IDM
and Jung's concept of the Collective Unconscious
The following is from the "Definition" portion of Jung's lecture in 1936 on "The Archetypes and
the Collective Unconscious", Collected Works, Vol. 9.i, pars. 87-110.
- "The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal
unconscious by the fact that is does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently
is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at
one time been conscious, but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed,
the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually
acquired but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most
part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes.
The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate to the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates
the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere. Mythological research
calls them "motifs"; in the psychology of primitives they correspond to Levy-Bruhl's concept of "representations
collectives," and in the field of comparative religion they have been defined by Hubert and Mauss as "categories
of the imagination." Adolf Bastian long ago called them "elementary" or "primordial thoughts."
From these references, it should be clear enough that my idea of the archetype -- literally a pre-existent form
-- does not stand alone, but is something that is recognized and named in other fields of knowledge.
My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature
and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix),
there exists a second 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."
From Carl Jung's "The Structure of the Psyche", 1927:
- "Just as some kind of analytical technique is needed to understand a dream, so a knowledge of mythology
is needed in order to grasp the meaning of a content deriving from the deeper levels of the psyche....
The collective unconscious -- so far as we can say anything about it at all -- appears to consist of mythological
motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole
of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious.
We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, which original chaotic forms were organized
through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences
are nothing but unconscious, introspective perceptions of the activity of the collective unconscious. Just as the
constellations were projected into the heavens, similar figures were projected into legends and fairy tales or
upon historical persons."
The IDM material shows us that the concept of the collective unconscious correlates with what we call our species-nature
and as such is reflected in instincts and habits developed out of a collective context rather than a personal context.
Since instincts reflect a species' adaptation to context, but at a GENERAL level so can emerge the concept of an
'archetype'. This does not necessarily mean the archetype is universal but more an archetype derived from local
interactions with the universe and as such locally 'universal'. That said, as IDM shows, we can identify core aspects
of personality in the IDM material at the level of groups within a collective that are biased to performing particular
tasks - e.g. the 'warrior, worker, queen' categories in ant/bee colonies etc.
Thus in such persona typology tools as the MBTI we can identify 'archetypal' NT,
NF, SP, and SJ temperaments sourced at the species-nature level of our being and then coloured, and so specialised,
by personal experiences.
Jung made the point that to comprehend the collective unconscious we need to look at the expressions in the
realm of Mythology and this does seem to be the case when we review the neurology in that our minds, ignorant of
how our neurology functions, are driven to interpret events the best way we can regardless of any limitiations
on current facts. Thus we find that the fact that our habits/instincts are encoded into the input areas of neurons
and as such allow context to PUSH the individual, being unknown in the past, has led to the development of a rich
realm of 'angels' etc in the attempt to describe feelings of being 'pushed' or 'guided' when in certain contexts.
See for example the comments on angels by a Rabbi.