Jungian Psychology and Its Uses in Folklore

THERE ARE, WE KNOW, risks involved in the use of borrowed concepts. That concept or hypothesis which appears so attractive in sociology, to name just one occasionally plundered field, may appear quite differently in folklore, no longer surrounded by the assumptions upon which it was originally based. This has been, I think, the fate of some of C. G. Jung's concepts; once removed from their original context in analytical psychology, they have not always fared well in other fields. Jung has sometimes been criticized by scholars on the basis of their own assumptions and without regard to his. It is true that Jung's concepts have been attractive to folklorists because some of them deal directly with folkldoristic materials-with folktales and myths, for example-but this does not change the fact that the assumptions from which they evolved are different from those in folklore. Although I am not always certain as to the aims of folklore, I am sure that it does not share the goals of analytical psychology and, more particularly, that it does not directly involve a system of psychotherapy. This said, I will now turn slightly about and suggest that there are concepts in analytical psychology of great usefulness to folklorists, but their successful use depends to a large extent upon a knowledge of what they mean in their parent discipline. The ones I have particularly in mind are the concepts of psychological type, the personal and collective unconscious, complex, and archetype. I want to discuss briefly their use in analytical psychology and then to suggest how they can be used by the folklorist-first, to make him aware of himself as an important psychological factor influencing in advance the results of his field work, and secondly, to provide the basis for a technique of content analysis of his materials, be they folk beliefs, tales, songs, myths, symbols, or cultural backgrounds. Jungian psychotherapy seeks to achieve the highest degree of psychic wholeness attainable for the individual, by attempting to bring about a reconciliation of the different aspects of his personality. To this process Jung gave the name individuation, and he was convinced that individuation was the end toward which all human beings strive, for the most part unconsciously. From his long experience in clinical practice, Jung discovered that everyone possesses a kind of pattern to

Analytical psychology · Folklore · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Anthropology · Jungian Analytical Psychology · Psychology

• Folktales in the Folder of Human Mind

  Open Access•Debangana Bhattacharya, Rita Karmakar•Journal of Humanities and Social…•2021

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