Shamanism, which values the ecstatic, is a path to transpersonal experience for the individual in a primitive culture. Jung was most interested in this level of experience. However, Jungian analysis combines both the natural and the psychologically primitive with the most sophisticated use of mind and consciousness known to our Western cultural tradition and holds the tension between them so that healing can ensue from a confrontation of the patient's ego with forces greater than itself. To this extent, Jung's work may be seen as a continuation into the present of the shamanic tradition. Conditions vary from country to country, but the trend is the same the world over.
Fewer people enter psychoanalysis of any sort, including Jungian analysis.
Psychoanalysis is over one hundred years old, and it is no longer the young and exciting discipline that it once was. Although Freudian psychoanalysis bears the brunt of disillusionment, Jung and analytical psychology come in for their share of criticism. Yet, many of Jung's ideas are now part of mainstream Western culture, and much of his specialized terminology is incorporated into everyday language. It is obviously impossible to predict what will happen to analytical psychology in the unknowable future of the new millennium. Some people think that analytical psychology will lose its separate identity, to become part of a generic psychoanalysis, following a current trend in many locations.