analytic psychology

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Also known as: analytical psychotherapy

analytic psychology, the psychoanalytic method of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung as he distinguished it from that of Sigmund Freud. Jung attached less importance than did Freud to the role of sexuality in the neuroses and stressed the analysis of patients’ immediate conflicts as being more useful in understanding their problems than the uncovering of childhood conflicts. According to Jung’s definition, the unconscious includes individuals’ personal unconscious and that which they have inherited from their ancestors (the “collective unconscious”). He classified people into introverted and extraverted types and further distinguished them according to four primary functions of the mind—thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition—one or more of which Jung believed predominates in any given person.