Course Description

This class will address some of the more foundational features of Jung’s original theoretical structure, including an overview of Jung’s concepts of the conscious functions such as ego and persona and an overview of personal and collective unconscious functions such as shadow, complexes, archetypes and the transcendent function. A close reading of excerpts from Two Essays on Analytical Psychology will demonstrate how to read Jung and concurrently introduce students to key concepts. The aim of this class is to gain understanding of the teleological and transpersonal qualities of the Jungian perspective.

Learning Objectives

Describe the foundational elements of Carl Gustav Jung’s model of the psyche—including ego, Self, persona, shadow, complexes, and the personal and collective unconscious—and explain how these structures inform Jungian clinical formulation.
Differentiate key Jungian processes such as individuation and the transcendent function from other psychodynamic change mechanisms, enabling clinicians to conceptualize psychological symptoms as symbolic communications rather than solely deficits or conflicts.
Define and identify archetypal material as it appears in dreams, fantasies, relational patterns, and affective states, and use archetypal understanding to assess meaning, and transformation in clinical work.
Apply Jungian teleological and transpersonal perspectives to psychotherapy by formulating treatment approaches that attend to purpose, symbolic coherence, and the patient’s relationship to meaning.

The Aion Institute is approved by the California Psychological Association to provide continuing professional education for psychologists. The Aion Institute (AIO279) maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

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AION 104 Introductory Theories and Technique in Jungian Psychotherapy