Cognitive Therapy Vs Jungian Analysis

Comparisons and Contrasts of Psychoanalysis, Jungian Analysis, and Cognitive Therapy

Psychoanalysis – Psychoanalysis is a method of psychotherapy that was founded by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud believed that people could be cured by making their unconscious thoughts conscious, allowing the therapist to gain insight. The goal of psychoanalysis therapy is to get rid of repressed emotional issues and experiences - making the unconscious conscious.

Jungian Analysis and Therapy – Jungian Analysis is a method of psychotherapy developed by C.G. Jung, (1875-1961). Jung is the psychotherapeutic approach of Analytical Psychology, where the patient and the doctor work together to bring the unconscious and the conscious together to be more balanced.

Cognitive Therapy – Cognitive Therapy is a method of psychotherapy developed by Aaron Beck in the 1960’s. It basically focuses on how you think, behave, and communicate and teaches you new ways of thinking. The main goal is to identify and solve problems.

Freud believed that the unconscious mind was where our repressed thoughts, our drive for sex and aggression, and traumatic experiences were kept. It was where we store all of our hidden sexual desires, resulting in neuroses.
Freud hypothesized three types of personalities: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id represents our unconscious drives (sex), has no morals, and only wants to satisfy pleasure. The ego represents our memories and our perception of things and it allows or helps us to deal with reality effectively. The superego tries to play mediator to the id, hoping to make socially acceptable behaviors.
Jung believed that the unconscious was not restricted to just repressed material. He, like Freud, divided the human psyche into three parts: the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious, but the ego was the conscious, the personal unconscious was for recalled and suppressed memories, and the collective unconscious held innate knowledge.
Aaron Beck started Cognitive Therapy for patients with depression. He found that depressed patients had experienced spontaneously negative thoughts, which he called “automatic thoughts”, and that these automatic thoughts had three categories: negative thoughts about the world, themselves or the future.

Freud believed that we could learn a lot about someone through dream interpretation. He said when we are in a conscious state that our deepest sexual desires are not acted out because of our superego (morality) and the ego (reality), but that during sleep we bring our sexual desires to our dreams.
Jung like Freud believed that dream analysis opened a window into the unconscious mind.

But unlike Freud, Jung did not believe that dreams were sexual by nature or that they disguised their true meaning. Jung believed that dreams were more symbolic, that they could have many meanings.

Beck believed by identifying and evaluating automatic thoughts, patients were able to think more realistically, which made them feel better emotionally and they were able to function much better.

Freud’s Psychoanalysis consists basically helping a patient to associate freely.

Jung’s Jungian Analysis and Therapy consists of helping the patient build a relationship between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind.

Beck’s Cognitive therapy helps the patient learn effective self-help tools that help you change the way you feel, think, and behave. It helps the patient gain independence so that they can deal with “real-life” problems.

In both Jungian Analysis and Psychoanalysis the therapist is like an investigator, probing the inner psyche. The goal of Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis is to bring behavioral patterns in the unconscious to the surface and to identify how they influence behavior.

Cognitive Therapy basically breaks issues down into thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches the patient other effective ways to deal with

problems.

Both Jungian Analysis and Psychoanalysis require a long commitment between patient and therapist, sometimes for as long as 3 to 4 years at 3 times weekly, with Cognitive it may only take a handful of sessions between the patient and the therapist to achieve intended goal.

Because social learning is such a big part of the most everyone’s development I would have to choose Cognitive Therapy as what fits best with my world view. Cognitive behaviorists believe that a social learning is a major part of our development as children, that we develop our personalities from our experiences as children. We learn and identify what is appropriate and not appropriate in regard to our thoughts and feelings by watching and imitating. This is how every single person that I know has learned what they know at this point in life, so for me it just makes sense to for this to be my preferred theoretical approach.