The Collective Unconscious
... just as the human body shows a common anatomy
over and above all racial differences, so, too,
the psyche possesses a common
substratum transcending all differences in culture and
consciousness. I
have called this substratum the collective unconscious.
With
a circumspection characteristic of genius, Jung in his description of the
“collective unconscious” brought forth a concept in which the traditions of this
idea in cultural history could be united with the empirical findings of
contemporary natural science and through which the dualism of matter and
mind/psyche may perhaps at the same time be overcome.
Unlike
the personal unconscious, whose contents are an accumulation of the psychic
materials of the individual
(that are continuously being replenished), the
collective unconscious consists of elements
inherited from the entire human
species since primeval times while its existence is passed on through heredity.
It consists of the historical collection of man’s universal experience of
fear, danger, love, hate, etc., and consists of the struggles between the
dark
and light principle.
This unconscious psyche, common to all mankind, does not consist merely of contents capable of becoming conscious, but of latent dispositions towards certain identical reactions.
Through the investigation of the dreams of his
patients (Jung) discovered that these contents go on appearing and operating,
producing living effects in the inner psychic world, quite untroubled by the
dreamer’s rationalistic conscious judgments. But, according
to Jung, these symbolic
religious experiences do not spring from personally acquired complexes but
rather from a much deeper, generally human
unconscious psychic matrix that, as is well known, he called the collective
unconscious, and also the “objective psyche.” P&R 52
It is popularly known as ‘a reservoir of the experiences of our species’, and because it is impervious to the influence of the conscious mind it is referred to as the objective psyche.
…
Hence the eternal doubt whether what appears to be the objective psyche
is really objective, or whether it might not be imagination after all.
But then the question at once arises: have I imagined such and such a
thing on purpose, or has it been imagined by something in me?
It is a similar problem to that of the neurotic who suffers from an imaginary
carcinoma. He knows, and has been told a hundred times
before, that it is all imagination, and yet he asks me brokenly, “But why do I
imagine such a thing? I don’t want to do it!”
To which the answer is: the idea of the carcinoma has imagined itself in
him without his knowledge and without his consent. The reason
is that a psychic growth, a “proliferation,” is taking place in his unconscious
without his being able to make it conscious. In the face of
this interior activity he feels afraid. But since he is
entirely persuaded that there can be nothing in his own soul that he does not
know about, he must relate his fear to a physical carcinoma which he knows does
not exist. And if he should still be afraid of it, there are
a hundred doctors to convince him that his fear is entirely groundless.
The neurosis is thus a defence against the objective, inner activity of
the psyche, or an attempt, somewhat dearly paid for, to escape from the inner
voice and hence from the vocation. For this “growth” is the
objective activity of the psyche, which, independently of conscious volition, is
trying to speak to the conscious mind through the inner voice and lead him
towards wholeness. Behind the neurotic perversion is
concealed his vocation, his destiny: the growth of personality, the full
realization of the life-will that is born with the individual.
It is the man without amor fati who is the neurotic; he, truly,
has missed his vocation, and never will he be able to say with Cromwell, “None
climbeth so high as he who knoweth not whither his destiny leadeth him.”
TDoP 183
The neurotic’s fear of carcinoma is therefore justified: it is not
imagination, but the consistent expression of a psychic fact that exists in a
sphere outside consciousness, beyond the reach of his will and understanding.
If he withdrew into the wilderness and listened to his inner life in
solitude, he might perhaps hear what the voice has to say.
But as a rule the miseducated, civilized human being is quite incapable of
perceiving the voice, which is something not guaranteed by the current
shibboleths. Primitive people have a far greater capacity in
this respect; at least the medicine-men are able, as part of their professional
equipment, to talk with spirits, trees, and animals, these being the forms in
which they encounter the objective psyche or psychic non-ego.
TDoP 183
The
story of the Temptation clearly reveals the nature of the psychic power with
which Jesus came into collision: it was the power-intoxicated
devil of the prevailing Caesarean psychology that led him into dire temptation
in the wilderness. This devil was the objective psyche that
held all the peoples of the Roman Empire under its sway, and that is why it
promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth, as if it were trying to make a
Caesar out of him. Obeying the inner call of his vocation,
Jesus voluntarily exposed himself to the assaults of the imperialistic madness
that filled everyone, conqueror and conquered alike.
TDoP 180
“The Collective Unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual”
A. | Individual |
B. | Family |
C. | Tribe |
D. | Nation |
E. | Ethnic Group |
F. | Primitive Human Ancestors |
G. | Animal Ancestors |
H. | Central Energy |
“People achieve a (perceived) psychic "benefit" when they are racist or classist”[13]
Quantum Physics discovered that all matter in the universe is influenced subjectively by the observer - an intimate link exists between them.
Jung
discovered that the human psyche is influenced objectively - by the collective
unconscious[14].
Consciousness
influences matter!
“Below this
level, Heisenberg and others have hinted, there may no longer exist a
fundamental ground of matter, but, rather, fundamental
symmetries and ordering
principles.”
In
addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of thoroughly personal nature
and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche … there exists a 2nd
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.
This
widened consciousness is no longer that touchy, egotistical bundle of personal
wishes, fears, hopes, and ambitions which always has to be
compensated or
corrected by unconscious counter-tendencies; instead, it is a function of
relationship to the world of objects, bringing the individual into absolute,
binding, and indissoluble communion with the world at large. The
complications arising at this stage are no longer egotistic wish-conflicts, but
difficulties that concern others as much as oneself. At this stage it is
fundamentally a question of collective problems, which have activated the
collective unconscious because they require collective rather than personal
compensation.
Whereas
the contents of the personal unconscious are acquired during the individual’s
lifetime, the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably
archetypes
that were present from the beginning. The most accessible of these, and
the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its nature can in large measure be
inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious.
The Collective unconsciousness is described as “objective” because it is
identical in all individuals and is therefore one. Out of this universal
One there is produced in every individual a subjective consciousness,
i.e., the ego.
As
a rule, when the collective unconscious becomes really constellated in larger
social groups, the result is a public craze, a mental epidemic that may lead to
revolution or war or something of the sort. These movements are exceedingly
contagious – almost overwhelmingly contagious because, when the collective
unconscious is activated, you are no longer the same person. You are not only
in the movement – you are it. If you lived in Germany or were
there for a while, you would defend yourself in vain. It gets under your skin.
You are human, and wherever you are in the world you can defend yourself only by
restricting your consciousness and making yourself as empty, as soulless, as
possible. Then you lose your soul, because you are only a speck of consciousness
floating on a sea of life in which you do not participate.
You
see (how) the concept of the collective unconscious, as Jung conceived it,
serves as a saving factor. Only through that concept can we
see an inner conflict objectively, without projecting it either onto the body or
onto the subject. AAI 97
Archetypes of the collective unconscious
Simple
minded folk have never, of course, separated these things from their individual
consciousness, because
the gods and demons were not regarded as psychic
projections and hence as contents of the
unconscious, but as self-evident
realities. Only in the age of enlightenment did people
discover that the gods did not really exist, but were simply
projections. Thus the gods were disposed of.
But the corresponding psychological function was by no means disposed of;
it lapsed into the unconscious, and men
were thereupon poisoned by the surplus of libido
that had once been laid up in the cult of divine images. The
devaluation and repression of so powerful a function as the religious function
naturally has serious consequences for the psychology of the individual.
The unconscious is prodigiously strengthened by this reflux of
libido, and, through its archaic collective
contents, begins to exercise a powerful influence on the conscious mind.
The period of the Enlightenment closed, as we know, with the horrors of
the French Revolution.
In
the collective unconscious you are the same as a man of another race, you have
the same archetypes, just as you have, like him, eyes, a heart, a liver, and so
on.
The Multiple Unity of the Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious appears at first to be – to put it simply – the sum of archetypal structures that manifest themselves in typical mythological motifs in all human beings. Underneath these structures, however, one finds a still deeper layer that has the appearance of a unit. Jung remarks: “Our Western psychology has, in fact, got as far as yoga in that it is able to establish scientifically a deeper layer of unity in the unconscious. The mythological motifs whose presence has been demonstrated by the exploration of the unconscious form in themselves a multiplicity, but this culminates in a concentric or radial order which constitutes the true centre or essence of the collective unconscious.” It is the same center that becomes visible in mandala symbols, in those circular, square, and spherical symbols(.) As this central, unified area of the unconscious is approached, time and space are increasingly relativized. That deepest area of the unconscious that is simply a unit or the center may therefore be understood as an omnipresent continuum, “an omnipresence without extension.” “When something happens here at point A which touches upon or affects the collective unconscious, it has happened everywhere.” As this part of the “objective psyche” “is not limited to the person, it is also not limited to the body.” This psyche “behaves as if it were one and not as if it were split up into many individuals.” The multiplicity of the archetypes seems to be nullified or suspended in it.