reservoir of potential that draws us toward the fulfillment of our soul's highest purpose.