AION 104 Course Evaluation

Course Description

This class will address some of the more foundational features of Jung’s original theoretical structure, including an overview of Jungian personality structure and function such as ego, Self, persona, shadow, individuation, complexes, and the transcendent function.  Jungian perspectives will be discussed in the context of the theory of archetypes and Jung’s autonomous spiritual principle, and the collective unconscious, and the teleological and transpersonal qualities of the Jungian perspective.

Curricular Notes

Symbolic and teleological grounding

AION 104 complements AION 103 by introducing Jungian psychology’s symbolic, archetypal, and teleological dimensions. Symptoms are reframed as meaning-bearing communications rather than solely as conflicts or deficits, and psychological development is understood as oriented toward wholeness rather than equilibrium alone. This course expands clinical imagination while maintaining rigor, preparing clinicians to work competently with meaning, dreams, archetypal material, and existential crisis.

Open Evaluation
1. Describe the foundational elements of Carl Gustav Jung’s model of the psyche—including ego, Self, persona, shadow, complexes, and the personal and collective unconscious—and explain how these structures inform Jungian clinical formulation.
2. Differentiate key Jungian processes such as individuation and the transcendent function from other psychodynamic change mechanisms, enabling clinicians to conceptualize psychological symptoms as symbolic communications rather than solely deficits or conflicts.
3. Define and identify archetypal material as it appears in dreams, fantasies, relational patterns, and affective states, and use archetypal understanding to assess meaning and transformation in clinical work.
4. Apply Jungian teleological and transpersonal perspectives to psychotherapy by formulating treatment approaches that attend to purpose, symbolic coherence, and the patient’s relationship to meaning.