Jung. Jung Jung Jung.
Fun to say, especially if you pronounce it like it's spelled, rather than how it's pronounced. I'm probably not what you'd call a Jung follower, but I'm familiar with his collective unconscious bit. As a theory, I like it as much as I like Plato's separate reality of ideas. I'm pretty gullible on hypothetical mechanisms, perhaps, but I always like 'em a little better if someone can take a crack at describing what the operating principles might be.
I think the shared Jungian archetypes concept works, as long as we limit it to working forwards (as Jung did, far as I can tell). To having its influence proceed from our collective past and shape us. That way, it needn't be conceived as some separate, mysterious field that binds us together, but rather as something consistent that has been stamped into each of us, more-or-less equally. The conditions of our species' shared experience of thousands of generations prior to history kicking in may well have stamped themselves pretty deeply into the grain, so to speak. That we can all tap into that shared well, I find plausible enough. Certainly less-complex animals exhibit behaviors that are not "taught," but that appear to bolster the idea of some collective or genetic memory.
But I am not convinced we can add to or influence the collective unconscious - at least, not at a pace our modern mind would consider efficient. I don't believe that a new idea today can be put down into the collective unconscious, where it will then become available for all humans to tap into (italics mine). I mean, even if it seeps in through the collective eyes via the collective television set, that's going to leave a whole bunch of us out.
On the whole I like Jung a whole lot better than Freud. "Jung" is fun to say! "Freud" is just kind of unpleasant, like you're eating some vinegary european marinated lunchmeat delicacy and then they tell you what's in it.
3 comments:
By coinky-dink, reading the New York Times article about Jung's psychotic writings as we speak - from a few months ago: The Holy Grail of the Unconscious.
I mostly believe that it's best not to know too much of what goes on in the minds of others. It ain't pretty, of that we can be fairly certain.
I heard those were finally published! I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm not sure how he'd feel about that.
I think he'd probably be fine with it. From what I understand, he undertook the whole 'Red Book' project with a pretty amazingly detached-yet-engaged attitude. A sort of willing collaboration with psychosis. Perhaps an analogue to a vision quest?
He was an amazing sort of fellow from what I can tell.
Yes, it will be published, or has been published, not sure which.
Perhaps it's pending, as I have only read about the book, but haven't seen reviews yet.
I guess we'll hear more next year, when it hits the shelves.
I think, long after the event, he would be fine with it now. Clearly he would not have been fine with it then.
Most psychotics probably wouldn't be much chop at engaging with their psychosis, let alone writing about it lucidly, so Jung's Red Book is a worthy publication. I'm glad it wasn't lost.
It sounds intellectually, emotionally and psychologically challenging, and there is little enough of that around, so it will be on my purchase list when it reaches Australia.
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