The idea that there is something unconscious in our mind that totally influences how we think, feel and act has seduced hundreds of thousands of people since Sigmund Freud published his first books on psychoanalysis. However, as the current of psychology inherited from Freud is based heavily on metaphysics, much has been hypothesized about what the structure of this unconscious structure of the human psyche is.
One of the best-known explanations in this regard is that of Carl Jung, one of the first followers of the father of psychoanalysis who, however, ended up radically departing from his teacher’s theories. Next we will see what they consisted of the different types of unconscious according to Carl Jung
The current of psychology started by Sigmund Freud, based on its beginnings in psychoanalysis, is famous for placing a lot of emphasis on a concept called “the unconscious.” This unconscious refers to that aspect of the human mind that stays away from the spotlight of consciousness and which, consequently, we find it difficult to take into account or even try to modify or anticipate.
However, that unconscious mind that Freud’s disciples were referring to is not any type of unconscious (for example, it has nothing to do with the way in which current psychology and neuroscience understand non-consciousness), but rather it is part of a very determined way of understanding the psyche, deeply based on metaphysics and the analysis of symbols in search of a hidden meaning.
Thus, the descendants of psychoanalysis understand this concept as a set of entities that fight against the forces of the conscious psyche in order to become manifest and come to light. And the symbols and symbolic expressions of thoughts, sensations and memories have a great role: hence, for example, the emphasis that Freud placed on the analysis of dreams and the result of free association.
Beyond an individual phenomenon
Carl Jung rejected many of Freud’s ideas, but ultimately he used a conception of the mind that, at its most basic, resembled that of the creator of psychoanalysis. He also believed in the need to look for symbols and signs of hidden meanings, although with a difference; If psychoanalysts understood that the unconscious was fundamentally confined to individuals, Jung proposed the opposite: that the unconscious It is basically a collective phenomenon, like the history of humanity
How did you get to that conclusion? Through the study of symbols and religions. As he learned about the different myths and ways of understanding the world of different cultures on the planet, Jung realized that many of these mythical elements had many characteristics in common: symbols, themes and development structures of mythical stories
However, the conclusions he reached did not stop at the simple recognition of very similar aspects in different cultural elements of practically all societies, regardless of their degree of isolation from the rest. Furthermore, Carl Jung defended the idea that these essential elements that can be found in all the mythical stories of the world manifest in dreams of patients with schizophrenia
From there, this Swiss researcher proposed an idea that, according to him, allowed us to answer the question of how these common symbolic elements can appear in all types of people, regardless of where they live and whether they have known other cultures or not.. There were two types of unconscious: one individual, and another collective
Carl Jung and the types of unconscious he proposed
The most characteristic idea of Carl Jung’s work in comparison to other references of the current of psychodynamics is that for him the psyche of a person is not only a product of their individual personal experiences added to their also individual biological propensities, but that fundamentally it works from elements that go beyond the individual.
This emphasis on the collective does not refer to the way in which others influence the person’s behavior when interacting with them; it goes much further. In fact, this “transpersonal” psychological factor has more to do with the history of humanity, that is, what happened before that specific individual was born. It is a part of the psyche that existed before the individual psyche had a chance to come into existence: Hence, for Jung, symbols, myths and religion had so much importance when it comes to understanding people’s minds: they are products of the evolution of humanity as a whole.
Thus, the types of unconscious according to Jung are the following.
1. Personal unconscious
It has to do with all the repressed and hidden aspects that have arisen from the interaction between the person and their environment (including the people with whom they come into contact). For example, if someone’s mother punished him very harshly during his childhood, that leaves an imprint on her unconscious.
The collective unconscious is that type of unconscious on which Carl Jung places more emphasis. It contains historical and collective elements that modulate the way in which human beings think, feel and act. Specifically, it includes heritable and socially constructed psychological structures, called archetypes
critics
All of Carl Jung’s work has been highly criticized both by members of the psychodynamic movement and by psychologists and philosophers of science who do not consider themselves heirs of Freud. The latter, specifically, point out how unreliable it is to trust one’s own interpretation to analyze people’s behavior; Ultimately, there is no objectively valid way to interpret symbols.
In any case, the types of unconscious proposed by Carl Jung have had a great influence on the humanities and have been reflected in numerous forms of art, which is why it is interesting to know them.
