Sigmund Freud & Carl Jung
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) coined the term psychoanalysis to describe his methods for curing the mental problems of his patients. He believed that most of these were caused by sexual difficulties that were repressed into areas of the mind that we are unaware of. He used the analogy of an iceberg floating in water to describe this hidden part of us.
The top 1/7th that pokes above the surface of the water represents our conscious mind. It is the conscious awareness we have when we are awake. The surface of the water itself is the boundary between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind- represented by the section of the iceberg below the water. Sigmund Freud called this the Pre-Conscious and it contains material accessible to the conscious mind such as facts, memories, ideas and motives. This part of the mind disguises the information coming from the unconscious by changing it into symbolism so that we will not be disturbed by what our unconscious is really thinking.
Below the Pre-Conscious lies the largest part of the mind which Freud called the Personal Unconscious. This 6/7ths contains our secret wishes and fears as well as the traumatic memories of the past. It stores repressed traumas and emotions and unacknowledged motives and urges. It is the uncontrolled instinctive side of us. Freud believed that the unconscious thoughts are completely hidden and unavailable to us.
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
Between 1907 and 1913 Freud’s star pupil, Carl Gustav Jung, fell out with Freud and proposed a new theory of the unconscious. Freud had recognised that the unconscious could retain ‘daily residues’ -images from our daily life that had been forgotten. But Carl Jung noticed that some of his patients were expressing themselves with imagery from ancient traditions. He wondered if the unconscious could hold ancient or ‘archaic residues.’ Jung’s patients were using inherited imagery harking back to forgotten mythologies buried in the unconscious.
In 1919 Jung called these images archetypes. Furthermore he proposed that we have a collective unconscious which is formed of the instincts and the archetypes. The archetypes are inborn forms of intuition which are the necessary determinants of all psychic processes. They manifest as images. They are like primordial ideas and are numinous, electrically charges with a sense of the sacred. Many of the images you will see in the cards are archetypal symbols originating from the collective unconscious. They are powerful symbols that represent the inner most processes within your psyche.

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