Fidel Castro Psychobiography

Life Events of Fidel Castro The psychobiography to the life of Fidel Castro. Carl Jung divided his developmental theory into three parts: childhood, puberty to young adulthood and middle age. Carl Jung believed that “we develop and grow regardless of age and we are always moving toward a more complete level of self-realization” (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). I believed that parents have a big role in child’s development of personality; and they can shape the child personality through their influences.
Fidel Castro was born one of several illegitimate children to prosperous sugar farmer Angel Castro y Argiz and his household maid Lina Ruz Gonzalez, on August 13, 1926. Fidel Castro is one of the world’s oldest dictators and in many ways the typical narcissistic oppressor. Theorists had tried to explain his behavior; however many accounts portray Castro to have been brought up in a supportive family even though he grew up with the stigma of being an illegitimate. “The ego begins to form substantively only when children become able to distinguish between themselves and other people” (Schultz & Schultz, 2009).
He attended Roman Catholic boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and High School in Havana, where he proved to be a talented student an outstanding athlete. In 1945 he entered Law School at the University of Havana and joined the Orthodox Party, which strive for economic independence, political liberty, social justice and an end to corruption. In 1947 Castro temporarily left the university and in 1948 he took part in urban riots in Bogota, Colombia. He returned to Havana, while being a student Castro married Mirta Diaz-Balart a philosophy student whose wealthy family had political ties to Cuban military leader Fulgencio Batista.

In 1949 his first son was born but because he had no income to support the family the marriage ended. According to Jung, from “teenage years through young adulthood, we are concerned with completing activities such as education, beginning a career, marriage and family” (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). Castro as a lawyer, tried to mount legal challenge to Fulgencio Batista’s reign, demonstrating that the Cuban Constitution had been violated when the courts refused to hear his petition, Castro decided that legal attacks on Batista would never change.
On July 26, 1953 Castro and his brother Raul, led about 160 men in a suicidal attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba in hopes of generating a popular revolution, “The persona archetype a public face we wear to present ourselves as someone different from who we really are” (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). Most of the men were killed and Castro and his brother were captured and sentenced by the government to 15 years’ imprisonment. They were later released in a political amnesty and went to Mexico to continue to campaign against Batista regime.
Castro began to make plans to return to Cuba, while in Mexico he met Ernesto “Che” Guevara who was destined to play an important role in the Cuban Revolution. These rebels acquired weapons, trained and coordinated their return with fellow insurgents in Cuban cities. On December 2, 1956 Castro and armed expedition landed on the eastern coast of Cuba, they were detected and ambush and many of the rebels were killed. Castro and the other leaders survived and made it to the mountains and reminded there for a while attacking government forces and installations and organizing resistance cells in the cities across Cuba.
With the help of revolutionary volunteers throughout the island, Fidel Castro’s forces won a string of victories over Batista government. As the undisputed revolutionary leader, Castro became commander in chief of the armed forces in Cuban government. Castro soon implemented a Soviet-style communist regime in Cuba, much to the dismay of the United States. This led to decades of conflict between Cuba and the USA including such incidents like The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Mariel boatlift.
Castro survived countless assassination attempts, some of them crude and quite clever; the collective unconscious is “the universal memories and experiences of humankind, represented in the symbols, stories, and images “It is the collection of our experiences as a species, a kind of instinctual knowledge” (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). Cuba was placed under economic embargo which has had serious effect on the Cuban economy. “Introverts focus on their own thought and feelings. ” (Zimbardo Pg. 392) They are not sociable and prefer to be alone.
Extrovert people are more interested in the world and the things going on in it then in their own life. They are outgoing and friendly. They enjoy being in social situations. Jung claimed “ few people have all pairs of forces in balance. Usually one is more dominant determining a person’s personality. ” ( Zimbardo Pg. 392) As we can see, although Jung was influenced by Freud’s personality theory, but his personality theory focuses on parents’ influence on a child’s personality and ego. Carl Jung died in 1961.