Collective unconscious

The collective unconscious is a term coined by Carl Gustav Jung term from the concept of its analytical psychology.

Evolution and collective unconscious

Although Jung took over from psychoanalysis, the terms consciousness and the unconscious, but the latter differentiated into a personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. This postulated Jung as repository of psychic heritage of human history, which had, like the biological body, developed through evolution through and had been influenced by different experiences. Everything was eventually expressed by the individual psyche of a man who will become part of the basic mental constitution of a person - and also at a collective level to a part of the whole species, and thus become part of the collective unconscious. With regard to the method described by Sigmund Freud structure of the superego acknowledges Jung that he was " in later works, " his basic view revised and that his superego that " the individual is partly conscious, partly unconscious and repressed collective consciousness " call. The collective unconscious is Jung individually and culture-independent and is based on cross-cultural comparisons in myth, magic and fairy tales ( see, eg, also discovered by Joseph Campbell on cultural narrative principle of the hero's journey ) studied and corresponds to the collective consciousness Émile Durkheim ( 1858-1917 ). According to Durkheim, it is anchored to its objectification in the individual psyches. The collective consciousness do not exist independently of the sum of all individual forms of consciousness.

Archetypes

Particularly frequent, recurring mental patterns shapes itself according to Jung the basic motifs or archetypes that looked structuring the individual and collective psyche. They developed a significant, involuntary force ( " numinous "), which can resist no individual psyche permanently.

The awareness appear archetypes as typical, frequently observed behavior motives that manifest themselves objectively as cultural objects and / or rituals. The motifs of various fairy tales, myths and their occurrence in the arts and in the dream about different eras, languages ​​and cultures through are introduced by Jung as evidence for the existence of these archetypes. Jung was in his conception of the collective unconscious, inter alia, Having regard to the work of Lucien Lévy -Bruhl (1857-1939), see also the concept of collective consciousness.

Maurice Halbwachs: Collective Memory

A different approach to collective unconscious structures developed Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) with his theory of the collective memory. This is more oriented towards the concrete historical situation of social groups and societies. According to Halbwachs, the need for memory and historical consciousness is to be understood as a response to the disappearance of traditions and realities.