Transcript The Jungian “Social Unconscious”

The Jungian
“Social Unconscious”
Stephanie Fariss, JD, LCSW, CGP
Diplomate Jungian Psychoanalyst
Despair Dialogue Desire
14th European Symposium in Group Analysis
University of Dublin Trinity College
21 August 2008
In the African tradition, it is
customary that at the
beginning of any group
function they remember the
wisdom of the ancestors
and acknowledge, “As we
gather, we are standing on
the shoulders of our ancestors.”
The African ritual for paying
homage to those who have
traveled before us is called
libation, and is a way of saying:
“I am because I belong with others.”
The term 'archetype' is often
misunderstood as meaning a certain
definite mythological image or motif…on
the contrary, [it is] an inherited tendency
of the human mind to form
representations of mythological motifs —
representations that vary a great deal
without losing their basic pattern…This
inherited tendency is instinctive, like the
specific impulse of nest-building,
migration, etc. in birds. One finds the
representations collectives practically
everywhere, characterized by the same or
similar motifs. They cannot be assigned
to any particular time or region or race.
They are without known origin, and they
can reproduce themselves even where
transmission through migration must be
ruled out.
(Jung, CW 18:523)
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
occurrences…
(Jung, CW 8:230)
The archetype is
essentially an
unconscious
content that is
altered by
becoming
conscious and by
being perceived,
and it takes its
color from the
individual
consciousness in
which it happens
to appear.
(Jung, CW 9(1):6)
It is only possible to live the fullest life when we
are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a
return to them.
(Jung, CW8:794)
Layers of the Unconscious
While Jung did not use the term the Social Unconscious, his ideas
about the nature and structure of the human psyche include layers
of the unconscious related to social experience and history.
According to Jung, there are three layers of the unconscious:
PERSONAL
CULTURAL (SOCIAL)
COLLECTIVE OR ARCHETYPAL
To understand the psychology of the collective, he went directly to
the archetypal layer of the psyche. Jung tended to separate out the
development of the individual from the individual’s life in groups
and the life of groups themselves. He was curious about the
differences between groups and cultures and, besides study,
traveled extensively to the Americas, Africa and Asia. But Jung was
also suspicious of the life of groups and the danger of the
individual falling into the grips of collective life.
Complexes & Archetypes
• Jung considered the “ego” to be the center of the field of consciousness,
and consciousness as a broader field of awareness that does not, by
itself, set the human species
apart from other forms of life such as plants and animals.
• The ego is also influenced by both external-environmental and internalpsychic stimuli. Collisions with environmental stimuli work to strengthen
the ego if the environmental events are not too harsh. The internal
psychic stimuli that create disturbances in consciousness Jung called
COMPLEXES.
• Jung discovered these internal disturbances while conducting Word
Association experiments. He was curious about what was happening in
the psyche of a test subject when a stimulus word was spoken. Some
stimulus words produced a disturbance in consciousness. Subjects
responded with emotion, signs of anxiety and defensive reactions that
Jung considered to be COMPLEX INDICATORS.
Complexes & Archetypes
• In analyzing the patterns of response, Jung found that words creating a
disturbance were clustered around a theme that pointed to a common
content. Later, Jung determined the core of the complex was an
archetypal image or idea.
• When subjects were asked to talk about their associations to these
stimulus words, Jung found that the words had aroused painful and
traumatic associations that had been buried in the unconscious.
• The unconscious contents that interfere with conscious performance, will,
action and memory Jung named complexes.
• Complexes can account for some of the less than expected
performances at the Olympics this past week, a writer’s block, even the
slip of tongue called a “Freudian slip.”
Cultural Complexes
Concerned about the omission of the Cultural Unconscious in the
theory of Analytical Psychology, various Jungian analysts,
including Joe Henderson, Tom Singer and Sam Kimbles, have
applied Jung’s complex theory to the cultural level of the psyche,
and introduced the concept of the CULTURAL COMPLEX.
With a cultural complex, a traumatic experience is shared by the
entire cultural group. Shared traumas lead to shared complexes.
The cultural complex functions like personal complexes and leads
to unconscious, feeling-toned trains of thought that can overtake
and stand in for the ego, blocking the ability to reflect on different
ways of thinking or feeling.
Example of a Cultural Complex
An important example of this is the proliferation of Madrasahs, the
religions schools that education millions of students in the Muslim
world. They have been blamed for brainwashing youngsters, making
them enemies of the West, but the trauma that led to the antiWestern sentiment in these schools is overlooked.
The Madrasah system is a thousand years old, and was founded in 11th
century Baghdad to provide prestigious training schools for future
leaders and religious scholars in Muslim countries. The initial
curriculum included Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy, logic and the
rational disciplines. When the British took control over South Asia,
Muslims were forced to defend Islam against the onslaught of Christian
influence—English replaced Persian as the official language and
Christian missionaries set up English-speaking religious schools.
The cultural complex created from this attack on Islamic culture led to
a closing of doors to modern knowledge in the Madrasahs. Modern
knowledge was now viewed as polluting because of its association with
the British. Without an understanding of the cultural complex, we
cannot understand how an insistence on secularization can be viewed
as a declaration of war on Muslim education.
Collective Unconscious
In a group of six essays that originated as lectures at the Eranos
Conferences in Ascona, Switzerland, Erich Neumann, a Jungian analyst
in Palestine, further developed Jung’s ideas about the process of
individuation through developing the concept of UNITARY REALITY and
the NATURE OF ARCHETYPES.
Neumann makes the argument that there is UNCONSCIOUS KNOWING
and that we should recognize that there are different degrees, steps, or
kinds of knowledge. He is concerned with the relationship between
these different degrees or kinds of knowledge. For instance, he says,
there is the EGO CENTERED form of knowing (incl. contents that have
become unconscious, originally linked to the ego but have been
forgotten, repressed, suppressed), which is a more or less a closed
system that is limiting to creativity.Neumann says it represents only one
particular form of knowledge whose clarity, precision, and applicability
to the ego is dearly paid for with it’s one-sidedness. Another kind of
knowing he calls EXTRANEOUS KNOWING, i.e., knowledge that is not
linked primarily to the ego.
The process of individuation is represented in this diagram. On the far left
side, you see the image of the first stage of this process, the constellation of
consciousness. The top layer, unmarked, is the PERSONALITY SPHERE or
FIELD. Here, EGO CONSCIOUSNESS is divided into the inner and the outer-the PSYCHE and the WORLD. At this stage, THE EGO is unable to recognize a
connection between the outer world and the underlying structure, but
experiences it as a disturbance to consciousness in the form of a complex.
For people at this stage, all experience that transcends the POLARIZATION
OF PSYCHE & WORLD (such as synchonistic events), are considered
ILLUSORY, NONSENSICAL, OUTSIDE THE REALM OF EXPLANATION.
• The “Personality Field” (PF) is the field of ego consciousness with the
operative self as center. It has a conscious relationship only to the world,
and to a lesser degree, the psyche.
• We associate knowledge exclusively with the system of ego-consciousness
which we identify with our total personality.
• The incompleteness of our ego-consciousness in light of our total personality
led to development of the concept of the “unconscious” in depth psychology
• The PF is the farthest away from the “archetypal field” (AF)
• The Archetypal Field (AF) (the “collective unconscious”) is NOT a “pantheon of forms”
possessing psychological significance
• In the AF, all archetypes are connected & fused & overlap in effect and
appearance,and by nature are “transgressive.”
• The AF is not limited to the human psyche, but has a reality in the biological, extrahuman, & extra-psychic realms.
• The AF has a dual nature:
NUMINOSITY- an energetic, dynamic field; free energy; a moving force
LUMINOSITY-particle/wave-like aspects of the unconscious mind that possess the
power to illuminate; the unitary reality’s way of making itself known; the aspect of
form & meaning.
• Together they become a life force incorporated in forms & shapes that bind energy
into a body-like system (instincts, fractals, emergent systems).
• The STRUCTURES of ARCHETYPES are directive and have a GUIDING QUALITY
for the individual and the group. The ARCHETYPAL FIELD is limited, restricted.
• The ARCHETYPE ITSELF must be recognized as SOMETHING W/OUT FORM,
SOMETHING that is able to CRYSTALLIZE INTO FORM under certain conditions
and as regulated by the Self Field.
• We can only grasp partial aspects of their reality as the AF only partially enters the
realm of our conscious experience. When the personality sinks into the AF
w/reciprocal coordination of world & psyche––a coordination based on an archetypal
structure that embraces both, it creates an emotionally-toned unitary experience &
the emergence of phenomena where the split between out and inner is dissolved or
made inoperative.
For some religions, e.g., in India & Africa, the worldview is determined by this
experience, not by ego knowledge.
• The experience of the AF is not limited to the human psyche, but has a reality in
biological, extra-human, extra-psychic realms, e.g., people & animals, people &
things, people & the environment. Its appearance as an image is only one disposition
of the AF
• There is an interdependence of psyche and the world: The personal evocation of the
archetype INSIDE the psyche depends on the presence of something in the world
OUTSIDE, & it is only when BOTH FACTORS work together that the ARCHETYPAL
EFFECT takes place. The inner and outer worlds are polar manifestations of a single
underlying unity that can only be realized by the meeting together & the combination
of both elements.
• The “Self Field” (SF) is the deeper regulating or ordering field, with a creative and
spontaneous character of order, unlike the fixed, rigid order represented by the
archetypes. The regulation of the archetypes (AF) originates with the SF when
certain conditions prevail.
• The SF directs the ego’s development and individuation, and guides the unified
whole of a person’s life processes and ways of relating to the world.
• It is the center of the individual, the nucleus of the personality, and represents an “a
priori and absolute knowledge.” Because it
contains in itself the plans and dispositions of individuals, it also builds this order in
an ascending process for its own natural evolution.
• The incorporation of the free energy of the AF as directed by the SF into
transpersonal forms is the work of culture. When cultural forms are destroyed, we
must deal with the formless energies.
• It is the EGO-SELF/SELF-EGO AXIS that makes it possible for the ego to
conceive of archetypal images (“image emergence”). It is the central axis
that constellates the regulating phenomenon of form. Developments
associated with the Ego-Self axis are closely bound up with the human
experiences of creativity and freedom.
• The psyche’s transformation manifests itself in a person’s changing
relationship to the reality planes as they become accessible to that person,
and the creative freedom and extent and luminosity of experience are
directly dependent on the phase of transformation in which the person
happens to be.
• With a lowering of consciousness and the movement of the personality into
the AF, there is an experience of expanded knowledge, a connection with an
experience of the numinous, and a growing consciousness toward the Self.
Diagram (a) Constellation of the Conscious Mind
Diagram (b) Personality becomes embedded in the AF, and a greater
relationship to the world and to the psyche
Diagram (c) : Centering of the World and the Personality (Zen)
THE SELF: Bion’s O (the Ineffable Image), Grottstein’s arrival at the
Transcendent Position (the Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious),
Ogden’s Inventive Power to “Create the New,” Lacan’s The REAL
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