Sigmund Freud was the Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis, a revolutionary theory of human behavior and a method for treating mental illness. His work championed the idea that childhood events and the unconscious mind profoundly shape adult personality and neuroses. Freud developed a structural model of the psyche—the id, ego, and superego—to explain the constant tensions between primal desires, reality, and morality.

Freud’s theories on psychosexual development, dream analysis, and defense mechanisms became foundational to modern psychology, though they remain highly debated. He saw the unconscious not as a mystical realm but as a repository of repressed desires and traumas, which could be brought to light through the "talking cure." His work dominated 20th-century thought, embedding concepts like the "Freudian slip" and "Oedipus complex" into the global lexicon.

Carl Gustav Jung was the Swiss psychiatrist who began as Freud's most esteemed protégé. However, following an intense creative crisis and an irreconcilable split with his mentor in 1913, Jung embarked on a profound "confrontation with the unconscious." From this journey, he founded analytical psychology, expanding the psychic map far beyond Freud's model. For an in-depth analysis of his individual chart, see the natal reading for Carl Jung.

Jung introduced concepts such as the collective unconscious—a universal reservoir of shared human images he termed "archetypes." His vision embraced the spiritual and mystical dimensions of experience, arguing that the psyche strives for wholeness through a process of "individuation." He saw alchemy not as primitive chemistry but as a potent metaphor for the psyche's journey toward integrating its conscious and unconscious parts.