Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology, was one of the great explorers of the inner world we call the psyche. Many of Dr. Jung’s ideas have entered mainstream thought and influence how we think about ourselves today.

Jung began his professional life treating patients and conducting research at the Burgholzi Clinic in Zurich, then the most famous psychiatric hospital in Europe. He was already prominent in his field when he read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, after which he wrote to Freud. Jung felt his research could provide scientific corroboration of Freud’s theories of the unconscious. The two men then met in 1906 and began an intense collaboration to map unconscious realms.

Their relationship ended in 1913 as Jung developed psychological theories that differed from Freud’s. Freud’s theories were rooted in sexuality, and he thought the unconscious was mainly a repository for repressed experience. Jung, however, realized that because universal mythological themes arise in dreams and fantasies, the unconscious was also the wellspring of creativity and growth. Jung later understood these themes as archetypes – the inner themes that provide the bases for how we live, think and feel.

The break with Freud precipitated a six-year period of personal crisis that Jung came to call his “confrontation with the unconscious”. He chronicled this period in the Red Book, a large, richly illustrated volume that was published in 2009. His experience became the foundation for a lifetime’s work that embraced wide-ranging studies, writing, travel and teaching. Jung’s theory and method, Analytical Psychology, mapped human dynamics in their complexity and depth.

Jung was the first to understand the importance of psychological development in adults and worked face-to-face with his patients in a process of mutual discovery. He felt people were motivated most significantly by an innate desire to realize their potential, which he called individuation, the goal of Jung’s psychoanalytic method.

Jung also developed the concept of typology, which introduced introversion and extraversion and identified major functions of consciousness. (The widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator [MBTI] is based on Jung’s theory.) Jung also gave us the theory of synchronicity, a concept of meaningful “coincidental” connections. He was one of the few theorists to pursue human development across one’s entire lifespan, whereas most other psychoanalysts posited development was a childhood phenomenon only. He focuses as much on a person’s future as much as her past. His extensive theoretical works constitute a comprehensive understanding of conscious and unconscious processes.