Carl Jung & the collective unconscious

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 iceberg, 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 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 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 always part the psychological life of all peoples everywhere. 

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.

Common archetypes?

In her book Awakening the Heroes Within, Carolyn Pearson identifies twelve archetypes that are 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. 

 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 culture: in the Middle Ages this was King Arthur, 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 in stores. 

The archetype remains; the garments it dawns are those of its 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 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. 

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, 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 are shadows. 

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.” 

1. Synchronicity

A concept coined by Jung. It denotes a meaningful coincidence or correspondence of two or more outer and inner events. It signifies the meaningful concurrence of a physical and a psychic event which are connected not causally but by meaning.

2. Daimon

Originally, a value-free, driving force, a spiritual energy which leads to the creative formation of individuality; for Socrates, an inspiring and guiding spirit.

3. Individuation

“Individuation means becoming an ‘in-dividual,’ and, insofar as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self.” — C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, par. 266.

4. Alchemy

The chemistry from prehistory until the 17th century, in which laboratory experiments were combined with intuitive, pictorial, partly religious experiences about nature and man. Many symbols which we recognize today as contents of the unconscious were projected onto matter, onto the prima materia. The alchemist sought the “secret of God” in the primary material and, in doing so, developed methods and processes which resemble those of modern depth psychology.

5. Animus

Personification of the masculine nature in the unconscious of a woman. The animus is often recognized in projection onto spiritual authorities; in this way, a woman’s inner image of masculinity finds expression.

6. Anima

Personification of the feminine nature in the unconscious of a man; the contrasexual soul image, the image of the feminine which is internalized in the male psyche.

7. Archetypes

Structural elements or dominants in the psyche which are in themselves indescribable, but which express themselves as dream and fantasy images and as fantasy motifs in consciousness; primordial images.

8. Collective Unconscious

The deeper levels of the unconscious, which Jung recognizes as containing the totality of all archetypes which reflect experiences common to all men. The forms of the archetypal structures (not their content) are hereditary and are comparable to the inborn behavior patterns of animals, such as nest building, bee dancing, courtship, and so forth.

9. Constellation

A time-bound grouping of events.

10. Shadow

In analytical psychology, the neglected qualities of the personality in the conscious process of integration, consisting of partly repressed, partly unlived traits which, for social, ethical, educational or other reasons, have been excluded from conscious experience and therefore have fallen in to the unconscious. The shadow is in a compensatory relation to consciousness; it can therefore function positively as well as negatively.