Complex in Psychoanalysis Revisited: Freud, Jung, and the War Complex

Desmond Ayim-Aboagye^1* & Manuela Julietta Amorin²

¹Regent University College of Science and Technology, Ghana; Uppsala University, Sweden
²Morgan State University, Maryland, USA

Dr. Desmond Ayim-Aboagye, Regent University College of Science and Technology, Ghana; Uppsala University, Sweden.

Keywords: Complex; Delusions; Hannibal Odessey Complex; Narcissistic; Paranoid Schizoid; Psychoanalysis; Psychobiography; Psychopathic Disorder; Sadistic Personality Disorder; Schizophrenic Personality Disorders; Unconscious Conflicts

Abstract

Introduction
Psychoanalysis clinical principles in the treatment of psychopathology have attracted philosophers and many professional psychologists for decades since its development. Some of these scholars have expanded what the pioneers, Freud and Jung, have earlier postulated. The discipline continues to engage modern scholars, some of who believe the psychoanalytic theory succinctly describes the reality of the individual’s unconscious mind conflicts, which finally appear to cause mental problems that make him grapple with pain and suffering for the rest of his life.
Purpose
The article endeavors to describe and explain the theory of complex, which was developed by Sigmund Freud and later embellished by his foremost disciple, Carl Gustav Jung. Comparisons are made to unearth their clinical importance in the treatment of psychopathology. The conditions of important historical personalities who experienced complexes regarding wars are studied to show that these unconscious emotional experiences, feelings, memories, etc., influenced the conscious activities of these war heroes. Thus a well-defined hypothesis is advanced which states that individuals could also have complexes about war.

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