Humanity shares common elements that, according to Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious, configure a sort of psychic heritage.

We would be, therefore, facing a "chest" of meanings that we inherited as a social group and that, in a certain way and according to this theory, influences our behavior and emotions.

Understanding the Collective Unconscious

We have all heard about what Jung brought to the world of philosophy and psychology at the turn of the 20th century. This contribution motivated his break with psychoanalytic theory and accentuated the distance between him and Sigmund Freud.

So, while for the latter the unconscious was just that part of the mind that allowed to hold all the experiences that were once conscious and were repressed or forgotten, Carl Jung went a bit further and transcended the individual plane. Jung, through his clinical practice and his own experience, distinguished a much deeper type of universal consciousness.

The collective unconscious was more like the cosmic night or that primordial chaos from which archetypes emerge and that psychic heritage we all share as humanity. Few theories have been so controversial in the world of psychology.

Collective Unconscious and Jung's thoughts

Jung's thought constitutes one of the first attempts to reveal the mechanisms that act, below our level of consciousness, on our thoughts and behavior. from his many travels and studies of different populations, religions, spiritualities and mythologies, Jung realizes that in different human cultures, across time and space, a whole imaginary baggage,mythical, common poetic is found, although presented in different forms, marked by similar structures and character types.

This baggage, by its specificities, constitutes the substratum of cultures. I take, of course, the word "culture" in its broad sense and would be the tool with which a human group perceives the world, understands the world, and acts in the world. Jung notes that when humans let their inner selves speak, they get in touch with this common baggage. This happens, for example, through dreams.

For him, beyond the strictly individual experience of the dreamer, dreams integrate and express elements that belong to this imaginary baggage common to Humanity. This collective unconscious would be composed of certain elements: the archetypes. These psychic phenomena are like units of knowledge, mental images and thoughts that we all have about what surrounds us and that ariseinstinctively.

Motherhood

An example would be "motherhood" and the meaning it has for us, the "person", another archetype understood as that image of ourselves that we want to share with others, "the shadow" or what, on the contrary, we want to hide or repress. Knowing this and picking up on the question we asked ourselves about the usefulness of this theory, it is important to think about the following. Carl Jung's collective unconscious suggests that we underline a fact.

We never develop in isolation and separately in this envelope that is society. We are the cogs of a cultural machine, of a sophisticated entity that transmits us patterns and instills in us senses that we inherit from each other. archetypes would be the organs of the psyche. Therefore, it is important to take care of the health of your organs, and paying attention to them, placing consciousness on our archetypes, integrating them into our life, plays a key role in relation to our mental health.

Health is seen here as much more than the absence of pathology, but as the ability to release all the potential one carries in order to live life as a masterpiece. To integrate this awareness of archetypes, to let the energy flow freely, man has always lived with reference to mythology, tales, legends, religions, and dreams in particular. They seem to constitute a whole paraphernalia of "build - repair" that is precious to humans, both individually and socially.

Collective Unconscious and the Instincts

Besides the "simple" sensible environment, objects of intellectual knowledge such as numbers, for example, have always nourished the imagination and minds of the most awakened men. They are loaded with various meanings. Also letters, which before - or in addition to - serving as instruments of communication between human beings, were supports for certain ritual, magical or divination practices (i.e. another form of communication, both internal and external).

We know this well from the runes of the Nordics or from the use of Hebrew letters in Kabbalah. Carl Jung's theory and his proposition about the collective unconscious actually reflect much of our instincts, our deepest drives as human beings: this is where love, fear, social projection, sex, wisdom, good and evil come from.

Thus, one of the Swiss psychologist's goals was to ensure that people build a healthy, authentic self within which all these energies and all these archetypes live in harmony.

Conclusion

A no less interesting aspect of Carl Jung's collective unconscious is that, as he explained, this psychic energy changes over time. With each generation, we find cultural, sociological, and environmental variations. All this would have an impact on our mind and those unconscious layers where new archetypes are created.

This article was written by Michael Sousa ( [email protected]). MBA in Strategic Management by FEA-RP USP, he is a graduate in Computer Science and an expert in Process Management and Six Sigma. He has an extension in Applied Statistics by Ibmec and in Cost Management by PUC-RS. However, surrendering to his interest in Freudian theories, he went to the Institute of Psychoanalysis to graduate in Psychoanalysis.He is also a columnist for Terraço Econômico, where he writes about geopolitics and economics.

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