The Collective Unconscious

Certain motifs (archetypes or moulds) seem to be given prominence in the legends and nursery stories of world literature. 

It seems to be almost universal and is often found, even today, in fantasies and dreams, in the delusions of mentally challenged patients, as well as in the hallucinations of fever patients. 

This can be called the Motif Phenomena.

Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 - 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. He took material from the Motif Phenomena and constructed a working model for the human psyche. He then drew the important distinction between Personal Consciousness, the Personal Unconsciousness and the Collective Unconsciousness. 

The Conscious and the Unconscious are two complementary spheres and they display opposite characteristics. They kind of balance each other out. 

Jung introduced the Collective Unconscious which resides in the inherited structure of the brain and in the inherited potential of psychic functioning in general. It is an entity that incorporated all the types of psychic reaction, as well as all human experiences right from the very beginning of mankind.

That is why it is called 'collective.' It is the collection of all blueprints for our thoughts, decisions and activities. 

The assumption is that we are all connected on one plane or the other and we automatically share this Motif Phenomena with each other! 

Within the Collective Unconscious lies the source of those motifs and it can play an important role in the individual psyche.

Archetype and the Collective Unconscious

Just as we inherit physical characteristics from our ancestors, so do we inherit archetypes as the material of the Collective Unconscious... an inheritance we share with the rest of mankind.

Defining Archetype: The archetype is a formal, empty element... a possibility of the form in which the idea might appear. It's not the ideas itself that are inherited, but merely their forms, which are equivalent of the equally formally determined instincts.

Archetypes, much like instincts, cannot be shown to be present as such, only when they were developed into something concrete. Archetypes are governing principles in the hidden part of the human psyche. They are force fields and marshals to whatever items sink into the unconscious.

We are not aware of them on a conscious level, but they exert a great effect on our decisions on what to do or to refrain from doing. Archetypes can develop different things until the end of time. It can branch like a tree and blossom a thousand fold.

The deeper a given archetype lies in the unconscious the simpler will it metaphorical language be. More meaning will reside within it, waiting to be unfold and it will therefore be more significant. 

So, the Collective Unconscious is home to all archetypes and contains every human experience since man's earliest days.

But it's not a storage for dead material, quite the contrary. It forms the matrix of our reactions and behavior.

FIN