One does not achieve enlightenment by fantasizing about light but by making the darkness conscious

-Carl Jung

Within the different psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic schools that emerged from Sigmund Freud’s approaches, and which are sometimes included under the term of deep psychology (psychoanalysis, individual psychology of Adler and Jungian analytical psychology) the premise is shared of the existence of a psychic substratum containing unconscious factors that condition and determine the ways of thinking, feeling and acting of individuals .

The unconscious: repressed desires and collective patterns

For Freudian psychoanalysis, the unconscious is a conglomerate of fantasies and desires that have been repressed by the individual in his process of adaptation to the social sphere . Therefore, it refers to contents related to the personal history of the individual, granting special relevance to the memory linked to parental figures.

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, creator of analytical psychology, is partly in agreement with this assumption but he suggests that in addition to the biographical contents, it is also possible to identify elements in the unconscious that are part of the phylogenetic history of humanity . It proposes then that in addition to the personal unconscious, there is a collective unconscious composed of prototypes of experiences and behaviours shared by all human beings as a species.

Archetypes in the collective unconscious

These patterns of behaviour, which Jung called archetypes, are closely related to instincts, insofar as they operate as stimuli that compel us to carry out certain behaviours and promote typical reactions before diverse circumstances of our life (emancipation from parents, forming a family, having offspring, seeking sustenance, appropriating a territory, participating in the collective, transforming the social order, death).

Unlike instincts, which are drives with a relatively closed and concrete circuit of realization, archetypes behave in an open and symbolic way ; however their non-realization is also a source of discomfort and frustration.

Jung suggests that it is possible to infer the existence of archetypes from their manifestations, one of which is the typical dramatic images and structures that can be found, in different cultural guises, in the mythological and fantastic narratives of different places and times.

The myths show us how humanity has faced different critical situations, and although some of them are thousands of years old, they continue to resonate and have an impact on our psyche because the challenges they allude to continue to accompany us.

Jung emphasizes that it is not possible in many occasions to lead to direct or indirect contact between peoples to explain the structural similarities of the myths. It is also relevant that these typical dramas and characters also arise spontaneously in psychotic delusions and hallucinations, as well as in altered states of consciousness as a result of meditative practices or the ingestion of psychedelic substances.Some dreams whose contents cannot be related to biographical aspects, can also be an expression of archetypal images.

The archetype of the solar hero

Freud and Jung not only distanced themselves by their different conceptions regarding the unconscious, but also by their approaches to the nature of the fundamental energy that moves human beings : the libido.

As is well known, the libido is, according to Freud, of a sexual nature, while for Jung, the sexual is only one of the manifestations of a much broader and more encompassing vital energy. Jung describes the libido then as a creative energy, which is the origin and engine of the universe . This energy manifests itself in human beings as a yearning for transcendence, for fulfillment, for the expansion of consciousness. Jung found that this process of manifestation and deployment of life energy is manifested mythically through the archetype of the solar hero. This archetype is the prototype of many ancient and contemporary stories in which the transformation of the hero is narrated ( The Odyssey , Star Wars , The Lord of the Rings )

Through a series of journeys and adventures (undertaking a journey, fighting the dragon, descending into hell, death, rebirth), and the encounter and confrontation with other archetypes (shadow, animus- anima, old sage, the great mother) the hero enters into relationship with the forces of the underworld (the unconscious,), finds the treasure he is looking for and returns to his place of origin to share the “light”, the wisdom, with his people.

Jung proposes to understand this mythical structure as a projection of a psychic process of transformation and evolution to which all human beings are called . Each human soul is forced to confront a series of circumstances that lead it to manifest its vocation, its particular calling, its singular contribution to the collective, to the world. It manifests itself as a yearning for knowledge, for self-improvement, for totality. I call this evolutionary path a process of individuation and it is also considered a symbol of the gradual transformation of the ego in its confrontation and adaptation to the forces of the unconscious and the external world.

Affective complexes

Archetypes are humanized in individuals from what Jung called the personal affective complexes . The complexes, besides being imbued with archetypes, are nourished by our personal experiences . They can be considered as a set of images and representations, affectively charged, around a common theme (relationship with the father or mother, power, eroticism, etc.)

Different circumstances in our lives are constant, that is, they make a certain complex more relevant. A constellation complex alters our conscious perception and will, tinging it with the traces of the corresponding archetypes added to previous experiences with respect to the same theme. Ancient demonic possessions and multiple personality disorders are expressions of highly constellation complexes. In these cases they behave as massive invasions of the unconscious that oppress and nullify the functions of the ego and consciousness.

Complexes are expressed in our psyche as urges, needs, views, emotional reactions, feelings of disproportionate admiration or disdain, obsessive ideas. They have the faculty to personify themselves in our dreams, and to generate events and circumstances in the physical world with analogous meanings (somatizations, accidents, encounters with people, repetition of finished type of relationship). The capacity of externalization of archetypes and complexes is the basis of the phenomenon described by Jung as synchronicity.

Affective complexes are considered to be the constitutive particles of the unconscious psyche and therefore do not only fall within the scope of psychopathology . They function as if pets were living in our house, which if we ignore or neglect them, sooner or later they will end up going against us, causing us multiple havoc. The alternative is to get in touch with them, pay attention to their needs, so that with time and effort we can somehow manage to domesticate them, even making use of their potential resources. The unconscious, whether we want it or not, will act on us so the most appropriate thing is to enter into their mysteries

This dialogue with our complexes, with our inner characters, who as we saw are the expression of the drama towards the realization of our deepest being, requires the deployment of a symbolic attitude through imagination and creativity.

Imagination and creativity as dialogue with the unconscious

Imagination has been denigrated by rationalist and materialist thinking since the Enlightenment, considering it to be of no value in obtaining valid and productive knowledge. Jung, however, joins the hermetic and phenomenological current that recognises the sphere of the imaginary, in which myths, dreams and fantasies are included as elements that allow access to the paradoxical complexity of the psyche, to the depths of human nature and above all to that other sublime reality that inhabits and conditions us.

Imagination

The imagination is recognized as having the symbolic property of uniting and reconciling polarities; of expressing, suggesting and evoking the ungraspable; of comprehensively approaching unclassifiable phenomena through concept and rationality. The analyst James Hillman proposes the imagination as the language of the soul .

The imaginary manifests itself spontaneously in dreams and that is why its interpretation is a fundamental part of Jungian psychotherapy. Also it is possible to artificially induce the imaginary in the therapeutic space through the technique of active imagination . This consists of giving the contents of the unconscious the opportunity to express themselves, making use of their capacity for personification.

It is then proposed to get in touch with our inner characters, to listen to them with attention and rigour, interacting and conversing with them as if they were real entities.

Ways to address the unconscious

Our inner characters can be evoked through the image of a dream, an intense emotion, a symptom. Each of us has a modality that facilitates such communication. There are people who can hear voices, or perceive inner images, some express themselves through body movements in a kind of dance. For others, contact with the unconscious is possible through automatic writing, a technique used by the surrealists.

Jung differentiates between idle fantasy and active imagination, pointing out that in the latter, the ego assumes an active attitude, that is, it does not accept in a passive and submissive way the voices and images of the unconscious , but it questions them . The active attitude implies supporting and maintaining the tension with the unconscious, allowing what he calls the transcendent function to emerge, that is, a new birth, the emergence of a new attitude, the product of this confrontation.

The transcendent function of the psyche is that which makes possible the conciliation of apparently irreconcilable opposites. It is the emergence of a third element or perspective, which includes and integrates the elements that have been in dispute. It is a process of conflict, negotiation and transitory agreements.

The technique of active imagination is often used in advanced stages of analysis, as it requires a structured ego that can withstand the tension of opposites and does not succumb to dissociation or identification with some of the contents of the unconscious.

Jung emphasizes that taking the unconscious seriously does not mean taking it literally, but rather giving it credit, providing it with the opportunity to cooperate with consciousness, rather than automatically disturbing it. This cooperation of the unconscious is related to the self-regulating principle of the psyche , a fundamental concept in the Jungian perspective.

Imagination as a facilitator of the psyche’s self-regulatory mechanism

The psyche is presented as a dynamic system of opposing forces (conscious-unconscious, progression-progression of the libido, matter-logos), with an intrinsic tendency to maintain a balance. This self-regulating mechanism implies a permanent interplay of compensation and complementarity between the psychic components.

The state of psychic equilibrium is regularly altered by stimuli from the lability of the internal and external world. This alteration demands modifications aimed at adapting to the new requirements, promoting in the psyche a transformation to stages of increasing complexity and integrality. Neurotic symptoms (obsessions, depression, anxiety, accidents, somatization, repetition of relationship patterns, self-sabotage) are an expression of an attempt by the unconscious psyche to seek this higher equilibrium state. An attempt to create awareness out of stumbling blocks.

The dialogue with the unconscious psyche through the imagination allows the self-regulating mechanism of the psyche to act without the need to resort to symptomatic phenomena. It is somehow anticipating events and eluding that Jungian sentence by which, “everything that is not done consciously will be lived outside as destiny”.

Self-regulation: one of the keys to the unconscious

The self-regulating mechanism of the psyche is referred to by the analyst James Hillman as our inner daemon. With this Hellenic concept he tries to allude to that force that leads us by good and bad to express our vocation, our particular calling . Imagination and creativity are then a means to interpret the winks of fate, the signs of our daemon.

The development of the symbolic attitude that Jungian psychotherapy seeks to foster through imagination allows us to escape from the narrow literalness of the facts. It gives us access to paradoxical subordinate logics. It links us to the deep polysemy of events through symbols, analogies and correspondences.

The symbolic attitude also broadens our sensitivity and our disposition to respond constructively to all that the diversity of life summons us to and to integrate and live with our dark aspects. The dialogue with the unconscious allows us to become co-creators of our reality and not simple slaves or victims of circumstances.

Bibliographic references:

  • Hillman, J. (1998). The code of the soul. Barcelona, Martínez Roca.
  • Jung, C. G. (1981). Archetypes and the collective unconscious. Barcelona, Paidos.
  • Jung, C.G (1993) Structure and dynamics of the psyche. Editorial Paidós,
  • Buenos Aires.
  • Jung, C. G. (2008). Complexes and the unconscious. Madrid, Alianza.