Fuck That One Guy In Particular

There was a comment made about Jung in the episode of Criminal Minds that I watched tonight ('The Witness') and so unfortunately now I do need to complain about Jungian psychology for a little bit. Now, some people will also complain about the subject matter of much of his work on spirituality, or point out his interest in the paranormal as another area where he's unsupported on any scientific basis. Some people are having no fun at all. This is literally the most bearable part of his work. Thankfully everyone else more educated than me has already beaten every possible dead horse on those, so I get to rave about what I hate most: his essentialism. And by 'rave,' I do mean it in the delirious sense rather than enthusiastic. It will not be informative, but it will be needlessly heartfelt!

To admit it upfront - I just can't get behind archetypes or the collective unconscious. It's uninteresting to me, someone who's interest in psychology stems more from wanting to compare and contrast the experiences of individuals than find a way to examine the human mind across all of humanity. It's unhelpful. And while I disagree with the idea that psychology should function 'exactly like other sciences,' because I think trying to definitively prove most things about something as varied as the human mind is wishful thinking at best and a slippery slope to finally creating something worse than diagnostic labels (< I cannot talk as much as I'd like to about this topic without embarrassing myself with my own fervor) at worst, I do think that psychology should seek to actually benefit people. Ultimately, I think my main issue is that imagining a use for it feels hopeless. Instead of criticising how we can't prove Jungs ideas, I'd like to ask this: if we could, how could we use them to better understand the human mind, and how would this benefit us?

If it's the archetypes which influence human behaviour more than our lived experiences, do we have any meaningful control over our lives? If those lives are merely a sequence of stages which are already set in stone, marked out by the archetypes, and we're already on the path to becoming what we've always been destined to be - how are we meant to care about who we are? Or eachother? You can't change much, if anything, why bother? The very idea that we have little to no power over our own destinies or even who we become honestly just seems pessimistic and sad. Jungs individuation process strips the individuality from people, much like it does the cultures it picks out as examples of proof archetypes must exist if they're seen in different places across history. It's an unpleasant mix of 'I can not make myself entertain this as a belief because it seems so untrue to life' and 'I can not make myself entertain this as a belief, because I think it would suck to have this as my main ideology.' Now, does this mean Jungian psychology as a whole is devoid of hope and completely worthless? Definitely not! But I dislike the loveless view of the world I see looking through its eyes, and I take no small amount of pleasure from seeing people kick its credibility while it's down.