The Psyche[1]
Anyone who wants to know the human psyche
will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology.
He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown,
bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throughout the world.
There in the
horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in
brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings
and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form
in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick
could give him, and he will
know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the
human soul.
-- Carl Jung
For Jung the psyche (or soul) encompasses the entire being, both conscious and unconscious.
1. The Conscious’ function is to adjust the ego to the environment.
The
unconscious processes that compensate the conscious ego contain all those
elements that are necessary for the self regulation of the psyche as a whole.
2.
The Unconscious’ function is to
keep balance within the
mind[2].
3.
The Collective Unconscious is the reservoir of all human
experience.
Consciousness
is like a surface or a skin upon a vast unconscious area of unknown extent.
Our conscious represents only a small part of the entire psyche. “He who would fathom the psyche must not confuse it with consciousness; else he veils from his own sight the object he wishes to explore”.[3] The conscious is that part of the mind that maintains the relation of psychic contents with the ego.
All the same, every science is a function of the psyche, and all knowledge is rooted in it.
Without consciousness there would,
practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far
as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche.
…
Consciousness is a
precondition of being. Thus the
psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically
and in fact gives it a position coequal with the principle of physical being.
The carrier of this
consciousness is the
individual, who
does not produce
the psyche on his own volition but is, on the contrary,
preformed by it and
nourished by the gradual awakening of
consciousness during childhood.
Since the psyche and
matter
are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact
with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors,
it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that
psyche and matter are
two different aspects
of one and the same thing.
The
synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for
they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the psychic, and vice versa,
without there being any causal connection between them… Our
present knowledge does not allow us to do much more than compare the relation of
the psychic to the
material world with two cones, whose apices, meeting in a
point without extension – a real zero-point – touch and do not touch.
All psychological phenomena can be considered as manifestations of energy ...
Subjectively and psychologically, this energy is conceived as desire.
I call it libido, using the word in its original sense, which is by no means only sexual.
The
psyche is far from being a homogeneous unit - on the contrary, it is a boiling
cauldron of contradictory impulses, inhibitions, and affects, and for many
people the conflict between them is so insupportable that they even wish for the
deliverance preached by theologians. Deliverance from what?
Obviously, from a highly questionable psychic state. The unity of
consciousness
or of the so-called
personality is not a reality at all but a desideratum.
Philemon and other figures of
my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the
psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own
life.
Freud based his model of psychology on
the idea that there is a will, a desire, an “I want” that is inherent in the
psyche. The
psyche is a little “I want”
machine, and the society or
environment or the household itself or the incapacity of the child’s body
present prohibitions to the psyche’s desires.
Scrupulous attention to the inner voice of the psyche - which manifests itself in dreams, fantasies and other derivatives of the unconscious - assists the soul on its path. JViJP 87
...
since we are both valley and mountain with respect to the psyche, it might seem
a vain illusion to feel oneself beyond what is human.
Atma,
Maha-atma, Parm-atma
“Soul” and
“spirit,” or psyche as such, is in itself totally
unconscious. If it is assumed
to be somewhere “outside,” it cannot be anything except a
projection of the
unconscious.
I
am of the opinion that the psyche is the most tremendous fact of human life.
Indeed, it is the mother of all human facts; of civilization and of its
destroyer, war.
And
you know that when the psyche manifests itself in reality, it is usually against
us. For inasmuch as it is not against us, it is simply identical
with our consciousness. Our consciousness is not against us, and
we consider everything to be our own conscious doing, but the psychic factor is
always something that we assume to be not our doing. We try to
deny it and oppress it. Say I want to write a letter that is
disagreeable to me. Then immediately I have the psychic factor
against me. I am not able to find that letter – it has been
spirited away; I discover that I have mislaid it unconsciously. I
wanted to take particular care of that letter, but because I have resistances
against it I put it in the wrong pocket or in a corner where I shall not find it
for months. TPoKY 53
The
human psyche everywhere is essentially the same and, responding essentially to
the same
Why do the alchemist say:
Heaven above,
Heaven below,
Stars above,
Stars below,
All this is above
Also is below.
Grasp this
And Rejoice
If we look at this naively, we see that it must have to do
with a double aspect of the
collective unconscious which is above and below us,
as though it surrounds us in two forms. Again and again in
the interpretation of dreams and
mythological material, people make the mistake
of identifying what is above with
consciousness and what is below with the
unconscious, the Unterbewusstsein – that which is below
consciousness –
implying that consciousness is what is above. If in a dream
one goes downstairs, that is taken as going into the
unconscious, and going
upstairs is going into consciousness. That is superficial
nonsense. If you look at the mythological maps of the world,
you see that above there is a realm consisting of the mysterious, the
unattainable for human beings, where the gods live. In
We must therefore look at the above and the below from a different standpoint and see if there is any kind of qualitative difference between representations of the unconscious powers above and the unconscious powers below. There are exceptions, but it can be said that in general the above is associated with what is masculine – ordered, light and sometimes spiritual – and the below with the feminine – fertile, dark (not evil; there are no moral designations in the original mythological counterpositions), chaotic, and the realm of the animals. The sphere above is connected with birds and angels – with winged beings which have to do with the spiritual world. For instance, if in a dream something comes from below, you might expect it to come up in the form of an emotion or a physical symptom such as sleeplessness, or some affective disturbance of the sympathetic nervous system. Or it comes in the form of synchronistic occurrences in the outer world. If an invasion from the unconscious comes from above, it can take the form of an enthusiasm for Communism or Nazism; such an “above” unconscious erupts into the system in the form of a collective idea. If it is characterized as positive, then it can be said to be the Holy Ghost; if it is considered negative, then there are the winged demons, bats in the belfry, and other pernicious winged creatures – that is, destructive ideas. Whether constructive or destructive, such ideas have a strong collective energy of their own. Dynamic representations belong to the “above” aspect of the unconscious and the emotional, instinctive representations to its “below” aspect. TAoPA 143
A new realization first becomes alive and effective when it succeeds in reaching beyond the limits of consciousness into the depths of the soul and there unites with a corresponding archetype. TGL 145
The psyche itself, in relation to consciousness, is pre-existent and transcendent. We could therefore describe it, with du Prel, as the transcendental subject. TDoP 91
[1]
See Soul/Atma pages 225
[2]
“It is now the unconscious that
takes care of the relation to the object, and it does so in a way that
is calculated to bring the illusion of power and the fantasy of
superiority to utter ruin”.
BW par 627 - page 224
[3] Modern Man in Search of a Soul – page 73
[4] The ego
is surrounded by the conscious part of the brain, which is surrounded by
the personal unconsciousness, which is surrounded by the collective
unconsciousness, which can never be made conscious.
[5]
“Jung identified five prominent
groups of instinctive factors: creativity, reflection, activity,
sexuality and hunger”
(Jung
Lexicon – Instinct page 73.)
“Hunger is a primary
instinct of self-preservation, perhaps the most fundamental of all
drives.
Sexuality
is a close second,
particularly prone to psychization (JUNG LEXICON FOR DEF/GLOSS), which
makes it possible to divert its purely biological energy into other
channels.
The urge to
activity manifest in travel,
love of change, restlessness and play.
Under
reflection, Jung
included the religious urge and the search for meaning.
Creativity was for
Jung in a class by itself.
His descriptions of it refer specifically to the impulse to create art.
(Jung Lexicon – Instinct page 73.)
[6] The ego
is ‘the subject of consciousness’ and consciousness is defined as
‘the function or activity which
maintains the relation of psychic contents with the ego’.
[7] Which is why the unconscious produces compensatory symbols -for wholeness
[8]
“Sleep, too, is an
abaissement du
niveau which leads to more or less complete oblivion of the ego”
(BW page 403 – par 522)
- On THE Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia”.
[9] On the
Nature of Dreams – BW pg. 388 – par 577
[10]
Definition:
Motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles
that govern a person’s thoughts and actions.
(Webster’s online)
[11] The
conscience part decides which course of action one should take.
[12] God can’t replace my father. People without a father – opportunity to surrogate the father with God. Difficult to internalize (too big) but highest conscience.
[13]
The Transcendent Function – The
Portable Jung – edited by Joseph Campbell – page 4