0.12 Carl jung  (Page 10/23)

The Unconscious Mind

Perhaps Jung’s most unique contribution to psychology is the distinction between a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious . The personal unconscious is not entirely different than that proposed by Freud, but is more extensive. In addition to repressed memories and impulses, the personal unconscious contains undeveloped aspects of the personality and material arising from the collective unconscious that is not yet ready for admission into conscious awareness. The personal unconscious is revealed through clusters of emotions, such as those resulting in a particular attitude toward one’s father or other father figures, which Jung referred to as a complex (Douglas, 1995; Jarvis, 2004). In this sense, a complex is not synonymous with a psychological problem, as the term is often used today, but rather any general state of mind common to certain situations. In this context, it is quite similar to the schemas discussed by cognitive theorists.

Jung arrived at his theory of complexes as a result of his research into schizophrenia, under the direction of Dr. Bleuler. Bleuler had assigned Jung the task of studying the Word Association Test , a test in which a list of 100 words is read to the patient, and the therapist watches for evidence of emotional arousal, such as pauses, failures to respond, or physical acts. In addition, Jung noticed that even with schizophrenic patients, the patterns of word association were often centered on a particular theme. That theme could then be regarded as a complex (which, again, could be either positive or negative). Sometimes, complexes remain unresolved, such as one’s feelings about parents, if the parents have died. In relatively healthy individuals, these unresolved complexes could result in dreams, visions, or similar phenomena pertaining to the object(s) of the unresolved complex. These complexes might even become personified. In the extreme situation of personified complexes, such as in a person suffering from schizophrenia, the patient cannot distinguish the personification of the unresolved complex from the seeming reality of being another person. Hence, the schizophrenic “hears” voices in their head, “spoken” by someone else. As Jung further investigated the nature and themes of complexes in psychiatric patients, he found common themes that could not always be attributed to the patient’s personal history. And so, he began to form his concept of the collective unconscious (Douglas, 1995; Jarvis, 2004; Jung, 1959b, 1961; Storr, 1983).

…from the standpoint of the psychology of the personality a twofold division ensures: an “extra-conscious” psyche whose contents are personal , and an “extra-conscious” psyche whose contents are impersonal and collective . The first group comprises contents which are integral components of the individual personality and could therefore just as well be conscious; the second group forms, as it were, an omnipresent, unchanging, and everywhere identical quality or substrate of the psyche per se . This is, of course, no more than a hypothesis. But we are driven to it by the peculiar nature of the empirical material…