Collective unconscious
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, and was originally coined by Carl Jung. He distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, which is particular to each human being. The collective unconscious refers to that part of a person's unconscious which is common to all human beings. It contains archetypes, which are forms or symbols that are manifested by all people in all cultures.
The difference in their conceptualization of the unconscious is one of the more conspicuous differences between the psychologies founded by Jung and Freud.
In his earlier writings, Jung called this aspect of the psyche the collective unconscious; later, he changed the term to the objective psyche. The objective psyche may be considered objective for two reasons: it is common to everyone; and it has a better sense of the self ideal than the ego or conscious self does, and thus directs the self, via archetypes, dreams, intuition, and making mistakes on purpose, to self-actualization.
In the Definitions chapter of Jung's seminal work "Psychological Types", under the definition of "Collective" Jung references "representations collectives" coined by Levy-Bruhl in his 1910 book "How Natives Think" as being what he describes as the collective unconscious. The question then becomes whether Jung originally came up with this, or translated it (as a term) from cultural anthropology and synthesized its meaning with his understanding.
Archetypes
The collective unconscious consists primarily of archetypes, defined as a pre-existent form, also called "motifs" in mythological research. Jung hypothesized that all of mythology could be taken as a type of projection of the collective unconscious. The key archetypes that Jung felt were especially important include : the persona, the shadow, the anima/animus, the mother, the child, the wise old man, and the self.
The persona is the mask we wear to make a particular impression on others; it may reveal and conceal our real nature. It is an artificial personality that compromises a person's real individuality and society's expectations—usually society's demands take precedence. It is made up of things like professional titles, roles, habits of social behavior, etc. It serves to both guarantee social order and to protect the individual's private life.
The shadow is the negative or inferior (undeveloped) side of the personality. It is said to be made up of all the reprehensible characteristics that each of us wish to deny, including animal tendencies that Jung claims we have inherited from our infra-human ancestors. However when individuals recognize and integrate their shadows, they progress further towards self-realization . On the other hand, the more unaware of the shadow we are, the blacker and denser it is. The more dissociated it is from conscious life, the more it will display a compensatory demonic dynamism. It is often projected outwards on individual or groups who are then thought to embody all the immature, evil, or repressed elements of the individual's own psyche.
The archetype of "the great mother" would be expected to be very nearly the same in all people, since all infants share inherent expectation of having an attentive caretaker (human instinct); every surviving infant must either have had a mother, or a surrogate (common experience); and nearly every child is indoctrinated with society's idea of what a mother should be (shared culture). The amalgam of all these effects could be the source of the shared figure, or archetype, which appears very nearly the same in most persons' dreams.
Critique
Some have pointed out that this is essentially metaphysics since it is a hypothesis that is yet to be widely accepted.
Less mystical proponents of the Jungian model hold that the collective unconscious can be adequately explained as arising in each individual from shared instinct, common experience, and shared culture. The natural process of generalization in the human mind combines these common traits and experiences into a mostly identical substratum of the unconscious.
Regardless of whether the individual's connection to the collective unconscious arises from mundane or mystical means, the term collective unconscious describes an important commonality that is observed to exist between different individuals' dreams. It was simply formulated by Jung as a model.
Further reading
- The Development of Personality
- "Psychic conflicts in a child.", Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 17, Princeton University Press, 1970. 235 p. (p. 1-35).
- The Symbolic Quest. Edward C. Whitmont. Princeton University Press, 1969.
- Gallo, Ernest. "Synchronicity and the Archetypes," Skeptical Inquirer, vol.18, No. 4, Summer 1994.
External links
- Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism: A pictorial and written archive of mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic images from all over the world and from all epochs of human history.
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