The concept of the collective unconscious was proposed by Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, in the mid-19th century. It roughly refers to a dimension that is beyond consciousness and is common to the experience of all human beings.

Although the term collective unconscious has been the object of much criticism, it has also positioned itself as a theory that offers important elements for understanding many phenomena of the human. In this article we will see what the Collective Unconscious is and how it has impacted on psychodynamic psychology .

A Brief History of the Unconscious

The history of psychology has been marked by different theories that address the relationship between the dimension of consciousness and its opposite or complementary dimension. Many are the proposals that have emerged to resolve this issue.

Among these is the concept of the unconscious from a psychodynamic perspective , which emerged at the end of the 19th century within Freudian psychoanalysis , but was taken up again and reformulated some time later, both by its followers and by its defectors.

One of the most popular is Carl Jung, who after having collaborated with Sigmund Freud very closely, decided to form his own tradition outside of psychoanalysis, which we know as “analytical psychology” . Among the main concepts that form part of this tradition is that of the collective unconscious.

What is the collective unconscious?

Within traditional psychology it is understood that what complements the “individual” is “the social”. However, for analytical psychology, the complementary to the individual is not precisely the social, but the collective, which not only refers to the set of people who make up a society, but emphasizes what these people have in common.

According to Jung, just as the individual has a psychic dimension that is beyond consciousness (the unconscious); the collective, insofar as it belongs to a supra-personal dimension, also has its own unconscious. Unlike the individual unconscious, which is acquired through lived experiences, the collective unconscious is a common platform, composed of archetypes that shape our individuality.

In other words, according to Jung, there are a series of psychic, imaginary and symbolic experiences, whose existence is not given by the acquired learnings, but it is about experiences that all human beings share, independently of our individual life stories.

These are experiences that obey another order, so Jung defines the collective unconscious as a second psychic system whose nature is universal and impersonal .

Just as the physical characteristics of an individual are more or less common to those of all individuals belonging to the human species, so too the psyche has common characteristics that exist independently of culture and the history of societies. It is an instance that transcends age, life and even death; it is an experience that has accompanied humanity since its existence.

First definitions since Carl Jung

In his first works, Jung described the Collective Unconscious as that substratum that makes it possible to understand why people who belong to such apparently different cultures share some psychic characteristics.

The latter could be seen, for example, in repetitive dreams, in art, in myths and religions, in children’s stories, in psychic symptomatology, among other areas. For this reason, the collective unconscious served Jung to offer explanations about the common meanings of symbols and myths that are apparently different between cultures .

Formally, the concept of the collective unconscious emerged in 1936, after a lecture that Jung gave in London, precisely under the title The Concept of the Collective Unconscious.

The archetypes

The collective unconscious is fundamentally composed of archetypes, which are pre-existing and universal forms (ideas, images, symbols) that shape a large part of psychic content.

According to Jung, just as human beings have patterns of instinctive behavior mediated by biological activity, we have patterns of instinctive behavior mediated by psychic activity , which drink from the mythical aspect through which experiences are mapped and narrated.

In this sense, archetypes and the collective unconscious are transmitted by the very condition of being human, and their effects are visible in the shaping of the individual psyche. And it is so because, for Jung, the unconscious also has purposes, intuitions, thoughts, feelings , etc., just as it happens with the conscious mind.

In order to develop the concept of the archetype, Jung took as a reference various anthropological and philosophical works, especially from authors such as Mauss, Lévy Bruhl and A. Bastian. Some of the archetypes he developed in an important way and which have been taken up by different authors are the anima, the shadow or the great mother.

Impact on psychology and related areas

Among other things, the concept of the collective unconscious has served to formulate explanations for various human experiences that more traditional and rational science can do little to explore. For example, in specific questions about mystical experiences, artistic experiences or some therapeutic experiences .

In addition, the concept of the collective unconscious has impacted much of the specialized language in areas that are not strictly speaking psychology, because it serves to talk about what we know we share, regardless of culture, although we do not know what it is. For the same reason, it has often been a problematic, ambiguous concept, subject to various criticisms, while still being present in even the most everyday language.

Bibliographic references:

  • Quiroga, M.P. (2010). Art and Analytical Psychology. An archetypal interpretation of art. Art, Individual and Society, 22(2): 49-62.