By Esha Bagora

Humor Editor

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are the banes of my existence. Ever since we started the psychoanalytical unit in 10th grade English class, I haven’t been able to stop over analyzing every single part of my day, which is just making my life harder and complicated. 

When we were learning about just Freud, everything was simpler. Was my mom yelling at me to clean my room since guests were coming over because of her superego? Yes, absolutely. My sister stealing my secret stash of chips was an obvious connection to her id, as she was so hungry for my food that she didn’t think about my emotions and how the lack of chips would affect me. I had a field day, though, with Freud’s defense mechanisms. Was my private trainer explaining how to use a particular machine for the fifth time in an annoyed yet nice voice, an example of repression? Me choosing to not check my grades, but constantly checking my bank account — is that denial or displacement? Life with Freud was easy. Simple in fact. 

But when we started to learn about Freud’s protegé Carl Jung and everything went to the dogs. Anima? Animus? How about Ani-no? I don’t understand why Jung felt the need to make so many explanations for people’s personalities, and then make it a part of the 10th grade English curriculum. We watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog the other day, and were assigned a two page analysis using Jung’s principles. HOW?!? Only after spending two hours self – studying the slideshow about Jung’s theories which we’ve gone over once in class, did I begin to understand everything. Yet even after my two – hour escapade, his only concept I fully understand is persona. I use it everyday, like when I pretend to be happy about my teacher assigning a humongous essay or feigning my sadness for a particular teacher when in reality, they are one of my favorites. 

But, the most frustrating part about Jung is that I can’t apply his theories. I can’t analyze my life by his thoughts. I just started watching New Girl on Netflix, and I SEE FREUD. I watched Kissing Booth 3 and Addison Rae’s movie (huge waste of time, don’t even get me started) AND I SAW FREUD. I don’t see Jung anywhere, in any aspect of my life, and that is so irritating. As I’m editing this article, I have come to the realization that the only one of Jung’s theories that I see is persona. People are so fake? Why? Literally just be your Self ( hehehehehehe ) and you won’t need your Persona’s so much. 

Also, because of Freud, I can’t have a single human interaction without hearing what I imagine to be his voice, telling me which defense mechanism I just witnessed. Personas, complexes, and the house of future development from Jung sound … interesting to think about and use at first. But, now that Jung’s life work has been understood by me, I will continue to call his theories the source of my misery and headaches. I wish I didn’t choose to spend two hours learning about Persona’s because my life was easier being frustrated about not knowing his theories. I can’t wait for the next unit in English!!!