The Jungian “Social Unconscious”

Stephanie Fariss, JD, LCSW, CGPDiplomate 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 UnconsciousWhile 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 internal-psychic 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 thetheory of Analytical Psychology, various Jungian analysts,including Joe Henderson, Tom Singer and Sam Kimbles, haveapplied 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 theentire cultural group. Shared traumas lead to shared complexes.

The cultural complex functions like personal complexes and leadsto unconscious, feeling-toned trains of thought that can overtakeand stand in for the ego, blocking the ability to reflect on differentways of thinking or feeling.

Example of a Cultural ComplexAn important example of this is the proliferation of Madrasahs, thereligions schools that education millions of students in the Muslimworld. They have been blamed for brainwashing youngsters, makingthem enemies of the West, but the trauma that led to the anti-Western 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 futureleaders and religious scholars in Muslim countries. The initial curriculum included Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy, logic and therational 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 andChristian missionaries set up English-speaking religious schools. The cultural complex created from this attack on Islamic culture led toa closing of doors to modern knowledge in the Madrasahs. Modernknowledge was now viewed as polluting because of its association withthe British. Without an understanding of the cultural complex, we cannot understand how an insistence on secularization can be viewedas a declaration of war on Muslim education.

Collective UnconsciousIn a group of six essays that originated as lectures at the EranosConferences in Ascona, Switzerland, Erich Neumann, a Jungian analystin Palestine, further developed Jung’s ideas about the process of individuation through developing the concept of UNITARY REALITY andthe NATURE OF ARCHETYPES.Neumann makes the argument that there is UNCONSCIOUS KNOWINGand that we should recognize that there are different degrees, steps, orkinds of knowledge. He is concerned with the relationship betweenthese different degrees or kinds of knowledge. For instance, he says,there is the EGO CENTERED form of knowing (incl. contents that havebecome unconscious, originally linked to the ego but have beenforgotten, repressed, suppressed), which is a more or less a closedsystem that is limiting to creativity.Neumann says it represents only oneparticular form of knowledge whose clarity, precision, and applicabilityto the ego is dearly paid for with it’s one-sidedness. Another kind of knowing he calls EXTRANEOUS KNOWING, i.e., knowledge that is notlinked 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, butexperiences it as a disturbance to consciousness in the form of a complex. For people at this stage, all experience that transcends the POLARIZATIONOF PSYCHE & WORLD (such as synchonistic events), are consideredILLUSORY, 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, extra-human, & extra-psychic realms.

• The AF has a dual nature: NUMINOSITY- an energetic, dynamic field; free energy; a moving forceLUMINOSITY-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 itcontains 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 MindDiagram (b) Personality becomes embedded in the AF, and a greater

relationship to the world and to the psycheDiagram (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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