Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is often considered the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is "by nature religious" and to explore it in depth. Though not the first to analyze dreams, he has become perhaps one of the most well known pioneers in the field of dream analysis. Unlike Freud et al. he was a self-described natural scientist, not a theoretical psychologist. For Jung this salient distinction revolved around his initial process of deep observation followed by categorizations rather than the reverse process of imagining what categories exist and then proceeding to seek for proof of and then discover that one was correct, always correct. While he was a fully involved and practicing clinician, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts; all of which were extremely productive in regard to the symbols and processes of the human psyche, found in dreams and other entries to the unconscious.
He considered the process of individuation necessary for a person to become whole. This is a psychological process of integrating the opposites including the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Individuation was the central concept of analytical psychology.
Some Jungian ideas are routinely discussed in the introductory psychology course curricula of major universities, and although rarely covered by higher-level course work, his ideas are discussed further in a broad range of humanities. Many pioneering psychological concepts were originally proposed by Jung, including the Archetype, the Collective Unconscious, the Complex, and synchronicity. A popular psychometric instrument, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), has been principally developed from Jung's theories.
