The presence of analytical psychology of C. G. Jung n the episthemology of Gaston Bachelard

Abstract

Bachelard references Jung’s analytic psychology as a tool for his study of the creative imagination and the four material elements frequently. His works in  the epistemology of science do not refer to Jung but instead to Freudian psychoanalysis. Readers are therefore led into believing that Jungian analysis is restricted to half of Bachelard’s work. But a close reading of both his epistemological works (especially La Formation de l’esprit scientifique and La Psychanalyse du feu), and Jung’s work shows
instead that Bachelardian epistemology is a case study in the application of Jungian conceptions on the structure of the psychic
life to the description of what Bachelard calls “epistemological obstacles” to the progress of science and how they represent
deep-seated explanatory frameworks about the physical world. I clarify the extent of that influence and also demonstrate where Bachelard goes beyond Jung and solves the ontological problem of scientific objects postulated by the mind.