ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the psychodynamic views of the psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in relation to embodiment and education. In the psychodynamic view our consciousness does not float freely above the ground of our being, but exists within an embodied state. Freud and Jung both observed how our mental state can engender changes in the body, just as readily as the body can affect changes to our mental state and that the connecting bridge was the unconscious. Understood as part of an organic system, they maintained consciousness arises from and remains part of this unconscious/body matrix. Sympathetic to the recapitulation idea of the time, they both saw the archaic states in a person’s unconscious, inform and shape conscious functioning and personality growth. Education has drawn upon these ideas indirectly through the contributions of numerous psychologists interested in development of the person and their functional capacities. Freud’s and Jung’s influence upon three psychologists pivotal to educational theory and practice, Piaget, Vygsotky, and Erikson, is discussed with reference to identity formation, mental functioning, and creativity.
