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'Collective unconscious' is a term of analytical psychology originally coined by Carl Jung. While Freud did not distinguish between an "individual psychology" and a "collective psychology", Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious particular to each human being. The collective unconscious is also known as "a reservoir of the experiences of our species."^[1]

Contents

Collective unconscious in Jung's works

Collective unconscious in fiction

See also

Further reading

External links

Footnotes

Collective unconscious in Jung's works

In his earlier writings, Jung called this aspect of the psyche the collective unconscious. He later changed the term to ''objective psyche''. The objective psyche may be considered objective for two reasons: it is common to everyone; and it has a better sense of the self's ideal than the ego or conscious self does. It thus directs the self, via archetypes, dreams, and intuition, and drives the person to make mistakes on purpose. In this way, it moves the psyche toward individuation, or self-actualization.
In the "Definitions" chapter of Jung's seminal work ''Psychological Types'', under the definition of "collective" Jung references ''representations collectives'', a term coined by Levy-Bruhl in his 1910 book ''How Natives Think''. Jung says this is what he describes as the collective unconscious.

Collective unconscious in fiction

According to the Hitchhiker novel ''Life, the Universe and Everything'', the game of cricket is a "collective unconscious" memory of the Krikkit Wars.
In the Stephen King novel ''Cell'', after an apparent terrorist attack wipes the minds of a majority of humanity, collective unconscious is used as the premise behind the basic instinct to kill, adapt and survive after the "Phoners" transition from humanity into a new species. Telepathy is also noted as a continuance of the collective unconsciousness.
In the Playstation 2's Xenosaga trilogy, the U.M.N. is described as the collective human unconscious overlayed on a computer network. U.M.N., which stands for ''Unus Mundus Network'', is based off of another theory of Carl Jung called Unus Mundus, a state where every contradiction is resolved.
In the book ''Planet of the Apes'' a human (who like other humans in the book with the exception of the protagonist are as intelligent as an ape in our world) has her collective unconscious tapped to give a history of the final days of man's dominance on the planet.
In the series "Dune" by Frank Herbert, the characters Leto and Ghanima Atreides, son and daughter of Paul Maud'Dib, become prescient due the spice ingested by their mother Jessica, whilst they are still in the womb. This prescience is described as "genetic memory" and thus the children are born as fully developed humans in the bodies of infants. This idea strongly resembles Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, especially as it is framed as 'genetic memory' which could easily be conceptualized as "a reservoir of the experiences of our species."
In the episode Waking Moments the crew of Voyager is attacked by aliens and trapped in a collective unconscious.

See also

★ 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness (7th circuit)

★ Akashic Records

★ Archetype

★ Collective consciousness

★ Over-soul

★ Pantheism

★ Paramatman

★ Synchronicity

★ Spiritus Mundi

★ Subconscious mind

★ Weltanschauung (World view)

Further reading

★ Jung, Carl. ''The Development of Personality.''

★ Jung, Carl. (1970). "Psychic conflicts in a child.", ''Collected Works of C. G. Jung, 17''. Princeton University Press. 235 p. (p. 1-35).

★ Whitmont, Edward C. (1969). ''The Symbolic Quest''. Princeton University Press.

★ Gallo, Ernest. "Synchronicity and the Archetypes," ''Skeptical Inquirer, 18'' (4). Summer 1994.

External links

★ for Research in Archetypal Symbolism'' A pictorial and written archive of mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic images from all over the world and from all epochs of human history.

★ Collective unconscious Theatre''

★ Kaleidoscope Forum Jungian Discussion Forum. All levels of discourse welcomed.

★ [1] An Online Novel being directed by the Collective Unconscious.

Footnotes

1. Jensen, Peter S., Mrazek, David, Knapp, Penelope K., Steinberg, Laurence, Pfeffer, Cynthia, Schowalter, John, & Shapiro, Theodore. (Dec 1997) Evolution and revolution in child psychiatry: ADHD as a disorder of adaptation. (attention-deficit hyperactivity syndrome). Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 36. p. 1672. (10). July 14 2007.