ABSTRACT

Psychoanalysts have tended to see Jung, Freud, Adler, and others primarily as psychoanalytical thinkers, whereas it is university departments of psychology that have included them in the study of the psychology of personality. Chapter 1 is in two sections. First is a brief summary of Jung’s personality theory to introduce the theory for readers not already familiar with Jung’s concepts and to establish what I am including. Section 2 introduces the question of how to evaluate Jung’s theory and defends the categorisation of Jung’s theory as a theory of personality by clarifying the degree to which Jung is concerned with the questions that a personality theory addresses. I argue that, in addition to being viewed (uncontroversially) as a psychoanalytical theorist, Jung should indeed also be considered a personality theorist inasmuch as his work has many themes in common with those of personality theorists contemporary with him. Hence his work can be evaluated systematically using a framework of criteria for evaluating personality theories.