The idea of the "Collective Unconscious" is Carl Jung's most misunderstood
contribution to psychology. It holds the rare prestige of being a theory that is
misunderstood not only by its detractors but quite often by its advocates.
Jung was a thinker who unfailingly followed his own north star indifferent to the
dangers of being labelled heretical. And as tends to happen with such minds, he is
extremely divisive. For some he's an analytic genius, for others he's a bona fide mystic
and for others again he's a charlatan or a nutjob.
Throughout his works, Jung repeatedly describes himself as an empiricist and
emphasises the importance of grounding his work in empirical science. But because of
his explorations in the psychology of seemingly bizarre subjects such as myths,
dreams and alchemy, he ultimately fell between pillar and post. The taboo nature of
these topics has led to his work being overlooked or dismissed out of hand.
In his incautious explorations of the ground between the scientific and religious
worldviews, Jung defied convenient categorisation and the simplest solution was to
disregard him. Freud's explosive work was giving the culture more than enough to
chew on at that time without Jung further complicating matters.
No concept of Jung's has suffered more from this misunderstanding and dismissal of
Jung than his concept of the collective unconscious. In doing the research for this
video, I did a quick search on Reddit for the term and the first results (from outside
the Jung subreddit) were very revealing.
Thread #1: rIsItBullshit This first post comes from the subreddit IsItBullshit
and the post's title is IsItBullshit: Collective Unconscious. The OP in this post
wanted a straw poll on whether people thought Jung's theory of the collective unconscious
was genuine article or cowpat and the top comment was the following:
People behave differently in groups, things like group polarisation
(groups often make more extreme decisions than single individuals
would), or groupthink (all group members aligning their views) are well-
documented. People in groups are also more susceptible to common
biases and heuristics. Nonetheless, the concept of a hive brain as is
suggested in psychoanalysis isn't really considered to be true.
Thread #2: r/askphilosophy The second thread was entitled "Is Carl Jung's
theory of the collective unconscious technically a metaphysical claim?" This second
thread was a bit more accurate but still within the first few comments I came across
the following: Yes. It rests on a theory of consciousness
akin to a form of panpsychism. That's metaphysical to me.
It is this breed of interpretation that has led to academics almost universally
overlooking Jung's work. Back when they were still friends and colleagues, Freud was
afraid Jung's occult interests would discredit the psychoanalytical movement which
was still trying to find its feet as a science. Freud wrote to Jung in a letter from this
time I know that your deepest inclinations are
impelling you toward a study of the occult and do not doubt that
you will return with a rich cargo. There is no stopping that, and
it is always right for a person to follow the biddings of his own impulses.
The reputation you have won with your "Dementia" will stand
against the charge of "mystic" for quite a while. Only don't
stay too long away from us in those lush tropical colonies, it is
necessary to govern at home. . . With cordial greetings and the hope
that you will write me again after a shorter interval this time.
Jung's curiosity for the fringes is the reason academics warn their colleagues and
students against uttering his name in an academic context even today. His very name
is liable to get one ostracised. In the case of the collective unconscious,
however, this reputation is wide of the mark. The wholesale dismissal of the collective
unconscious as a half-baked theory about a paranormal hive mind is a complete misunderstanding.
The truth about the collective unconscious is both more straightforward and more
fascinating than this claim of panpsychism would lead you to believe. It is a bridge
between fairytales, instincts and ancient history.
The structure of the psyche: As we looked at in the last episode, you can
think of the psyche as an iceberg. The part above the surface is open to the air and easy
to become acquainted with. But this is just the tip. Most of the iceberg is beneath the
surface, hidden underwater. The visible part of the iceberg is analogous
to the conscious mind. For most of humanity's history, this was the entirety
of the mind, but the 19th century changed all
this. At the turn of the 20th century, Freud's star was on the rise and he popularised
the conception of the unconscious (or as many call it - the subconscious).
The unconscious is the name we give to those parts of the mind that are outside of
consciousness. In the analogy of the iceberg, the unconscious is the big chunk hiding
beneath the water's surface. For Freud, this contained all the impulses,
ideas and wishes that the individual represses. The reason for this repression
is because they conflict with the taboos and mores of society. The unconscious is the swampland
of shadowy, animalistic urges of the personality that every person buries to
integrate into communal society. The contents of this swampland remain active
in the unconscious and it is these contents that cause neuroses and other phenomena
like forgetting and slips of the tongue. Freud called these completely unconscious
lower impulses the Id (which is Latin meaning 'it').
Jung followed Freud to this point but went further. Jung believed there was more in the
unconscious than our questionable notions. It wasn't just a dumping ground for
antisocial urges but a whole world unto itself. This world was the birthplace of all
myths, gods and magic. The depths of the iceberg were far deeper and far stranger
than even Freud imagined.
What is the collective unconscious? Traditional psychoanalysis says that there
are two layers to the mind: the conscious and the unconscious. Jung's contribution was
to distinguish separate layers in the unconscious: the personal unconscious and
the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is home to all the
people, things and places we have encountered in our own lives. All our personal
experiences exist at this level. There is our personal mother and father, our friends
and the things and places we have encountered in our lives.
The collective unconscious is far deeper than the personal. This layer contains the
accumulated historical, collective experiences of humanity. It is not a mystical hive
mind, however, but the psychology of the instincts of humanity. It is a common rather
than a communal mind. An analogy for this misinterpretation might
go like this: biologists are claiming that humans have a collective body. The meaning
of this, biologically-speaking, is that humans all over the world are working from
the same blueprint. We are born with four limbs, opposable thumbs and an oversized brain.
The analogous misreading would be something like: "biologists are claiming that all
humans have the same body," i.e. there are only four limbs, two opposable thumbs and
one oversized brain in the entirety of the human species. That is a very different claim.
The human body? - like the collective unconscious? - is common, not communal.
The biology and psychology of being human So, the collective unconscious is the part
of the mind we are all born with. But what are
the contents of this collective aspect of the mind? The contents of the collective
unconscious relate to the common experiences of humanity. They are the mental
component of the instincts. What do we mean by mental component? Well,
everything in the human experience has a mental and a physical component. Let's
say you spilt some scalding water on your arm. If you were to look closely enough,
you would see the nerve endings on your arm activate and send a message back up the
nervous system towards the brain. That's the physical side of the equation.
Pain is the mental side of the equation; you feel pain on your arm where the water hit
you. The physical component? (nerves firing) and the mental component (pain) are flip
sides of the same experience.
Or let's take an example from the animal kingdom. Turtles lay their eggs and bury
them on beaches. All the turtles in the region do this on the same beach so you end up
with thousands of eggs being buried. When it comes to hatching time its like shooting
fish in a barrel for the predatorial birds in waiting.
The turtles have no time to waste getting into the water. The turtles that do wait are
all the more likely to die. These turtles from
the moment they are born run on pure instinct and make straight for the ocean.
This is a psychological inheritance of the turtles. This is what they do the moment they
are born. They don't start running for the water when they see a predator. They just
make a straight beeline because they are instinctually driven to it.
Now let's take a look at the more complicated example of a child entering adolescence.
This transition to adulthood also has physical and mental components.
On the physical side, you could observe the significant physiological transformations
that reshape the body. Or at a deeper level, you could look at their hormones going
wild. On the mental side, there is all the angst,
anxiety and mood swings that accompany adolescence. There are the new ways of thinking
and feeling about their peers, about the opposite sex, about music, about authority
and everything else in the world. They are transforming in a way that cannot be satisfactorily
explained by examining the physical component.
This adolescent transformation is the perfect example of an instinctual
transformation. Adolescence doesn't happen when a child chooses it. It's not a switch
that the parents flick-on. There is an instinctual level beyond consciousness or culture
that initiates this transformation. This deep biological level transcends culture.
Biology doesn't care if you are a 21st century American or a 5th century Bedouin;
either way, you will have to pass through the crucible of adolescence.
This biological level is where we encounter the collective unconscious. The personal
unconscious revolves around our personal struggles and our personal context. But
some things are universally human: we were all children at one point, we all become
adults and we will all eventually die. These are eternal facts of human life that bring
with them predictable psychological and physiological changes.
The collective unconscious is the layer of the mind that is wired in alignment with
these perennial aspects of being human. It is no more mystical than the freshly
hatched turtle making a beeline for the sea.
Contents of the collective unconscious Up to now, we have been describing what the
collective unconscious is in broad terms. It is the mental component of the instincts.
This instinctual layer runs deeper than the cultural and experientially conditioned conscious
and personal unconscious. It is perennial in the same way as the form of the
human body is perennial? - it transcends cultural context. But what are the actual
contents of the collective unconscious? That is the question that Jung dedicated his
life to. His life's work was an exploration of the collective conscious? - its nature
and how it manifests in the psychology of the
individual. When this layer is active, its contents begin
to bubble up from this underworld of the psyche. These contents? - whether they emerge
in a 21st-century American teenager or a Roman matron two millennia ago? - bear more
resemblance to each other than they do to contents of consciousness or the personal
unconscious. It is out of this collective unconscious that
the gods, the great heroes, and their attending myths and fairytales emerged. These
supercharged contents of the collective unconscious bubble up and interact with the
rest of the mind. This potent dose of primal energy acts as a catalyst in the reshaping
of the individual's psyche. It releases the resources needed to meet the overwhelming
challenge facing them. At such times, you might find yourself awakening
in the depths of the night covered in sweat and your heart still racing in fear
as you reassure yourself that you are not trapped in a maze fighting a giant snake.
The contents of the collective unconscious may not be ones that you have encountered
in your personal life, but they contain themes that recur in ancient myths from across
the world and across time. Jung's investigation of this collective unconscious led him
to the "lush tropical colonies" of religion, mythology and alchemy.
For Jung, these exotic contents corresponded to the activation of the instincts. At
pivotal moments in our lives, something awakens deep inside us. These are the
energies of transformation with all the power of four billion years of evolutionary
refinement behind them. The mental manifestations of these instincts
are what Jung called the collective unconscious. It is not a hive mind but a deep,
ancient part of the mind that becomes activated when the tools of our ego and our
culture are not enough.