From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Illustration of the structure of Hell according to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. By Sandro Botticelli (between 1480 and 1490). According to Carl Gustav Jung, hell represents, among every culture, the disturbing aspect of the collective unconscious.
Collective unconscious, a term coined by Carl Jung, refers to structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings. According to Jung, the collective unconscious is populated by instincts and by archetypes: universal symbols such as the Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, the Tree of Life, and many more.
It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species.
Basic explanation
The name "collective unconscious" first appeared in Jung's 1916 essay, "The Structure of the Unconscious".[1] This essay distinguishes between the “personal”, Freudian unconscious, filled with sexual fantasies and repressed images, and the “collective” unconscious encompassing the soul of humanity at large.[2]In “The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology” (November 1929), Jung wrote:
And the essential thing, psychologically, is that in dreams, fantasies, and other exceptional states of mind the most far-fetched mythological motifs and symbols can appear autochthonously at any time, often, apparently, as the result of particular influences, traditions, and excitations working on the individual, but more often without any sign of them. These “primordial images” or “archetypes,” as I have called them, belong to the basic stock of the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions. Together they make up that psychic stratum which has been called the collective unconscious.On October 19, 1936, Jung delivered a lecture "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious" to the Abernethian Society at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London.[4] He said:
The existence of the collective unconscious means that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment. The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic ocurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths.[3]
My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.[5]Jung linked the collective unconscious to 'what Freud called "archaic remnants" - mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind'.[6]
The collective unconscious exerts overwhelming influence on the minds of individuals. These effects of course vary widely, since they involve virtually every emotion and situation. At times, the collective unconscious can terrify, but it can also heal.[7]
Jung contrasted the collective unconscious with the personal unconscious, the unique aspects of an individual study which Jung says constitute the focus of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler.[8] Psychotherapy patients, it seemed to Jung, often described fantasies and dreams which repeated elements from ancient mythology. These elements appeared even in patients who were probably not exposed to the original story. For example, mythology offers many examples of the “dual mother” narrative, according to which a child has a a biological mother and a divine mother. Therefore, argues Jung, Freudian psychoanalysis would neglect important sources for unconscious ideas, in the case of a patient with neurosis around a dual-mother image.[9]
This divergence over the nature of the unconscious has been cited as a key aspect of Jung's famous split from Sigmund Freud and his school of psychoanalysis.[10] Some commentators have rejected Jung's characterization of Freud, observing that in texts such as Totem and Taboo (1913) Freud directly addresses the interface between the unconscious and society at large.[11]
Probably none of my empirical concepts has met with so much misunderstanding as the idea of the collective unconscious.
Jung also distinguished the collective unconscious and collective consciousness, between which lay "an almost unbridgeable gulf over which the subject finds himself suspended". According to Jung, collective consciousness (meaning something along the lines of consensus reality) offered only generalizations, simplistic ideas, and the fashionable ideologies of the age. This tension between collective unconscious and collective consciousness corresponds roughly to the "everlasting cosmic tug of war between good and evil" and has worsened in the time of the mass man.[13][14]
Organized religion, exemplified by the Catholic Church, lies more with the collective consciousness; but, through its all-encompassing dogma it channels and moulds the images which inevitably pass from the collective unconscious into the minds of people.[15][16] (Conversely, religious critics including Martin Buber accused Jung of wrongly placing psychology above transcendental factors in explaining human experience.)[17]
Instincts
Jung's exposition of the collective unconscious builds on the classic issue in psychology and biology regarding nature versus nurture. If we accept that nurture, or heredity, has some influence on the individual psyche, we must examine the question of how this influence takes hold in the real world.[18]Humans experience five main types of instinct, wrote Jung: hunger, sexuality, activity, reflection, and creativity. These instincts, listed in order of increasing abstraction, elicit and constrain human behavior, but also leave room for freedom in their implementation and especially in their interplay. Even a simple hungry feeling can lead to many different responses, including metaphorical sublimation.[19][20]
Archetypes
In an early definition of the term, Jung writes: “Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype, no matter whether its mythological character is reocgnized or not.”[21]Archetypes are closely related to instincts. For example, on exactly one night in its entire lifetime, the yucca moth discovers pollen in the opened flowers of the yucca plant, forms some into a pellet, and then transports this pellet, with one of its eggs, to the pistil of another yucca plant. This activity cannot be “learned”; it makes more sense to describe the yucca moth as experiencing intuition about how to act.[22] Archetypes and instincts coexist in the collective unconscious as interdependent opposites, Jung would later clarify.[7][23] Whereas for most animals intuitive understandings completely intertwine with instinct, in humans the archetypes have become a separate register of mental phenomena.[20]
An complete list of archetypes cannot be made, nor can differences between archetypes be absolutely delineated.[24]
Jung made reference to contents of this category of the unconscious psyche as being similar to Levy-Bruhl's use of collective representations or "représentations collectives," Mythological "motifs," Hubert and Mauss's "categories of the imagination," and Adolf Bastian's "primordial thoughts." He also called archetypes "dominants" because of their profound influence on mental life.
Evidence
As evidence of the existence of psychic elements shared among all humans, Jung cited mythological ideas which emerged in people's dreams and in psychotherapy. For example: “The snake-motif was certainly not an individual acquisition of the dreamer, for snake-dreams are very common even among city-dwellers who have probably never seen a real snake.”[25][26] Still better evidence, he felt, came when patients described complex images and narratives with obscure mythological parallels.[27] Jung's leading example of this phenomenon was a paranoid-schizophrenic patient who could see the sun's dangling phallus, whose motion caused wind to blow on earth. Jung found a direct analogue of this idea in the “Mithras Liturgy”, from the Greek Magical Papyri of Ancient Egypt—only just translated into German—which also discussed a phallic tube, hanging from the sun, and causing wind to blow on earth. He concluded that the patient's vision and the ancient Liturgy arose from the same source in the collective unconscious.[28] This latter example has been the subject of contentious debate, and Jung critic Richard Noll has argued against its authenticity.[29]Going beyond the individual mind, Jung believed that “the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious”. Therefore, psychologists could learn about the collective unconscious by studying religions and spiritual practices of all cultures, as well as belief systems like astrology.[30]
Popperian critic Ray Scott Percival disputes some of Jung's examples and argues that his strongest claims are not falsifiable. Percival takes especial issue with Jung's claim that major scientific discoveries emanate from the collective unconscious and not from unpredictable or innovative work done by scientists. Percival charges Jung with excessive determinism and writes: “He could not countenace the possibility that people sometimes create ideas that cannot be predicted, even in principle.” Regarding the claim that all humans exhibit certain patterns of mind, Percival argues that these common patterns could be explained by common environments (i.e. by shared nature, not nurtre). Because all people have families, encounter plants and animals, and experience night and day, it should come as no surprise that they develop basic mental structures around these phenomena.[11]
Exploration
Proof of the existence of a collective unconscious, and insight into its nature, could be gleaned primarily from dreams and from active imagination, a waking exploration of fantasy.[31]
Jung considered that 'the shadow' and the anima and animus differ from the other archetypes in the fact that their content is more directly related to the individual's personal situation'.[32] These archetypes, a special focus of Jung's work, become autonomous personalities within an individual psyche. Jung encouraged direct conscious dialogue of the patient's with these personalities within.[33] While the shadow usually personifies the personal unconscious, the anima or the Wise Old Man can act as representatives of the collective unconscious.[34]
Jung suggested that parapsychology, alchemy, and occult religious ideas could contribute understanding of the collective unconscious.[35] Based on his interpretation of synchronicity and extra-sensory perception, Jung argued that psychic activity transcended the brain.[36] In alchemy, Jung found that plan water, or seawater, corresponded to his concept of the collective unconscious.[37]
In humans, the psyche mediates between the primal force of the collective unconscious and the experience of consciousness or dream. Therefore, symbols may require interpretation before they can be understood as archetypes. Jung writes:
We have only to disregard the dependence of dream language on environment and substitute “eagle” for “aeroplane,” “dragon” for “automobile” or “train,” “snake-bite” for “injection,” and so forth, in order to arrive at the more universal and more fundamental language of mythology. This give us access to the primordial images that underlie all thinking and have a considerable influence even on our scientific ideas.[38]Care must be taken, however, to determine the meaning of a symbol through further investigation; one cannot simply decode a dream by assuming these meanings are constant. Archetypal explanations work best when an already-known mythological narrative can clearly help to explain the confusing experience of an individual.[26]
Based on empirical inquiry, Jung felt that all humans, regardless of racial and geographic differences, share the same collective pool of instincts and images, though these manifest differently due to the moulding influence of culture.[39]
Application to psychotherapy
Psychotherapy based on analytical psychology would seek to analyze the relationship between a person's individual consciousness and the deeper common structures which underlie them. Personal experiences both activate archetypes in the mind and give them meaning and substance for individual.[40] At the same time, archtypes covertly organize human experience and memory, their powerful effects becoming apparent only indirectly and in retrospect.[41][42] Understanding the power of the collective unconscious can help an individual to navigate through life.In the interpretation of analytical psychologist Mary Williams, a patient who understands the impact of the archetype can help to dissociate the underlying symbol from the real person who embodies the symbol for the patient. In this way, the patient no longer uncritically transfers their feelings about the archetype onto people in everyday life, and as a result can develop healthier and more personal relationships.[10]
Practitioners of analytic psychotherapy, Jung cautioned, could become so fascinated with manifestations of the collective unconscious that they facilitated their appearance at the expense of their patient's well-being.[10] Schizophrenics, it is said, fully identify with the collective unconscious, lacking a functioning ego to help them deal with actual difficulties of life.[43]
Application to politics and society
Elements from the collective unconscious can manifest among groups of people, who by definition all share a connection to these elements. Groups of people can become especially receptive to specific symbols due to the historical situation they find themselves in.[44] The common importance of the collective unconscious makes people ripe for political manipulation, especially in the era of mass politics.[45] Jung compared mass movements to mass psychoses, comparable to demonic possession in which people uncritically channel unconscious symbolism through the social dynamic of the mob and the leader.[46]Jung called the UFO phenomenon a “living myth”, a legend in the process of consolidation.[47] Belief in a messianic encounter with UFO's demonstrated the point, Jung argued, that even if a rationalistic modern ideology repressed the images of the collective unconscious, its fundamental aspects would inevitably resurface. The circular shape of the flying saucer confirms its symbolic connection to repressed but psychically necessary ideas of divinity.[48]
Minimal and maximal interpretations
In a minimalist interpretation of what would then appear as "Jung's much misunderstood idea of the collective unconscious", his idea was "simply that certain structures and predispositions of the unconscious are common to all of us...[on] an inherited, species-specific, genetic basis".[49] Thus "one could as easily speak of the 'collective arm' - meaning the basic pattern of bones and muscles which all human arms share in common."[50]Others point out however that "there does seem to be a basic ambiguity in Jung's various descriptions of the Collective Unconscious. Sometimes he seems to regard the predisposition to experience certain images as understandable in terms of some genetic model"[51] - as with the collective arm. However, Jung was "also at pains to stress the numinous quality of these experiences, and there can be no doubt that he was attracted to the idea that the archetypes afford evidence of some communion with some divine or world mind', and perhaps 'his popularity as a thinker derives precisely from this"[52] - the maximal interpretation.
Marie-Louise von Franz accepted that "it is naturally very tempting to identify the hypothesis of the collective unconscious historically and regressively with the ancient idea of an all-extensive world-soul."[53] New Age writer Sherry Healy goes further, claiming that Jung himself "dared to suggest that the human mind could link to ideas and motivations called the collective unconscious...a body of unconscious energy that lives forever."[54] This is the idea of monopsychism.
