Carl Jung and Collective Uncoscious

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Carl Jung and the Collective Unconscious

 

 

Carl Jung was a student and follower of Freud. He was born in a

small town in Switzerland in 1875 and all his life was fascinated

by folk tales, myths and religious stories. Although he had a

close friendship with Freud early in their relationship, his

independent and questioning mind soon caused a break.

 

Jung did not accept Freud's contention that the primary motivation

behind behavior was sexual urges. Instead of Freud's instinctual

drives of sex and aggression, Jung believed that people are

motivated by a more general psychological energy that pushes them to

achieve psychological growth, self-realization., psychic wholeness

and harmony. Also, unlike Freud, he believed that personality

continues to develop throughout the lifespan.

 

It is for his ideas of the collective unconscious that students of

literature and mythology are indebted to Jung. In studying

different cultures, he was struck by the universality of many

themes, patterns, stories and images. These same images, he found,

frequently appeared in the dreams of his patients. From these

observations, Jung developed his theory of the collective

unconscious and the archetypes.

 

Like Freud, Jung posited the existence of a conscious and an

unconscious mind. A model that psychologists frequently use here is

an iceberg. The part of the iceberg that is above the surface of

the water is seen as the conscious mind. Consciousness is the part

of the mind we know directly. It is where we think, feel, sense and

intuit. It is through conscious activity that the person becomes an

individual. It's the part of the mind that we " live in " most of

the time, and contains information that is in our immediate

awareness Below the level of the conscious mind, and the bulk of

the ice berg, is what Freud would call the unconscious, and what

Jung would call the " personal unconscious. " Here we will find

thoughts, feelings, urges and other information that is difficult to

bring to consciousness. Experiences that do not reach

consciousness, experiences that are not congruent with who we think

we are, and things that have become " repressed " would make up the

material at this level. The contents of the personal unconscious

are available through hypnosis, guided imagery, and especially

dreams. Although not directly accessible, material in the personal

unconscious has gotten there sometime during our lifetime. For

example, the reason you are going to school now, why you picked a

particular shirt to wear or your choice of a career may be a choice

you reached consciously. But it is also possible that education,

career, or clothing style has been influenced by a great deal of

unconscious material: parents' preferences, childhood experiences,

even movies you have seen but about which you do not think when you

make choices or decisions. Thus, the depth psychologist would say

that many decisions, indeed some of the most important ones that

have to do with choosing a mate or a career, are determined by

unconscious factors. But still, material in the personal

unconscious has been environmentally determined.

 

 

What is the Collective Unconscious

The collective unconscious is different. It's like eye color. If

someone were to ask you, " How did you get your eye color, " you would

have to say that there was no choice involved – conscious or

unconscious. You inherited it. Material in the collective

unconscious is like this: inherited. It never came from our current

environment. It is the part of the mind that is determined by

heredity. So we inherit, as part of our humanity, a collective

unconscious; the mind is pre-figured by evolution just as is the

body. The individual is linked to the past of the whole species

and the long stretch of evolution of the organism. Jung thus placed

the psyche within the evolutionary process.

 

 

What's in the collective unconscious? Psychological archetypes.

This idea of psychological archetypes is among Jung's most important

contributions to Western thought. An ancient idea somewhat like

Plato's idea of Forms or " patterns " in the divine mind that

determine the form material objects will take, the archetype is in

all of us. The word " archetype " comes from the Greek " arche "

meaning " first, and " type " meaning " imprint or pattern. "

Psychological archetypes are thus first prints, or patterns that

form the basic blueprint for major dynamic counterparts of the human

personality. For Jung, archetypes pre-exist in the collective

unconscious of humanity. They repeat themselves eternally in the

psyches of human beings and they determine how we both perceive and

behave. These patterns are inborn within us. They are part of our

inheritance as human beings. They reside as energy within the

collective unconscious and are part the psychological life of all

peoples everywhere at all times. They are inside us and they are

outside us. We can meet them by going inward to our dreams or

fantasies. We can meet them by going outward to our myths, legends,

literature and religions. The archetype can be a pattern, such as a

kind of story. Or it can be a figure, such as a kind of character.

 

What are some common archetypes?

 

In her book Awakening the Heroes Within, Carolyn Pearson identifies

twelve archetypes that are fairly easy to understand. These are the

Innocent, the Orphan, the Warrior, the Caregiver, the Seeker, the

Destroyer, the Lover, the Creator, the Ruler, the Magician, the

Sage, and the Fool. If we look at art, literature, mythology and

the media, we can easily identify some of these patterns. One of the

most familiar to contemporary western culture is the Warrior. We

find the warrior myth encoded in all the great heroes who ever took

on the dragon, stood up to the tyrant, fought the sorcerer, or did

battle with the monster: and in so doing rescued himself and

others. The true Warrior is not just macho. The macho man (or

woman) fights to feel superior to others, to keep them down. The

warrior fights to protect and ennoble others. The warrior protects

the perimeters of the castle or the family or the psyche. The

warrior myth is active in each of us any time we stand up against

unfair authority, be it a boss, teacher or parent. The highest

level warrior has at some time confronted his or her own inner

dragons. We see the Warrior archetype in the form of pagan

deities, for example the Greek god of war, Mars. David, who fights

Goliath, or Michael, who casts Satan out of Heaven are familiar

Biblical warriors. Hercules, Xena (warrior princess) and Conan the

Barbarian are more contemporary media forms the warrior takes.

And it is in this widely historical variety that we can find an

important point about the archetype. It really is unconscious.

The archetype is like the invisible man in famous story. In

the story, a man invents a potion which, when ingested, renders him

invisible. He becomes visible only when he puts on clothes. The

archetype is like this. It remains invisible until it dawns the

clothing of its particular culture: in the Middle Ages this was King

Arthur; in modern America, it may be Luke Skywalker. But if the

archetype were not a universal pattern imprinted on our collective

psyche, we would not be able to continue to recognize it over and

over. The love goddess is another familiar archetypal pattern.

Aphrodite to the Greeks, Venus to the Romans, she now appears in the

form of familiar models in magazines like " Elle " and " Vanity Fair. "

And whereas in ancient Greece her place of worship was the temple,

today is it the movie theatre and the cosmetics counter at

Nordstrom's. The archetype remains; the garments it dawns are those

of its particular time and place.

 

This brings us to our discussion of the Shadow as archetype. The

very clearest and most articulate discussion of this subject is

contained in Johnson's book Owning Your Own Shadow. The Shadow is

not a difficult concept. It is merely the " dark side " of the

psyche. It's everything that doesn't fit into the Persona. The

word " persona " comes from the theater. In the Roman theater,

characters would put on a mask that represented who the character

was in the drama. The word " persona " literally means " mask. "

Johnson says that the persona is how we would like to be seen by

the world, a kind of psychological clothing that " mediates between

our true elves and our environment " in much the same way that

clothing gives an image. The Shadow is what doesn't fit into this

Persona. These " refused and unacceptable " characteristics don't go

away; they are stuffed or repressed and can, if unattended to, begin

to take on a life of their own. One Jungian likens the process to

that of filling a bag. We learn at a very young age that there are

certain ways of thinking, being and relating that are not acceptable

in our culture, and so we stuff them into the shadow bag. In our

Western culture, particularly in the United States, thoughts about

sex are among the most prevalent that are unacceptable and so sex

gets stuffed into the bag. The shadow side of sexuality is quite

evident in our culture in the form of pornography, prostitution, and

topless bars. Psychic energy that is not dealt with in a healthy

way takes a dark or shadow form and begins to take on a life of its

own. As children our bag is fairly small, but as we get older, it

becomes larger and more difficult to drag.

 

With this in mind, it is not difficult to see that there is a shadow

side to the Archetypes discussed earlier The shadow side to the

warrior is the tyrant, the villain, the Darth Vader, who uses his or

her skills for power and ego enhancement. And whereas the Seeker

Archetype quests after truth and purity, the shadow Seeker is

controlled by pride, ambition, and addictions. If the Lover follows

his/her bliss, commits and bonds, the shadow lover is a seducer a

sex addict or interestingly enough, a puritan.

 

But we can use the term " shadow " in a more general sense. It is not

merely the dark side of a particular archetypal pattern or form.

Wherever Persona is, Shadow is also. Wherever good is, is evil. We

first know the shadow as the personal unconscious in all that we

abhor, deny and repress: power, greed, cruel and murderous

thoughts, unacceptable impulses, morally and ethically wrong

actions. All the demonic things by which human beings betray their

inhumanity to other beings is shadow. Shadow is unconscious. This

is a very important idea. Since it is unconscious, we know it only

indirectly, projection, just as we know the other Archetypes of

Warrior, Seeker and Lover. We encounter the shadow in other people,

things, and places where we project it. The scape goat is a perfect

example of shadow projection. The Nazis projection of shadow onto

the Jews gives us some insight into how powerful and horrific the

archetype is. Jung says that when you are in the grips of the

archetype, you don't have it, it has you.

 

This idea of projection raises an interesting point. It means that

the shadow stuff isn't " out there " at all; it is really " in here " ;

that is inside us. We only know it is inside us because we see it

outside. Shadow projections have a fateful attraction to us. It

seems that we have discovered where the bad stuff really is: in him,

in her, in that place, there! There it is! We have found the

beast, the demon, the bad guy. But does Evil really exist, or is

what we see as evil all merely projection of our own shadow side?

Jung would say that there really is such a thing as evil, but that

most of what we see as evil, particularly collectively, is shadow

projection. The difficulty is separating the two. And we can only

do that when we discover where the projection ends. Hence,

Johnson's book title " Owning Your own Shadow. "