The Unconscious Mind
"The whole personality of man is indescribable. His consciousness can be described; his unconsciousness cannot be described, because the unconscious—and I repeat myself—is always unconscious. It is really unconscious; he really does not know it. And so we don't know our unconscious personality. We have hints and certain ideas, but we don't know it really. Nobody can say where man ends. That is the beauty of it, you know. It is very interesting. The unconscious of man can reach—God knows where. There we are going to make discoveries." ―Carl Jung, excerpt from Richard Evans Interviews:Transcript of the 1957 Films
Personal Unconscious
Painful, repressed, and/or forgotten memories from one's past make up the personal unconscious.
Painful, repressed, and/or forgotten memories from one's past make up the personal unconscious.
"The personal unconscious consists firstly of all those contents that became unconscious either because they lost their intensity and were forgotten or because consciousness was withdrawn from them(repression), and secondly of contents, some of the sense-impressions, which have never had sufficient intensity to reach consciousness but have somehow entered the psyche."
―Carl Jung, "The Structure of the Psyche" "Jung believed the personal unconscious was dominated by complexes. Complexes, in Jung's system, are emotion-laden themes from a person's life. For example, if you had a leg amputated when you were a child, this would influence your life in profound ways, even if you were wonderfully successful in overcoming the handicap. You might have many thoughts, emotions, memories, feelings of inferiority, triumphs, bitterness, determination...centering on that one aspect of your life. If these thoughts troubled you, Jung would say you had a complex about the leg." ―intropsych.com |
Collective Unconscious
An innate collection of psychic material common to all humans in all cultures.
An innate collection of psychic material common to all humans in all cultures.
"I have chosen the term "collective" because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present in every one of us." -Carl Jung "The collective unconscious however , as the ancestral heritage of possibilities of representation, is not individual but common to all men, and perhaps even to all animals, and is the true basis of the individual psyche."
―Carl Jung, "The Structure of the Psyche" |
Archetypes
These ancient images reflect very common universal themes that are present in the unconscious. These symbolic images exist outside space and time.
These ancient images reflect very common universal themes that are present in the unconscious. These symbolic images exist outside space and time.
"I began to see that the structure of what I then called the collective unconscious was really a sort of agglomeration of such typical images, each of which had a unique quality. |
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"The greatest and best thoughts of man shape themselves upon these primordial images as upon a blueprint. I have often been asked where the archetypal or primordial images come from. It seems to me that their origin can only be explained by assuming them to be deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity...The archetype is a kind of readiness to produce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas."
―Carl Jung, "On the Psychology of the Unconscious"
―Carl Jung, "On the Psychology of the Unconscious"
Dreams & Symbols
Specific expressions of the unconscious which have a purposeful structure indicating an underlying idea. The basic role of dreams is to restore a person's total psychic stability. They usually play a part in our psychic makeup.
Specific expressions of the unconscious which have a purposeful structure indicating an underlying idea. The basic role of dreams is to restore a person's total psychic stability. They usually play a part in our psychic makeup.
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"A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt." ―Carl Jung
*Signature of Carl Jung, no date applicable