analytical psychology Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science ...

, the personal unconscious is

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phi ...

's term for the

Freudian Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

unconscious Unconscious may refer to: Physiology * Unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli Psychology * Unconscious mind, the mind operating well outside the attention of the conscious mind a ...

, as contrasted with the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious. Often referred to by him as "No man’s land," the personal unconscious is located at the fringe of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

, between two worlds: "the exterior or spatial world and the interior or psychic objective world" (Ellenberger, 707). As Charles Baudouin states, "That the unconscious extends so far beyond consciousness is simply the counterpart of the fact that the exterior world extends so far beyond our visual field" (Ellenberger, 707). The personal unconscious includes anything which is not presently conscious but can be. The personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed. The personal unconscious is like most people's understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both

memories Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...

that are easily brought to mind and those that have been repressed for some reason. Jung's theory of a personal unconscious is quite similar to Freud's creation of a region containing a person's repressed, forgotten or ignored experiences. However, Jung considered the personal unconscious to be a "more or less superficial layer of the unconscious." Within the personal unconscious are what he called "feeling-toned complexes." He said that "they constitute the personal and private side of psychic life."

References

*C. G. Jung. ''The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious'', 2nd ed., trans. by R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 4. *

Henri Ellenberger Henri Frédéric Ellenberger (Nalolo, Barotseland, Rhodesia, 6 November 1905 – Quebec, 1 May 1993) was a Canadian psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist, sometimes considered the founding historiographer of psychiatry. Ellenberger ...

(1970). '' The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry''. New York: Basic Books. {{DEFAULTSORT:Personal Unconscious Analytical psychology