This paper will discuss three of Carl Jung ideas in regards to the nature of the unconscious which are touched upon in this article with a view as to which one is the most persuasive in character.
The first idea Jung postulates is that of the existence of the unconscious mind. Unlike the conscious mind, which may be proven to exist through common sense and experience, the unconscious mind contains hidden content that only surfaces occasionally in dreams, when people are unconscious (Baynes, 1958, p. 341). Although Jung agrees with Freud and others that the unconscious speaks to people through symbolic language, rather than directly, Jung disagrees as to where the content comes from. Freud and others had asserted that unconscious symbols in dreams came from unprocessed conflicts and desires that had been suppressed and that needed to be exposed and dealt with. Dreams were a way for the patient to come to terms with those repressions and were a gauge for psychiatrists to use in studying where patients were in the healing process (Baynes, 1958). Jung termed this part of the unconscious the personal unconscious.
Jung disagreed with FreudÆs point of view that all of the unconscious was personal, which lead to the second of one his key ideas in this article, which was where these dreams came from. Jung asserted that if indeed all things in the unconscious were merely suppressed memories, then once those repressions were dealt with and removed, there would be no more need for the unconscious and it would cease to exist altogether. In fact, ôthrough the removal of repressions, a man would acquire a phenomenal memory which would henceforth forget nothingö (Baynes, 1958, p.344). Therefore, there must be other psychic material that lies below the threshold of consciousness. This material contains psychic components such as subliminal sense perception and other components that have not yet reached the threshold of consciousnes...