The Idea of the Child in Freud and Jung: psychological sources for divergent spiritualities of childhood
Title:
The Idea of the Child in Freud and Jung: psychological sources for divergent spiritualities of childhood
Author:
Mercer, Joyce Ann
Appeared in:
international journal of children's spirituality
Paging:
Volume 8 (2003) nr. 2 pages 115-132
Year:
2003-08
Contents:
This essay explores the constructions of the child developed in the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These child-constructs constitute important psychological source-theories for spiritualities of childhood as each embodies a particular understanding of what childhood means, within the author's understandings of human personhood. After addressing an initial period of agreement between the two thinkers in which both understood the child as preeminently sexual, the essay details Jung's departure from Freud over the latter's theory of infantile sexuality, toward a construction of the child as having a special closeness to the spiritual realms of the numinous and the collective unconscious. This construct of Jung, while upholding a basically hopeful and positive view of the child, risks distortions in over-idealized spiritualities of childhood. Freud's construction, on the other hand, maintained an essentially negative parallel between the child and illusory religion, and the child and so-called primitive societies, that risks reducing children's spirituality to moralisms. At the same time, however, the essay concludes that elements of both of their constructions of the child may be retrieved toward children's spiritualities that promote the thriving of children.
Journal description