Carl Jung Darwin of The Mind

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CHAPTER TITLE
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CARL JUNG, DARWIN

OF THE MIND
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CARL JUNG,
DARWIN OF THE MIND
Thomas T. Lawson
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First published in 2008 by

Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright 2008 by Thomas T. Lawson

The right of Thomas T. Lawson to be identied as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-85575-468-3
Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd
www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk
e-mail: studio@publishingservices.co.uk
Printed in Great Britain
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
www.karnacbooks.com
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CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
xi
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
CHAPTER TWO
The evolution of consciousness
25
CHAPTER THREE
Archetypes and the collective unconscious
75
CHAPTER FOUR
Individuation
121
CHAPTER FIVE
Synchronicity
177
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER SIX
Conclusion
203
REFERENCES
215
INDEX
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For Flowers
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Lawson lives in the Virginia mountains near Roanoke,

where he was a trial lawyer for more than twenty-ve years. Since
1992 he has been writing, in pursuance of his interest in Carl Jung,
and painting.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has been the backbone of my second career and, for quite
a few years now, a sustaining interest for me. Because of my absorption with it, I have drawn on friends and family in great measure
for counsel and support, and, indeed, where called for, toleration.
Some are not here to see me nally delivered of this undertaking:
Bill Emerson, Lex Allen, and John Larew. I hope I adequately
expressed to them my gratitude for their insights and encouragement while they were alive. I further thank Judy Hawkes, Jane
Covington, Heidi Schmidt, and Linda Thornton who read all or
parts of the manuscript and commented on it to my prot. My wife,
Anna, a superb editor, my son, Towles, and my daughter, Blair,
read, added, and tolerated. Sarah Holland supplied me with my
title. Others contributed in various ways to the birthing of the project: Richard Adams, Alan Armstrong, John Beebe, Annie Dillard,
Leslie de Galbert, and Louis Rubin. To them I am deeply grateful.
Finally I express my sincere appreciation to my agent and adviser,
Larry Becker, who has so gracefully seen me through.
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CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Psychology and philosophy
his book advances some ideas about the evolution of

consciousness. If consciousness evolved in humans, there
must have been a time when there was less of it. Moreover,
there is no reason to assume that it is not continuing to evolve. That
means that there is less of it now than perhaps there will be. We
think of ourselves as fully conscious, but it seems to me that there
are a lot of ways that we remain unconscious. Let me give a couple
of examples.
I grew up in the 1950s, in a small city in Virginia. My parents
were reasonably well off, and there was little of doubt, and a great
deal of complacency, in the world view that I naturally absorbed
from their generation and accepted as my own. I wrestled with the
problems of religion and chafed at the absurdity of the sexual strictures of the day, but it was a long time before I came to realize that
there are other ways of looking at the world than through the eyes
of that particular society, smugly frozen as it was in its comfortable
place in time and space.
I had a gift for argument, and I could usually more than hold
my own in the debates among the boys at the boarding school I
1
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CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND
attended. Even so, it occurred to me one day that I was having far
more trouble defending the status quo in the south than I should
have had. There was nothing for it but to reverse course on the
segregation issue. It strikes me now that the reality of that status quo
must be all but beyond the comprehension of someone not a part of
that time and place. It consisted in a genteel and seemingly decent
society where a particular group of people was treated by the
majority with such revulsion and disdain as to be forbidden by law
to eat at the same restaurants, drink from the same water fountains,
or use the same public toilets as the others. If the decent people of
that society could have let themselves into the minds of those they
were treating in such a way, surely they would have acted otherwise. Must it not be that they allowed themselves to be unconscious
of how those other people felt? As I view it now, the hallmark of
that societal outlook was unconsciousness.
Somehow, even as the Cold War progressed, it remained possible to think that the world was essentially benign. We now see
starkly that in the Cuban missile crisis a false step by either of two
fallible human beings, John Kennedy or Nikita Khrushchev, might
well have destroyed the whole of humanity. Neither side was
insane. Both considered that they were behaving rationally. But
they nevertheless brought human life to the brink of extinction. At
work was what Carl Jung saw as Shadow behaviour. Each side
projected the darker aspects of its collective psyche on to the other.
Each in turn therefore felt threatened by the other in the most
dangerous way. In not recognizing the unconscious activities within
themselves, each side engaged in potentially self-destructive behaviour. Consciousness says in this situation, A part of what is going
on comes from within me; I must take that into account. The
projection of internal psychic contentsideas or feelings, say, of
which one is unawareon to an external person or thing is a
marker of unconsciousness. When one is unconscious of ones own
motives, for example, they may be seen as belonging to others.
Think of the treatment of African Americans in the South just
mentioned. The white society had repressedthat is, become
unconscious ofdispositions they found to be intolerable in themselves; dispositions, for instance, to be lazy, slipshod, ignorant, and
of no account, or towards brutality and sexual aggression. Such
dispositions, though unconscious, tend nevertheless somehow to
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nd light of day, and so they appear to us as traits of someone else.

What better someone than an impoverished minority with a different colour of skin?
My objective in this book is to pull together the thought of Carl
Jung and place it in a non-technical way within a contemporary
context, so as to make it accessible to the general reader. My method
will be to cast Jungs ndings in terms of the evolution of the psyche,
of which I think they afford a compelling sketch. I believe that a
grasp of psychical evolution can have no less powerful an inuence
on the way we look at the world than did Darwins insights into
physical evolution. Nietzsche observed, with characteristic, but as
yet not fully vindicated, prescience, that psychology might be seen
as the queen of sciences, for whose service and preparation the
other sciences exist (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 32). By this he meant that
the essence of knowing a thing must ultimately lie in knowing that
by which knowledge is acquired and held: in knowing, in other
words, the mind itself. All knowledge and understanding come to
us through, and are shaped by, the mind, and thus by our own
subjective experience. As Nietzsches dictum would logically
include philosophy within its scope, it follows that, when we set out
to get a x on what sort of world we live in and how we should go
about living in it, we might well consider looking rst into our own
minds. In short, anyone interested in the great questions of philosophy ought, on the suggestion of Nietzsche, look into psychology.
Such an approach would seem plausible enough, except for the
fact that psychology, itself, is so difcult to get a handle on. I tried
at college to take a course in analytical psychologyonly to learn
that, before I might get to what I took to be the good stuff, I must
have rst subjected myself to a list of dry prerequisites: courses,
such as statistics, in which I, a liberal arts major, had very little
interest. It would be just as hard today to get a ready gloss on
analytical psychology. Even professionally practising Freudians
and Jungians find themselves divided, respectively, into schools,
which by no means agree within themselves as to doctrine
(Samuels, 1985, Chapter One). One can get books explaining quantum mechanics, without the maths, or chaos theory, but with
psychology it is not so easy.
There is, however, I believe, a way to get a handle on psychology so as to turn its lamp on the grand issues of philosophy. The
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way has been pointed out to us by Carl Jung. I am convinced that

Jungs theories, based on his findings in depth psychology,
demand, under reasoned analysis, a general acceptance. Moreover,
if accepted, they would tell us a great deal about the origins and
functioning of that defining characteristic of humanity: the
conscious mind.
An argument for Jung

It is generally accepted that everything in biology can be explained
through Darwinian evolution. Everything, that is, except the most
extraordinary thing: human consciousness. Jungs theory propounds that a collective unconscious, structured by archetypes,
evolved through natural selection, just as did the instincts. It postulates, further, that from this inherited unconscious, present in all
humans, consciousness arose. The subsequent and, at least within
the last six thousand years, rapid, evolution of consciousness can be
charted in developments in civilizations through history.
The phenomenon of consciousness is one of the few great barriers remaining to be crossed in the astonishing advance of science in
the modern era. There is an increasing body of knowledge of the
workings of the brain, of its electro-chemical processes; but thus far
there is in this knowledge no suggestion of that which might afford
a bridge between the brain, which is material, and the thinking
mind, which seems, at least, not to be. Centuries ago, Descartes
struck a division with which we are yet confronted; he labelled the
two realms of reality res extensa, the physical world, and res cogitans,
the world of the mind. Jungs penetrating inquiry into the latter
realm through its effects, the phenomena it produces, tells us
muchif not of what it is, then of how it works in us. And, in the
end, we shall nd that Jungs system offers to resolve the duality of
these two worlds and bring them together again into one.
People going about their everyday lives, who think about it at
all, will probably acknowledge that they have at best a vague grasp
of the functioning of their own psyches. And it is probably safe to
say that most people operate on the principle that the psyche
consists primarily of the conscious mind. Practically speaking, most
of us turn a blind eye to the unconscious urges, intuitions, blocks,
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and inspirations that broadly affect our actions. But what is at work
when, for example, at crucial moments we stumble over our words
or fail to come up with a name well known to us? What of our
drives and motivations that may be obvious to those around us, but
of which we remain oblivious? The expression that an idea pops
into ones head seems to have a basis in reality. But who is behind
the scenes deciding what ideas should pop into our heads and
when? If Jung can supply a key to these puzzles, should we be not
glad to have it?
Jungs career was spent in the profession of medicine, treating
patients and teaching. What he learned as one of the earliest practitioners of analytical psychology is central to all of his writing. It
follows, however, that, while a great deal of what Jung wrote is of
general application, there is much of a strictly medical nature that
is not of interest to the common reader. My focus here is on the nonmedical side of Jungs thought, the idea being to propound Jungs
ndings in terms of their wider, philosophical, implications. I shall
describe what I take to be the essence, distilled from Jungs writings
and in some cases the elaborations of his followers, of what is in
broad reach a comprehensive theory of the relation of psyche to the
whole of creation. Jung always maintained that he was a man of
science and not a philosopher; yet my focus should do him no injustice, any more than would a review, from the standpoint of its
philosophical implications, do injury to the spirit of Darwins work.
In as much as we are dealing, albeit in a non-technical way,
with psychology, it is appropriate at this point that I acknowledge
the effects of my own psychologyboth as known to me and
unknownupon what I am putting before the reader. Not only are
there bound to be shortcomings in knowledge and understanding
in one not formally trained in the disciplines of either psychology
or philosophy, but also there will be the intrusion, inevitable in
anyone, of the subjective into the subject matter. Indeed, it will no
doubt be argued on some fronts that my interpretation of Jung is a
highly idiosyncratic one.
Although it has been some time ago now, I spent the rst part
of my adult life as a trial lawyer. The perspective I developed in that
work is bound to shape my address to the material before us.
Indeed I conceive my approach here as analogous to a certain
aspect of trial work. Let me explain. It has been widely observed
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that Jung, as might be expected in one who evolved in his thinking

over a long life, embraced not a few inconsistent positions. Moreover, nowhere did he summarize or attempt to boil down to a
digestible mass his varied corpus. Finally, it is often difficult to
extract from one of Jungs writings a single, unambiguous meaning.
This is where the trial approach comes in. At the conclusion of a
trial, the lawyers on each side make a closing argument. What has
gone before has been the presentation of evidence. The evidence
from the two sides is, of course, usually in conict, and, indeed,
even within the case as presented for a given side, inconsistencies
will often have crept in. Closing argument is the lawyers chance to
gather together within a relatively short time the whole of the case.
The lawyer is called upon to lay the case out from the point of view
of the client, resolving or explaining away conicts and presenting
a coherent picture that will be both understandable and persuasive
to the jury. If there have been expert witnesses presenting technical
information, that information must be reduced to its essentials and
made digestible to the common understanding. At this point the
lawyers also have the opportunity to comment on the material that
has been put forward. They can advance ideas of their own that
might cast the matter of the case in greater relief and aid in its interpretation. This book is my closing argument after a years-long
study of Jung. The picture it gives is my own, but I hope it accurately presents the material I have to work withJungs thought
and in a way that renders it clear and convincing.
Jungs arguments can be assessed without

recourse to depth psychology
Jung saw patients over a long and very active career, and he
extracted from his intimate association with the unconscious functioning of his large and varied array of patients a treasure trove of
experience. In dreams, fantasies, visions, and the delusions of the
insane, he observed recurring types of gures and situations, which
could be associated with particular meanings. These observations
were Jungs point of departure for his conclusions about the workings of the mind. Neither I nor the general reader has the means of
assessing the data that Jung accumulated. Indeed, what Jung
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extrapolated from his interactions with patients, because of the

subjective element it necessarily entails, is not, in the main,
amenable to objective verication. This is to say that the ndings of
depth psychology are in many particulars not susceptible, as is the
case with observations within the hard sciences, of duplication by
experiment. Each mind is different.
Even so, it is not necessary to have a grounding in analytical
psychology for us form a judgement as to the probity of Jungs
proposals. Jungs concepts of the archetypes and the collective
unconscious serve as the basis of a theory about the relation of the
unconscious to the conscious mind and for the development of the
latter out of the former. This is an empirical, not a metaphysical
theory. It may be examined, as should any theory about some part
of experience, in terms of its internal coherence, of its economy, of
how it squares with related knowledge, and of its explanatory
power. There is also reason to think that with the advance of our
scientific tools and understanding, much of it may be testable. I
think, therefore, that we have the means, without recourse to depth
psychology, to assess the soundness of Jungs ideas.
A persuasive support for Jungs arguments lies in the phenomenon that there are unmistakable parallels in the themes that thread
through the mythologies of otherwise diverse cultures. These correspondences would be a natural consequence of the ideas Jung
proposes, and, because meshes in mythic content across cultures
are so close as to be almost uncanny, they provide grounding for
those ideas. Common themes in mythology suggest a common
source, and it is just such a source that Jung supplies through his
concept of a collective unconscious. It is possible, of course, that
common traditions were spread by diffusion; that is, carried by
early humans as they spread about the earth or passed along by
contact from group to group. But, then, what was it about these
particular myths and stories that made them stick, that assured that
they, rather than some others, were passed down through the ages
as the store of images common to culture? It would be very difcult, on the basis of present knowledge, to demonstrate beyond
doubt that Jungs collective unconscious or any other factor was the
source or cause of the universality of basic mythic themes. But
the weaker proposition that there does exist the widest imaginable
distribution of certain characteristic motifs seems a safe enough
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bet, and that, of itself, will serve us in carrying the argument

forward.
Jung conceived of what he named archetypes as timeless
forms that find psychic expression in images. He saw them as
giving body to a collective unconscious, an inherited psychic structure present in all humans. Images springing from the archetypes,
in Jungs conception, supply the attractors by which consciousness
is drawn from the unconscious, and they therefore shape the activities of that consciousness. The correspondences of myth and ritual
in various cultures were, to Jung, expressions, within those cultures, of the archetypes. Erich Neumann, one of Jungs most distinguished followers, supplied a compelling reason for the acceptance
of this idea. He did so on the basis of his own extensive studies of
universal themes in mythology. Elaborating on Jungs findings,
Neumann succeeded in tracing a recognizable course of development of human consciousness. According to Neumann, as consciousness evolved, expressions of the archetypes became more
differentiated and personalized. Thus, a direction in the development of consciousness could be established through the progressive
manifestations of the archetypes in various cultures across time.
Our ancestors came out of Africa and began to spread across the
globe some 50,000 years ago. It is plausible to assume that these
early humansall hunter-gatherers and all having their origins in
the same regionwere not very different from each other. Now
they are represented in cultures of extraordinary variety, and some
of astonishing achievement. It is clear that there has not elapsed,
since the beginning of the dispersal of our ancestors, time enough
for present cultural extensions to have come about through genetic
change. Evolution, which involves genetic change, is a very slow
process. Yet the evolution of consciousness, as reected in culture,
seems to have proceeded apace. As we go forward, I shall offer a
proposal of my own as to how the evolution of consciousness,
under the Jungian scheme, could have transpired so rapidly. I shall
suggest that it is through the evolution of culture itself: that,
through the preservation in culture of the outcomes of certain felicitous encounters between extraordinary individuals and the archetypes, we have a mechanism whereby consciousness might evolve.
The mechanism is directly analogous to genetic evolution and operates according to the basic formula of natural selection: replication
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(here, the passing of the groups culture down the generations),

subject to variation (the new idea of the extraordinary individual),
selected according to environmental tness (of cultural orientation).
I should make it clear that there is not here the suggestion that
either Jung or Neumann has identied other than by way of analogy the actual means by which consciousness came about. Jung
described in the collective unconscious the living bed from which
he concluded consciousness arose, and, in the archetypes, he
described the elements of the collective unconscious that somehow
function to bring consciousness to the fore. Neumann traced signposts along the path of emerging consciousness by which we can
mark its progress. Yet the moving force that began in early
humankind to lift consciousness out of the depths of the unconscious, and that does so anew in the life of each individual, remains
a hallowed mystery.
The resistance to Jungs findings

There are a number of explanations that may be advanced for why
the greater part of Jungs elucidation of the unconscious mind and
its workings has not passed into general awareness. We will look at
some of them, but one is tempted to say, in Jungian fashion, that the
time has not been right. The impetus for this book is the idea that
the time now might be.
There are many psychiatrists and psychologists who base their
practices on Jungs ndings, and there are, as well, countless books,
periodicals, schools, seminars, and convocations across the world
whose testament to the power of Jungs teachings can fairly be said
to be of cultic dimensions. But, in spite of them, to the educated
layman Jung seems still to be known vaguely as a follower of Freud
who came up with the idea of a collective unconscious. This idea is
seen as intriguing, but not the sort of thing one is prepared to incorporate into ones world view. People who seek learningacademicians, clerics, scientists, philosopherspursue their disciplines in
basic oblivion of what Jung can tell themwith solid rational
groundingabout their own minds.
Jung compels us to acknowledge the reality of psychic manifestations. A dream, for instance, is a fact. The dream content may be
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taken by the sceptical observer as gibberishbits of nonsense

somehow inltrating the waking awareness; yet no one can deny
that the bits are there. So it is with other psychic disturbances of the
conscious attitude: moods, fantasies, fears that ood in on one for
no good reasonall arguably groundless, but none the less real.
Jung could find a pattern; and he demonstrated it in pragmatic
ways. For instance, his work on word association at the beginning
of his career was of break-through signicance for early psychology
and, interestingly, led to the invention of the lie detector; his development of analytical psychology has resulted in the presence
worldwide of more than 1,000 Jungian analysts and informs the
practices of countless therapists; and his description of psychological types has given rise to a cottage industry in psychological
consulting, which provides services for every sort of employer and
counsellor.
Science cannot ourish without objectivity, for in objectivity lies
the difference between science and superstition. Yet the essence of
psychology is the subjective, and for this reason psychology has
always been suspect as a science. As Jung posited it, the problem in
dealing with the mind is the want of a point of remove from which
the mind can be observed. Nothing can be apprehended except
through the mind. Yet, when the mind undertakes to comprehend
itself, the validity of its conclusions is conditioned by the means by
which it operates, and these means cast a shadow over the outcome.
It seems, in other words, that, when it is the mind itself that is under
scrutiny, we can never know whether or to what extent the act of
observing warps the observation.
The problem of the subjective in psychology was addressed in a
new way in the behaviourism of John B. Watson, rst proposed in
1913. The idea was much in keeping with the scientic bent of the
age. Watson argued that psychology should be approached essentially in disregard of consciousness. It should be viewed from the
outside, in terms of an individuals behaviour. Human conduct
could be reliably predicted and regulated in terms of environmental determinants. Behaviourism, or the radical behaviourism of the
movements most inuential proponent, B. F. Skinner, ruled magisterially over psychological study for decades. In 1959, Noam
Chomsky wrote a review of one of Skinners books that spiked its
basic assumptions, and behaviourism was vanquished from the
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eld.1 Yet, during the long period of its dominance, behaviourism

eclipsed in academic and scientific circles the introspective
approach to which it was in reaction, and of which Jung was a part.
Aside from this, Jung opened himself to dismissal in a scientic
age by refusing to eschew the existence of the paranormal. His
insistence upon recognizing the possibility of non-causal connections fed into his celebrated break with Freud, who relentlessly
squelched anything that might imperil acceptance of the edgling
science of psychoanalysis. Jung treated with seriousness all products of the mind, regardless of how senseless they might appear to
the thought of his day, and he ventured deeply into the realms of
dreams, myths, fairy tales, astrology, Gnosticism, alchemy, and
Eastern mysticism.
Finally, Jungs thought is not organized and compressed into
one or two volumes where it might be readily accessible. Instead,
his work is spread across a wide array of books, scientic papers,
lectures, and theoretical treatises. These sometimes overlap, and
many were the subject of revisions over the course of Jungs long
life. We are very fortunate to have, published in a single set, Jungs
Collected Works.2 However, this compilation consists of twenty
volumes of complex material, widely varied in subject matter and
date of composition, and there is little of the corpus that is easy
reading.
The emergence of consciousness

Jung built upon the discoveries of two great precursors: Darwin
and Freud. Darwin discovered the evolutionary development of the
physical organism. Freud demonstrated that the conscious mind
does not embrace the whole of the psyche and that there are unconscious mental processes that directly affect behaviour. Jung
proceeded to develop the concepts of the archetypes and the collective unconscious. Central to his formulation is the understanding
that the collective unconscious evolved, just as did the body, and
that the unconscious mind functions autonomously; that is, its functioning is not subject to conscious control.
The concepts of the archetypes and the collective unconscious
can be tted into a scheme in which the evolution of consciousness
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can be envisioned. I shall at this point touch on some of the ideas

that go into this formulation in order to give the reader a sense of
where we are heading. In so doing, I would prevail upon the
reader, nevertheless, to trust that in the succeeding chapters a fuller
view of the landscape of Jungs thought in this respect will be
vouchsafed. We are at this juncture merely skipping from high
point to high point.
We begin with the instincts. No one questions the presence of
instincts, either in animals or in humans. The mechanism for the
transmission of the instincts from one generation to the next may
pose problems, but it has been conclusively demonstrated that the
instincts are not the products of learned behaviour. Rather, they are
built into the DNA of the organism. The collective unconscious
envisioned by Jung is an extension or elaboration of the instincts.
Consciousness, he thought, in turn grew out of the collective unconscious. Consciousness functions as an adaptive device that enables
human beings to temper and rene the all-or-nothing character of
the instinctual response. Thus, the instinctual imperative can be
deferred or even over-ridden altogether in the interest of the adaptation of the individual to the environment. If, for example, the
male human can avoid giving the urge to sex immediate and
unremitted expression, he might live longer, and ultimately enjoy
more sex.
The archetypes as posited by Jung at the most basic level give
form to the instincts. In the course of the evolution of humansI
leave aside the extent to which the same occurs in other species
they took on a more rarefied role. They became the vehicle for
certain kinds of images that shaped the behaviour of early
humankind. These images or ideas, in minds not yet conscious,
were projected on to the environment, leading the individual and
the group to react to them as if they were external realities. Thus
spiritsunconscious contents projected upon the surrounding
worldinhabited all things: the sky, the forest, the river, the spear,
the quarry. The individuals only recourse was to conjure them with
magic. This was the level of the participation mystique described by
the French anthropologist, Lucien Levy-Bruhl. The individual was
psychically undifferentiated from and interlocked with the natural
world. As an aggregation of unconscious contents coalesced into an
ego, whereby a distinction was established between the ego and its
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surroundings, consciousness began to emerge. Gradually, bits and

pieces of the unconscious were assimilated to the ego. Psychic
contents previously projected outwards became, rather, internal
predicates of awareness. The group, through ritual and myth, consolidated this hold on reality, reinforcing the fragile ego. Religion
replaced magic as the means of placating and imprecating the
imperious forces in nature. These forces were personied as deities,
beings that were more or less understandable, if not altogether
manageable.
We may imagine that the world appeared to humans at the
onset of consciousness much as it does to a young child today, as
the child experiences the transition between unconscious projection
and an incipient consciousness. I can recall, in light of present
knowledge, something of this process taking place in me as a child.
One slipped between fantasy and reality. Here is an example. When
my father went off to the army in the Second World War, my mother
and my then only brother and I lived with some relatives in a
rented house. Beyond the driveway behind the house stood a
garage. I had got it in my head that my father, once when there had
been a re (there had in fact been none, so far as I now know), had
leapt from the second storey of the house across the broad driveway parking area and into an apartment above the garage. It could
not, of course, have been done, and a part of me could see that, but
another part of me kept the fantasy alive. I remember wrestling in
my mind over whether the heroic act had actually occurred. Such
was the potency to me of my father. He was the recipient of my
projection of the archetypal Father image.
Looked at from the other direction, I have a recollection from a
similar time of an early onset of consciousness, consciously held on
to. My mother undertook to give my brother and me vitamin pills.
We had two capsules to swallow each morning, and somehow I
could not get mine down. I would put them in my mouth, but they
just would not get to where they would go down my throat. I
remember, specically, being on my tricycle, and exactly where I
was on the lawn, when I intentionally took up the problem and
came to a solution. I thought about it, and I tried it. I put my ngers,
as if I were holding a pill, as far back in my mouth as I could get
them, and there was my throat. Next morning, I was ready with this
method, and, lo, it worked. I knew to use it from then on. This is,
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to be sure, a trivial example, but I think it illustrates how we move

from a place where things are knowable to us, but yet remain
unknown, to the point of awareness and purposive action. Until my
experiment, the inside of my mouth was a dark hole to me.
As consciousness, in the course of evolutionary history, developed out of the unconscious, a certain relationship between these
two poles of the psyche was established that set the pattern for their
interaction. In respect to consciousness, the unconscious plays a
compensatory role. Whatever the posture of the ego, the unconscious stands in opposition to it as a balance. If, for example, the
thriving businessman gets too full of himself, his dreams may take
on a deationary character. If he remains oblivious of the fact that
his conscious self-assessment is overblown, his unconscious may
interfere in his actions in a way calculated forcibly to bring him
down a peg. As a mild instance, he may be propelled in his selfaggrandizement to the point of embarrassing himself among his
peers.
It is almost as if the unconscious had a mind of its own.
Consider, for instance, the dream process. Many dreams have clear
developments of plot. If the plot is to be meaningfulsay in terms
of moving the individual away from an overbalanced conscious
posturethen it is as if someone knew in advance, though certainly
not the conscious mind of the dreamer, where the dream had to go.
Here is an example from the dream of Karen, a model of mine (I
will explain later). I came to know this woman in the Caribbean.
She is an avid diver who likes to hunt sh with a spear gun. There
is a place she sometimes dives, locally called the supermarket,
where rock and coral stand in rows. In my friends dream, she is
shopping for groceries in an underwater supermarket, pushing her
cart and selecting items from the shelves. Suddenly she encounters
a large shark. She dodges from aisle to aisle trying to avoid it. Now,
as a shark is a threat to divers, it is easy to see where the images
supermarket, sharkspring from. Yet it must be acknowledged
that the dream has its own, rather cunning design. The exotic
underwater supermarket becomes the literal, everyday supermarketalmost. The dream by no means has the feel of a thing
pasted together by chance. Moreover, if one is to suppose that this
dream actually speaks to the life of the dreamer, then it assumes to
a much greater extent the character of having been carefully crafted.
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There were conicts between my friends island life and her decidedly more mundane domestic life, stateside. I will not attempt to
interpret it, but the dream does seem designed to speak in some
way to the conict between these two aspects of her life. But who
would be the composer of such a script? Our candidate is the
unconscious, which, as Jung demonstrates, has the capacity to act
on its own, independent of ego or will. As we go along, we will
encounter a number of further examples of dreams that seem not
just to be intelligible, but to speak in meaningful ways.
The heros journey

We will now try to get a glimpse of how the archetypes operate to
pull contents from the unconscious into the light of consciousness.
Jung advanced that it is through the formation of images that
consciousness is galvanized, even though the images themselves
may not become wholly conscious. We will begin with the earliest
imagery and see how it becomes the stuff of mythimagery
consciously recorded.
Everyones rst experience is of a mother. This ordinary human
being is, to the formative psyche of the infant, the altogether engulfing experience of the world. It can be said that the awareness of
ones separateness from the mother marks the beginnings of the
ego. Behind the real mother stands the awesome image of the Great
Mother archetype, representing the unconscious from which the
ego emerges. If one follows Jungs theory, the archetypes that collect
around the emergent ego impel it towards the establishment of
separateness from the Mother image of the unconscious, lest it sink
back into it. The ego is driven to strive at all costs to preserve itself,
even though the previous state of egoless oneness with the world
presents itself as one of paradisiacal bliss. Towards this end, the
imagery of the unconscious takes on a startling reversal. The Great
Mother, imaged as all-embracing and life-giving, takes on her polar
opposite character of the threatening, smothering, Terrible Mother.
The ego, banished from paradise (preconsciousness), is confronted
with the fearsome dragon that threatens it with oblivion, unless
opposed by heroic action. The imagery traces the reality that the
emergent ego is at risk of being engulfed again in the void of the
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unconscious. If resistance to the threat of extinction is successfully

carried out, if the archetype of the heros ordeal is psychically
traced, the ego gains strength. The iterations in myth and literature
of the heros struggle against the baleful representative of the
unconscious are numberless. As Jung conceives it, they bespeak
the struggle of consciousness to secure a central position in the
personality.
In speaking of the hero and not of the heroine, it may appear
that I am leaving out the feminine half of the equation. This is not
the case. The girl and woman, in progressing through life, likewise
experience the heros journey. Consider that the collective unconscious must be the same in both sexes. It is inbred, a part of the
genetic make-up of all humans. Thus, in Jungian theory, the potential for both masculine and feminine is incorporated in every
psyche. Nevertheless, even though the archetypal wherewithal in
the psyches of both sexes is the same, the imagery born of it may
take a different character in the female as compared with the male.
Such a pattern is naturally congruent with equally distinctive
gender developments in physiology. In Chapter Two, I shall
indulge some speculations on one path the female hero might take.
What we have described with a very broad brush takes place on
a number of levels. One well may ask whether, when we trace the
heros journey, we are speaking of the archetypal pattern for the
emergence of consciousness in individuals or in the human species.
The answer is, in both. With each individual, unconscious images,
perceived as shaping and conditioning the outside world, give way
in consciousness to a progressively objective grasp of things
outside. Thus, the black void of a little pill swallowers mouth can
become something with specic, palpable features that can be negotiated. So it is, also, with the rise of consciousness in the species, as
marked by cultural progression. The starting point is a particular
individual who has an exceptional relationship with the unconscious. Through political, religious, philosophical, scientic, or artistic expression, this extraordinary individual renews contact with
the archetypes within the context of her or his culture. If the time is
right, the revolutionary idea will take hold and effect a vital transformation in the life of the group. Who would say that Luther or
Newton or Picasso did not bring about an expansion of consciousness as such? After each of them, the world was no longer the same.
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As Jung made the point: the man whose sun still moves round the
earth is essentially different from the man whose earth is a satellite
of the sun (Jung, 1960 [1931c], par. 696).
One must resist the temptation to conclude from these propositions that certain thoughts or images are inherited, passed on
directly through the genes. Rather, what is inherited is a predisposition to form certain types of images. Jung used the analogy of the
crystal (Jung, 1958 [1948], par. 222, n. 2). The crystalline lattice is not
discernible in the mother fluid, but upon crystallization there
occurs a unique, distinctive pattern. Further, while the crystalline
patterns of a given substance are all alike, no two are identical. So
it is with the expressions of the archetypes. What is inherited is the
disposition to form certain images. Thus, while across times and
cultures there is a tremendous diversity in mythic material, the
patterns are everywhere the same.
Here it may be also a good idea to confront head-on the problem
of teleology, so as to avoid, if possible, distracting the reader who
may be reexively put off by the whiff of it. Teleology, the idea of a
design or goal in nature, is a highly suspect concept to the scientic
mind. A profound effect of the Darwinian revolution was to unstring
the prevailing idea that the seemingly orderly way in which the natural world is put together bespeaks a divine intelligence. But, in the
place of a divine ordering principle, there sprang to life pseudo-scientic concepts, such as Social Darwinism. The idea that the universe
is ordered to reect God was converted to one that the universe is
ordered to produce man. And not just man; European man.
In due course, the scientific community reacted against this
anthropocentric presumption, and that reaction continues to be
reected in a strong resistance today to anything that smacks of teleology. Thus, for instance, the designation of a culture as primitive,
implying that other cultures have progressed beyond it, may be seen
as, well, taboo. But to suggest a direction in nature is not necessarily
to suggest a goal. The concept of evolution does not exist except in
terms of an evolution from something to something. Thus it is with
psychic evolution. If the psyche as we know it did not spring fullblown into the brain of some early individual, thence to be passed
intact to all of that individuals descendants, then the psyche will
perforce have existed in the past in a less evolved, more primitive, if
you will, state.
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Whence the archetypes?

I have tried to sketch a theoretical trail from the operation of the
instincts, via the archetypes, to the emergence of consciousness, and
then, as consciousness became more and more comprehensive,
affording an increasingly realistic orientation to the exterior world,
to our present state. While this evolutionary scan may strike an
intuitive resonance in some, there is about it an undeniable strangeness. Archetypes are hard to get a handle on. As logical alternatives
are difcult to come by, however, most people choose not to think
about the subject at all, or they defer to a religious or other metaphysical formulation, to which the analytical approach is beside the
point. For the rest of us, it is a stretch. I attended a lecture by a
biophysicist who demonstrated rather convincingly that there is
more than enough neural capacity in the brain to accommodate all
the electro-chemical processes necessary to the complexities of
thought. Then, when the question was put to him, he conjectured
that these entirely explainable material processes must have been
jolted into a state of self-awareness in consequence of something
like a surge or overload of neural inputs.
A more compelling alternative was put to me by a Freudian
psychiatrist. He recounted instances from his own clinical experience of the surfacing of mythic images in patients who were totally
unaware of the undeniably archetypal character of these images. He
observed that there could be but two explanations: either there is a
collective unconscious as Jung proposed, or the similarities in the
images that arise spontaneously are attributable to the fact that
fundamental human experiences are sufficiently few that similar
images can be said to arise reexively in response to similar stimuli. Whence, though, the reex? We shall glance later at the tale of
Perseus and the Gorgon in terms of its intricately ramied setting
within a larger mythic complex. It would burden credulity to
propose that such an elaborate set of images, having equally nespun counterparts in other mythic systems, would spring up
simply as an offshoot of everyday experience.
The thesis that consciousness emerged through a procession of
images drawn from a collective unconscious provides an explanation in a realm where explanations are scant. One pursuing this line
might perhaps hope that, if the explanation proves out, it will lead
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to a clear-cut solution. The archetypes will be conrmed to be products of natural selection that evolved so as to permit the advance in
adaptability represented by consciousness. But, alas, Jungs formulations will not permit of such a tidy solution. Rather, he ventured
that the archetypes pre-existed the speciesall the species! This
postulation by Jung raises the much vexed mind-brain dichotomy.
It presents the chicken-or-the-egg type question as to which came
rst: mind, as represented by the archetypes, or matter, as represented by the brain as a physical organ. Jung suggests that the stuff
of mind cannot be shown to have emanated from matter. What is
surprising is that his argument has support reaching back to the
early Greek philosophers, and, moreover, that it gains currency in
the formulations of some of the bulwarks of modern physics. Jung
demonstrated that the case for the priority of a purely formal, nonmaterial reality is as defensible, logically, as the proposition, more
congenial to Western thinking, that mind is wholly derivative from
matterthat is, that mind is entirely the product of electro-chemical processes in the brain. We may wonder in the end whether the
two cases can be taken as mutually exclusive ways of seeing the
world, with both being necessary to a complete conception of it.
The relationship between the conscious and the unconscious

Myths supply context for archetypal expression and stand in aid of
individual psychic development. Freud repeatedly encountered the
oedipal situation in the unconscious lives of his patients. He
concluded that they had personally experienced, and then
repressed, the actual situation in childhood. Jung made us understand, however, that a reduction, in every case, of psychic experience to biographical fact is as unnecessary as it is improbable. Freud
had, through the analytical technique he developed, called to the
fore the archetypal path taken by the evolving psyche. It is the great
path of all human experience, but we follow it in our psyches without having literally to travel it in mundane experience.
The archetypes function on an everyday level in peoples lives.
Their role, says Jung, is not only to guide the emergence of
consciousness in the first instance, but also to maintain psychic
balance and assist in the other basic transformations of life. The
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resonance we experience with myths and fairy tales can be attributed to the fact that interior processes corresponding to them are
taking place within us. The infant must be differentiated from the
parent, the young adult must be set on an independent course,
mortality must be faced at the middle of life, and the decline of
ones powers must be accepted in later life. Encountering these
transformations is by no means an exclusively conscious process.
As in all things human, if matters are to proceed properly, the
conscious and the unconscious must go hand in hand. Knowing
only vaguely why, most cultures have aided and reinforced these
processes by rituals, such as initiation rites at puberty. Church
sacraments, albeit now somewhat pallidly, exemplify such rituals in
our own culture.
In athletics concentration implies a mating of conscious and
unconscious powers. The outfielder does not think when to leap
so as to reach the y ball at precisely the right instant, nor does the
tennis player consciously direct all of the motions of the serve.
To perform at peak, the athlete must be loose: i.e., not dominated
by conscious processes. Still, conscious thought and will must
be brought fully to bear in order to integrate the ingrained motion
into the context of the game. So it is in life. If its full cooperation is
to be obtained, the unconscious must be accorded its proper role.
Relations with the unconscious may go along perfectly well without
our being specically aware of it, so long as the conscious position
does not become overbalanced one way or another as between the
rational and non-rational (unconscious) aspects of the personality.
Dire consequences can attend a serious imbalance. Jung points to
the two world wars as consequences, on a mass level, of Western
mans hubris in the conviction that the world could be met and
indeed dominated solely through the application of reason
and scientic knowledge. And one does not have to read the existentialists to be sensible of the widespread angst presently within
our culture. For many Westerners, the scientific method, with
its demonstrated ability to explain large chunks of the observable
universe, has supplanted traditional religion as a belief system. But,
unlike the church in former times, science can offer no means
of maintaining the vital connection between the conscious ego
and its roots in the unconscious. Thus, a sense of alienation is the
order of the day.
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The self and individuation

What Jung termed individuation is the process whereby the
natural opposition between the conscious and the unconscious is
resolved via the middle path. The process need by no means be
initiated or carried through by the ego alone, nor could it be. The
unconscious, through the production of archetypal images, is an
active partner with the person who would be whole. The culture
can impress its norms on the individual well enough, but the goal
of all individuals is, or should be, to become, not fungible reproductions from the cultural mould, but freestanding persons who
think and act for themselves. To become such persons, we would
optimally integrate the various parts of our psyches into a unied
whole. That is the goal of the individuation process.
There is an archetype that confers an image of wholeness and is
fundamental to all cultures. It directs the individuation process, and
it is nothing less than an image of God. And since God, if there is a
God, can only be apprehended through the psyche, this archetypal
image is as direct an image of the divine as we will ever have. This
psychic reality Jung calls the Self. Jung is happy, though, to leave
the question of the relationship between the Self and God, whether
they be the same or no, to the theologians. Jung portrays the Self as
the totality of the psyche. The Self, in all its majesty, is inherently
beyond comprehension, for the partthe conscious mindcan
never fully comprehend the whole. The Self is symbolized by a
circular figure, typically with a fourfold character, as in a circle
divided by a cross or embraced within or embracing a square: thus,
the medieval preoccupation with the mathematical problem of
squaring the circle. The fourfold aspect of the imagery is an
expression of the four basic functions of the personality, described
by Jung in his book, Psychological Types (Jung, 1971 [1921], Chapter
Two).
As found in association with the circle, these four functions are
represented as knitted together into a whole, and so the Self image
is likewise one of psychic wholeness. It is to be found in medieval
depictions of Jesus anked by the four evangelists, in the ecstatic
visions of saints, in the arcane scrutinies of the alchemists, in the
mandalas of Eastern mysticism, in Native American sand paintings,
and in the dreams of ordinary people.
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At an earlier time the Christian church was the source of living

symbols linking all of Christendom with this deep image, of which
the cross is a supreme example. If the Christian symbols no longer
carry the necessary immediacy and vitality, it may be because they
spring from the soil of the Middle East and from a time and in
circumstances totally remote from our own. Joseph Campbell made
this point by describing the jarring contrast of the moment some
years back when astronauts, orbiting the earth in a man-made craft
on Christmas Eve, read to the world below the nativity story from
Luke, and there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the
eld, keeping watch over their ock by night . . . Only the mythic
content of the story of the Christ child bore any reality to Westerners listening on television to the astronauts coursing in their
orbital path. Santa in his sleigh would have had as much a connection with the lives of most of them as those storied shepherds of old
in that remote part of the world. But it is the nature of archetypes
that new expressions spring from them at the time of need. And, as
they are the means whereby humankind can change, one may hope
that there is even now at work in the soul of some extraordinary
individual a vision for which the ground has been gradually
prepared in the collective unconscious and which will break forth
upon the world with the same overpowering force as that with
which Christianity confronted a spiritually beleaguered Rome two
thousand years ago.
Synchronicity
Jung came to the conviction that there is an a priori ordering principle to the universe. This principlewhich in psychic processes
appears to us as the archetype of the Selfis, he believed, of the
character of mind or spirit, as opposed to matter. If matter were
ordered by this principle, it follows that mind alters matter.
Remember, Jung argues that this is no more strange to think than
that matter can create mind.
Jung wrestled with the problem of an apparent meaningfulness in events. Everyone has experienced seemingly incomprehensible coincidences between mental and physical events: a result
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INTRODUCTION
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in a game of chance produced by concentration, an impression

of deja vu, a correspondence between a dream and a subsequent
occurrence, to mention small things; a sense of destinys fullling
itself, to mention a large one. Our practical minds teach us to disregard these things or explain them away, and for this reason it is
probable that there is a much higher incidence of such correspondences than we allow ourselves to believe. Our sense is that they
might bear a casual mention, but they are by no means to be
marked down and taken stock of. Jung, in his private and professional experiences, found such occurrences to be so frequent and
so striking as to demand an explanation beyond that of pure
chance.
It can be demonstrated that the concepts of time, space, and
causality are essential to the operation of rational thought. We nd
the world to be structured according to these conditions because
rational processes can function only within their connes. Is there a
happy match between the world and our perception of it, or do we
impose a template upon a world that only approximately, or only
in part, conforms to its reality? Kant argued that we cannot know
an object, the thing-in-itself, as it actually is. Rather, our minds
cabin the experience of the object within categories, which are
necessary to thought, but which bear no provable relation to the
actual contours of the object itself.
As we proceed we shall encounter, in discussing the Einstein
PodolskyRosen paradox, the strange reality of quantum physics
wherein there seems to be an acausal principle at work in fundamental processes in nature. If cause and effect is in some way set
aside in operations at the subatomic level, one might allow for the
possibility of acausal functioning elsewhere. Jung argued that the
materialist model of nature, the hallmark of which is the law of
causality, indeed yields in macro events to an acausal operating
principle. This principal he calls synchronicity. As an ordering
principle, synchronicity, in ways as yet unknown to us, links physical and psychic events through what we perceive as meaningful
connections. Sometimes events in the physical world may strike us
as charged with relationships beyond those that would be
accounted for by their obvious causes. With a greater understanding
of nature, we may come with Jung to see these connections as a
pervasive part of reality.
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Notes
1.
2.
Something very like behaviourism ourishes today in the approach of

a potent branch of cognitive science. This approach takes consciousness to be an emergent property of brain functioning: a phenomenon
that, though indisputably real, plays no actualizing role in mental
processing. Thus, the functioning of our physiological systems can
give a full account of everything human (see Dennett, 2003).
The Collected Works were produced by the Bollingen Foundation, Inc,
established by Paul and Mary Mellon.
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CHAPTER TWO
The evolution of consciousness
The unconscious as stepchild
aintaining that he was an empiricist, a votary of medical

science, Jung refused generally to speculate on matters
beyond his power to observe. He held to this position
because of the obvious danger for an inquirer into psychology of
being taken as a spinner of strange and untestable theories, of being
accused, as he said, of mysticism (Jung, 1958 [1936/37], par. 92).
Although his standpoint was a scientific, medical one, there is
nevertheless much in the way of philosophy that one may derive
from Jungs ndings. Philosophy raises questions such as Who are
we? How should we live? What is the meaning of life? Jungs
psychological ndings address these questions. They speak to such
things as how consciousness, the essence of a moral being, arose
and how our minds as a whole function. Imagine being a philosopher and disregarding knowledge that would throw light on these
questions, or a teacher, a preacher, a lawyer, or a scientist.
But what facts did Jung work with on which such understandings might be grounded? He worked with manifestations of the
psyche, and he related them to the lives of the individuals in whom
25
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they occurred. We are sceptical when told that the psyche is or does
such and such, because we are impressed with its intangible, its
ultimately mysterious, nature. Feelings and thoughts, real though
we know they are, strike us as somehow less real than the material,
palpable world. But feelings and thoughts have real consequences.
The atom bomb at Hiroshima destroyed more than sixty thousand
people at a stroke. Yet an atomic explosion had never before
occurred on earth and never would have, but for the intervention
of the processes of the mind. Might, Jung asked, one conclude that
it was the uranium, or the laboratory equipment, rather than the
human mind that created this event (Jung, 1958 [1952b], par. 751)?
It is a curiosity that the psyche, the only category of existence of
which we can have direct knowledge, is seen by us as less than fully
existent. And the unconscious psyche seems to us to be at an even
further remove from reality than the part of the psyche that is
conscious. We accept, though not with the same assurance as that
with which we embrace the reality of material things, the reality of
our conscious processes. But do we not, still, disregard or shove
aside those that are unconscious? Unconscious processes are even
more fleeting in nature and hard to grasp than conscious ones.
Accordingly, they are even more likely to be put, if you will, out of
mind. Do we stop to credit the marvel that keeps the car on the
road, perhaps for miles, while we behind the wheel contemplate
matters back at home or in the ofce?
A mood may suddenly change, a headache comes upon us
unawares, the name of a friend we are about to introduce vanishes
into thin air, a melody pursues us for a whole day, we want to do
something but the energy for it has in some inexplicable way disap
peared. We forget what we least wanted to forget, we resign
ourselves happily to sleep and sleep is snatched away from us, or
we sleep and our slumber is disturbed by fantastic, annoying
dreams; spectacles resting on our nose are searched for, the new
umbrella is left we know not where [Jung, 1960 [1926], par. 639]
We have all had the experiences Jung describes. Try as we may

to explain them away, be it as accident or indigestion, they are real,
and we must reckon with their consequences. A heart attack
brought on by stress can be just as fatal as one caused solely by
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THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
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plaque in the arteries. The problem is that, even if we accept the

operation of unconscious psychic factors, we are usually at a loss to
know what they are or why they do what they do, precisely because
they are unconscious. The usual recourse, as the alternative to
accepting our inability to understand, lies in denial. We resist recognizing that which we cannot rationally explain.
Jung accepted the reality of the effects of unconscious activity
and postulated that they have a purpose related to the well-being
of the individual. He was able, in consequence, to gain insight into
theretofore unrecognized or inexplicable psychic events and to
establish logical connections between such events and what was
going on in the individuals life. After all, the unconscious processes are our processes. But that is again a part of the problem: they
are by nature subjective, and we are conditioned to place reliance
only upon the objective. Yet we can apprehend nothing save
through the mind. From that standpoint, therefore, everything is
subjective. The senses might receive a sight, a touch, or a taste, but
nothing comes of it until it is registered in the mind; and a thing
cannot be known unless there is a someone who knows it. We say
to ourselves that, nevertheless, our minds accurately reect what is
out there. And that opinion appears to be conrmed by the basic
fact that different subjects, different individuals, normally agree as
to the nature of the objective reality that they confront. Not only
that, a thing once apprehended appears the same when we have left
and returned to it. A tree is a tree, a rose is a rose.
Even so, we cannot rest comfortably in the conviction that we
correctly apprehend the world in the face of the knowledge that in
the end we are forced back upon our own subjectivity. And, to make
matters worse, we must contemplate the fact that, as to much,
perhaps even the greater part, of what conditions that subjectivity,
we shall be utterly unconscious. In addition, while we may see the
same tree as the person standing next to usand the same cells in
one of its leaves under a microscopewe have to accept that we see
these things differently from that person. To one the tree may be a
thing of beauty, while to the other it is an obstacle in the way of the
view or, for that matter, just a source of rewood. One may experience a sense of rapture while the other is left cold. Indeed, these
differing experiences of the same object can befall the same person
at different times. To put a point on it, if we stop to be honest with
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ourselves, we often have cause to doubt the validity of our experience of the world about us. Things, events, impressions are not
always clear-cut. Ambiguities creep in. Our fears and desires cloud
our perceptions. The eager sherman thinks he sees the dimple of
the rising trout in what is in actuality only a swirl of the current. Witnesses to the same event give conflicting reports. The mind is a
mediator of experience; it lters it, translates it, allegorizes it, twists
and even falsies it (Jung, 1960 [1926], par. 623). This may be why
we repress the unconscious so vigorously: it unseats our objective
picture of the world. It calls into doubt the integrity of our rational
consciousness.
As no doubt with most children, I had, as a child, an active fantasy life, but there came a point when I was aware of that fact. This,
for me, called into question even the most basic sense perceptions.
In later lifedo not ask my wife to agree with thisI have had to
relearn this uncertainty. It helped, in my case, to have been often
unequivocally sure of a thing, only to have it indisputably
disproved. The occurrence of such awkwardnesses was never more
frequent than during my stint as a young naval ofcer. Even a lower
ofcers rank carries the power to enforce ones views at a certain
level, and that power seemed to carry with it the conviction that
one must be right. As a result, I was all too often compelled to face,
at the hands of those with lesser standing in the military hierarchy
but with a much greater experience of what it was about, the crumbling of the assumptions underlying my most adamant positions.
The courtroom also is an especially good place to observe the
disintegration of assumptions condently held. One does not have
to have been long at the trial bar to note that many seemingly
honest people, having a legal interest in a particular set of facts, will
testify under oath to precisely such facts, only to have the whole
fabric unravel in the face of objective evidence. I am making the
following bit of cross-examination up, but it is not wide of the mark
from testimony heard in courtrooms every day.
QUESTION: What did you do, Madam, before you drove past the
stop sign into the intersection?
ANSWER: I stopped; I looked to my right, and nothing was
coming; I looked to my left, and nothing was coming; so I pulled
out.
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QUESTION: Am I to understand then, Madam, that you were

struck broadside by a non-existent vehicle?
I was never a prosecutor in trafc court, but I did develop a term

for such testimony in other trial situations. It is usually not a good
tactic to call a person a liar, outright, in court, so I came to apply to
testimony of the above sort the term, creative recollection,
always, of course, with an appropriate dollop of sarcasm. Even so,
I am convinced that many times the witnesses giving such testimony actually believed they were telling the truth. For their own
lawyers this conviction sometimes laid a trap. The trial-tested attorney always probes carefully in advance even those points of potential testimony that the client or witness presents as gospel. Those
who fail to do so can experience some rather unpleasant awakenings in the courtroom.
People tend to think of themselves as fully conscious. How is one
to make the case that thinking, striving people going about their
daily lives are less than fully conscious? A nice illustration might lie
in an everyday thing: our prejudices. Not all prejudices are ugly.
Some amount to no more than simple likes and dislikes, of cauliower, say. An unquestioning adherence to conventional morality
amounts to a prejudice. At root, a prejudice is a way of avoiding the
expenditure of the time and mental energy necessary to scrutinize a
thing. When a matter touches upon a prejudice, we are disposed to
accept only such information about it as conforms to the prejudice.
We need not then bother ourselves with it further. Prejudices can be
useful tools in negotiating the complexities of life. They say, I
already know about that; I shall act on what I know. But in indulging
them we are complicit in the determination to remain ignorant about
the other side of the object of the prejudiceand there always is one.
That is to say that at some level we have elected to be unconscious
of that other side. Some people operate almost exclusively upon
prejudices. Such people tend to speak in platitudes and clichs, and
to my mind they can be seen as largely unconscious.
The interplay between consciousness and the unconscious is
exposed when a prejudice is charged with feeling. An archetype is
implicated in such cases, and it is usually that of the Shadow. The
Shadow represents all the things about ourselves that are inconsistent with our conscious perception of ourselves. Unconscious
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contents, according to Jung, are projected outwards. Unconscious

contents associated with a matter about which we have a prejudice
are projected upon the object of the prejudice. We have not allowed
ourselves to inquire openly into the matter and our feelings about
it, because it would be difcult or painful to do so. Thus, we see in
that we most dislike just what we nd abhorrent in ourselves, as in
the case of the two little examples with which I began this book. For
another example, a person who insists adamantly upon a point, say
of religion, might carry as a part of the Shadow unacknowledged
doubts antithetical to that conscious stance. Because these doubts,
though unconscious, nevertheless exist, there may attach a certain
shrillness to the persons insistence on the point.
The collective unconscious as an extension of the instincts

Let us now, giving the psyche its due as something real, see what
can be deduced about it. First, Jung demonstrated that the psyche
is in its essence an extension of the instincts. The effects of the
instincts can be observed in animals and in humans. Rather loosely,
they have been characterized as the four fs: feeding, ghting,
eeing, and sex (Ornstein, 1991, p. 197). Jung described them thus:
Instincts are typical modes of action, and wherever we meet with
uniform and regularly recurring modes of action and reaction we
are dealing with instinct, no matter whether it is associated with a
conscious motive or not (Jung, 1960 [1919], par. 273).
Instincts are biological in that they are inherited and that they
produce an invariable response to a given situation. They are denitive of the species. Were they not exactly as they are, the species
would not exist as such. Yet instinct is by no means a clear-cut concept. It is a given that instincts are extremely complex phenomena
that go deeper than learned behaviour. The duckling imprints upon
the mother duck, and follows her about. The mother does not teach
this behaviour, it just happensthrough countless hatches, among
every species of duck, over aeons.1 The instincts, then, are stamped
into the genes, but to say that is not to deny that there is an element
of psyche in them. An instinct does not respond to a stimulus willynilly. It is rather as if there were a pre-existing image which, in order
for there to be a response, must nd its receptor in the environment.
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Driving on a backcountry road, one may come upon the wariest

of woodland grouse without ushing it. There is no image in the
grouses computer to match motor vehicle. But, if the vehicle
were to come rushing at the grouse, at some point the grouse would
spookperhaps when the image matched up with that, say, of
charging predator. Jung used the following example:
Always [an instinct] fullls an image, and the image has xed qualities. The instinct of the leaf-cutting ant fullls the image of ant,
tree, leaf, cutting, transport, and the little ant-garden of fungi. If any
one of these conditions is lacking, the instinct does not function . . .
[Jung, 1960 [1947], par. 398]
Undeniably, then, there is a psychic aspect to such images. They are,

says Jung, meaningful fantasy structures with a symbolic character (Jung, 1963, par. 602). The image is not a material thing; nor is
it, as far as we can presently demonstrate, in the nature of a physical process.
At this juncture, we can begin to see the connections between a
psychic apparatus that we accept without questionthe instincts
and those ideas of Jungs that strike most people as problematic. Let
us take the archetypes. Jungs archetypes are the structures of the
unconscious from which emerge not only the images that provoke
the instincts, but also those of dreams and fantasies. The archetypes
condition our responses and often prompt our actions. At the most
fundamental level they trigger the instincts, but, in humans at least,
they extend further than that. The soldier who rushes into battle in
response to the image of ag or fatherland is not so very different,
but different none the less, from the dog that reexively launches
itself into the dog ght.
Our psychic inheritance, based upon the archetypes, represents,
as Jung posits it, the residue of the experience of our ancestors
through the generations. The scholarly reaction to such a notion is
one of scepticism, as at first blush it smacks of the discredited
Lamarckian concept of inherited ideas. But, as Jung was ever at
pains to point out, it implies nothing of the kind. What is suggested,
rather, is an inherited possibility, embodied in the archetypes, that
certain ideas emerge in response to certain experiences. Jung uses
the metaphor of pathways, gradually traced out through the
cumulative experience of our ancestors (Jung, 1960 [1928], par. 99).
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The metaphor is not an altogether happy one, as it seems to convey

an active tracing as opposed to the essentially passive winnowing
process of natural selection. It is nevertheless well suited to convey
the genetic set-up in the psyche once established: a pre-set pattern
of psychic response. If one thinks about it, the concept of the archetypes constitutes no further a reach from objective reality than the
proposition that we have inherited instincts: a proposition we are
compelled by simple observation to accept.
Whereas the images underlying the instincts can be imagined as
rather basic, the mythic formulations that serve to shape consciousness can be quite elaborate. These mythic formulations, moreover,
tend to run counter to the instincts. Their role seems to be to oppose
or leaven the instincts, so as to allow, through conscious or unconscious attitudes, an adaptation to the environment that is more exible and creative than blind instinctual response. The archetypes, to
sum up, and along with them the instincts, are rooted in the central
nervous system of the human species. Just as the basic instincts are
common to us all and prompt a physical response, so also is the
tendency unconsciously to generate and respond to images psychically. We can now see more clearly the outlines of the concept of the
collective unconscious. It is a system common to the human species
that, through the archetypes, affords the ground for everything
from the most basic instinctual response to the most rarified
conscious thought.
This way of looking at the structure of psyche places the question of the transpersonal nature of the collective unconscious,
insisted upon by some, beside the point. It is not necessary for us
to conclude that the underlying ground of the collective unconscious transcends the boundaries of the individual. That ground is
deposited in each of us. We all arrive with essentially the same
psychical equipment, albeit individually packaged. It is true that
common instincts seem to equip certain species with seemingly
supra-individual capabilities, as when simultaneously a flock of
birds wheels or a school of sh darts. And there is, of course, the
phenomenon of extrasensory perception among humans. Jung,
however, comes at such mysteries from another directionthrough
synchronicity. As we shall see in the chapter under that name, what
appear to us as unfathomable psychic phenomena may be merely
reective of a pervasive psychic factor that inuences events in the
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material world. In any case, it sufces for the present merely that
we accept that we all have essentially the same unconscious makeup. This is a proposition ingrained in every practitioner of the art
of human relationsthat is, we all act on it. On the instinctual level,
our desires and appetites are much the same. And such is likewise
the case on a more elevated, yet still unconscious, plane. Certain
affronts, for example, can be counted on to provoke anger, and the
right atteries will tickle the vanity of virtually anyone. Individuals
differ for the most part only in the degree of directness or subtlety,
as the case may be, needed to prompt the predictable response. In
other words, within the human personality the range that we have
in common is perhaps wider, and Jung would say vastly wider,
than the scope of our individuality. The reader may be thinking,
perhaps to this point unconsciously, that this is no more than to say
that there is such a thing as human nature. And so it is. But, since
we are asking in our philosophical inquiry What is human nature,
and how did it come about?, it is well that we come specically to
terms with its existence.
How Jung came to it

Let us take a break from our account for a moment to take a look at
how Jung came to develop the ideas we have under review. In so
doing we will be able to get a glimpse of two things about Jung that
might aid us in understanding him: his personal history and his
dreams. In Jung these two factors are linked together in an extraordinary way, as is demonstrated by his autobiography, dictated
towards the end of his life to Aniela Jaff. Memories, Dreams,
Reections (1965) is surely one of the most curious autobiographical
works in the whole of literature. The reason is that Jung describes
his long life of extraordinary worldly accomplishment almost
entirely in terms of the dreams, visions, psychic correspondences,
and symbolic observations that punctuated it. Jung spent his school
days in Basel, Switzerland. His father was a Lutheran minister. Two
of his fathers brothers were likewise clergymen, and in his
mothers family there were six parsons. Needless to say, Jungs
growing up was infused with the atmosphere of the church. He
became aware, however, that his father was tormented by religious
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doubt. At the age of twelve, the psychically precocious young boy

received a singular visitation. A disturbing thought gathered in the
back of his mind. He sensed it to be blasphemous and for several
days resisted its formulation. Persistently, however, the thought
pressed itself upon him, so that, nally, in great trepidation, he let
the thought come on:
I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden
throne, high above the worldand from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks
the walls of the cathedral asunder. [Jung, 1965, p. 39]
This image burst upon Jung as a liberating illumination. He had

resisted the thought, having an intimation that it was sacrilegious,
but had come to feel that God wished him to experience it.
Otherwise, why had the thought pressed itself so insistently upon
him? For Jung the vision was a divine revelation, and he concluded
from it that an apprehension of the divine will comes, not from
scripture and doctrinethe source of his fathers conictbut from
having the capacity and courage to experience it directly for ones
self (ibid., p. 40). This secretfor he could conde it to no oneand
his reections upon it, informed the whole of Jungs youth. He felt
singled out and therefore isolated, as one possessed with a special,
and perhaps unwholesome, knowledge (ibid., pp. 4042).
When the time came for Jung to go to university, he was torn
as to whether to pursue natural science on the one hand or the
humanities, in the form of history or philosophy, on the other. After
a protracted period of indecision, a pair of successive dreams
conclusively resolved the issue. In both he found himself in a dark
wood, where he came upon something indubitably associated
with natural science. In one dream he dug up the bones of prehistoric animals, and in the other he stumbled upon, half submerged
in a circular pool, a giant and shimmering radiolarian, another
ancient form of life known to us only through fossils (ibid., p. 85).
The tenor of the dreams, moreover, as we shall see, foreshadowed
the particular cast Jung was to put on the natural science he in fact
took up.
As we know, the science Jung devoted himself to was analytical
psychology, and his contribution in that eld stands, sub specie aeternitatis, as the discovery of the collective unconscious. Jung was led
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to this singular concept by another dream. It occurred to him at

a time when Freud, an acknowledged father figure for Jung,
was signalling that he regarded Jung as his putative successor.
Jung knew, however, that he could not fill that role, because he
could not accept certain positions Freud propounded as dogma.
At the same time, he had not sufciently worked out his own ideas
as to be able to oppose them to Freuds (ibid., pp. 157158).
Jung dreamt that he was in a two-storey house, which he understood to be his own. On the top oor was a nice room furnished
with fine antique furniture. The walls were hung with precious
old paintings. Jung was impressed, but then it occurred to him that
he did not know what was on the ground oor. That part of the
house he found to be much older, dating from the fifteenth or
sixteenth century. It was dark, with a red brick oor and medieval
furnishings. After exploring it, he passed through a heavy door
and down a stone stairway into the cellar. There he found himself
in a beautifully vaulted room, which, from its construction, he
knew to date from ancient Roman times. One of the paving stones
of the floor contained a ring, which, when pulled, opened the
way to yet another set of steps, these being narrow, and leading
down into the depths. Descending, Jung entered a low cave cut
into the rock. There, strewn on the floor in thick dust he found
skeletal remains and shards of pottery from a primitive culture
(ibid., pp. 158159).
For Jung, the dream supplied the answer to deep questions
concerning the human psyche that his intellectual engagement with
Freud had put before him. What the dream had pointed him to was
noteven in retrospect, if one considers the general imperviousness to it even todayan obvious solution. But Jung found the
meaning of the dream to be plain. Here it is in Jungs words:
It obviously pointed to the foundations of cultural historya
history of successive layers of consciousness. My dream thus constituted a kind of structural diagram of the human psyche; it postulated something of an altogether impersonal nature underlying that
psyche. It clicked, as the English have itand the dream became
for me a guiding image which in the days to come was to be corroborated to an extent I could not at rst suspect. It was my rst inkling
of a collective a priori beneath the personal psyche. [ibid., p. 161]
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As can be told from this statement, Jungs initial insightthat

there is a part of the psyche that all of us share, a collective unconsciousdid not draw a distinction between a collective unconscious
that is bred into us genetically and one that is culturally fashioned.
Indeed, Jung probably never did consciously make that distinction,
although it is worth underscoring, given our evolutionary perspective, that for reasons manifest throughout this treatment a cultural
collective unconscious cannot be visualized in terms of genetic
selection. We will discuss the personal unconscious and the idea of
a non-genetic cultural collective unconscious in Chapter Four.
Consciousness as an adaptive mechanism

What we have sketched out so far is that all of us are possessed with
psychic dominants, called by Jung archetypes, of which we are
essentially unconscious. The archetypes clearly have a role in evolutionary adaptation. First, they lie at the root of the instincts. But
beyond that, they have come, in humans at least, to serve to temper
or counterbalance the instincts. The archetypes give form to the
instincts and to the collective unconscious, of which the instincts
are a subset. The remaining aspect of the psyche is consciousness,
represented by the ego. Consciousness is by far the most recent to
have evolved, and it evolved out of the collective unconscious. I
shall follow the examples of Freud and William James in not undertaking a denition of consciousness (Guzeldere, 1995, pp. 112113).
Arriving at a satisfactory denition would be tricky at best, and ne
distinctions do not seem necessary to our purpose.
One may reect that overwhelmingly the life of humankind has
been lived with at most minimal consciousness. For the vast part
of the span of the two and a half million years and more during
which human-like creatures have been in existence, they have
existed simply as upright hunting and scavenging animals
that lived in groups. The species, Homo sapiens, has been around
at least 100,000 years. Agriculture and stockbreeding began
no earlier than 11,500 years ago, and it was thousands of years after
that before the first civilizations formed. During all but a tiny
fraction of the existence of Homo sapiens, then, humans exhibited
very little of what we identify as conscious behaviour. We can
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say this because consciousness and culture go hand in hand, and

the evidence of culture, even at the relatively late time by which
it clearly asserts itself, does not for many thousands of years
develop marked strides of advancement. And yet, notwithstanding
their being in the main unconscious, humans had long had their
present cranial capacity, occupied by a large brain. During all this
time and before, Jung postulates, the mnemonic deposits
of human experience were accumulating in the collective unconscious (Jung, 1960 [1928], par. 99). This would have occurred
through natural selection, just as with those precursors of the collective unconscious, the instincts (Stevens, 19932). Consciousness,
in the Jungian scheme, emerges from the unconscious through
the aggregation of unconscious contents into a dominant psychic
centre. For there to be consciousness there has to be an I that sees
itself as distinct from other elements of the psyche and from
the outside world. The emergence of this I, or the ego, can
be observed in the young child. Proto-consciousness is sporadic,
limited to the perception of a few connections, the content of which
is not remembered (Jung, 1960 [1931d], par. 755). When, through the
mechanism of memory, these perceived connections confer upon
the subjectthe forming ego of the childthe impression of existing continuously through time, the rudiments of consciousness are
demonstrated. These connections or contents, prevailing in
memory, can indeed be said to constitute the ego (ibid.). Something
akin to the build-up of the ego in the child must have occurred
across large numbers of generations to bring a rudimentary
consciousness to the fore in our ancestors.3
The adaptive advantage of consciousness is obvious. It permits us to fine-tune automatic response mechanisms so as to be
able to address, with particularity, an innite variety of situations.
It affords, put otherwise, great subtlety of discrimination and
a flexibility of response to take advantage of it. Early hominids
could get through life in a virtually unconscious state, but
they were prey to all sorts of natural perils that modern humans
avoid with ease. It may be objected that modern humans have
brought upon themselves a whole new world of ills, but, as Jung
observes, the fact remains that the conscious man has conquered the earth and not the unconscious one (Jung, 1960 [1931c],
par. 695).
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The dynamic role of the unconscious

The bombshell in Jungs findings is that the unconscious mind
operates to an extent on its own. It is more than, as Freud would
have it, the undigested residue of repressed thoughts and archaic
psychic vestiges exerting themselves upon the waking psyche. It is
a dynamic entity that functions as a part of the total personality in
a salutary way.4 Its role is compensatory. It stands in opposition to
the conscious position as a balancing force. Jung visualized unconscious contents clustered around an archetype operating independently of the ego and producing an effect on it. A pull and tug
between the conscious ego and such elements of the unconscious is
therefore generated. Consciousness is perforce directed; attention is
focused upon something. When consciousness is too much focused
in a particular direction, the unconscious disposes itself as a counterpoise, and thus, in the healthy psyche, a balance is established
(Jung, 1960 [1957], par. 159).
How can the unconscious, so ephemeral in our estimation, in
any way hold sway against conscious directedness? For one thing,
in most cases it sets the agenda. Consider what goes into the establishment of the objects of ones attention. In selecting a career, for
example, there may be several options, but one unaccountably
seems to exert a greater pullindeed, as we have seen, in Jungs
case the unconscious overtly took a hand as a tie-breaker. The same
power may point the way in selecting a mate or in choosing what
to do today. On the other hand, if one simply cannot act to accomplish a chore, not in itself abhorrent, it stands to logic that the
impediment can only be an unconscious one. When you walk into
a room, what rst catches your eye? Certain objects or individuals
will probably serve as the obvious points of focus. But those things
will not be the rst things to gain attention for everyone, and there
is a good chance, moreover, that they will be different as between a
man and a woman. In any case, settling upon them is hardly likely
to be a matter of reason or of conscious thought. I say this, not on
the basis of any experimentation, but in the belief that it will ring
true to the reader. If it does, it suggests that the reader, too, is
disposed to accept, on the basis of experience, that attention is, in
the absence of conscious direction, directed by unconscious
processes.
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The same is true of that which holds our attention once gained,
namely, interest. What invests an object with interest other than
the unconscious? You may say that usually perfectly good reasons
exist for what sustains a persons interest, given the personality,
circumstances, and history of the person in question. But what may
be intensely compelling to a person at one moment may be a matter
of indifference at another. And, if we take interest to be a matter of
personality, do we not risk the circularity implicit in the possibility
that much of what we take to be a persons personality lies in what
interests her or him. And then, again, we must ask, are there not
causes outside of that persons consciousness that make particular
things or subjects of interest? Given that different things are of
interest to different people, one may expect, in working ones way
back to the why of what interests a particular person, to reach a
point where the only sensible conclusion is that such is simply the
way it is with that person, that it is a product of nature and nurture
that cannot be unravelled. In other words, whatever the motivations may be, they are not conscious oneswhich is no more than
to say that the motivating factors reside in the unconscious.
Another way the unconscious brings itself into play in the
conscious world is through dreams and reveries. The tendency in
our society is to discount the effect of dreams. Even so, most people
would no doubt accept that, at least in some instances, the nights
dreaming has an effect upon how one feels upon waking: whether,
for example, one is groggy or alert, or in a good mood or bad. One
may even nd upon examination that what is on the mind upon
waking has been keyed by the dreams of the preceding night. If the
events of the day bear upon how one feels at bedtime, might not the
events of the night produce a like result come morning? But the
events of the day are real, the reader will say. Yet are not our
daytime moods affected by what goes on in our heads as well as by
what is going on around us? And might we not also say that these
moods are inuenced by unconscious as well as conscious developments? Who then is to say that what goes on in dreams has a less
potent effect on ones attitude than what goes on in ones head
during the day? In any case, given our bias in favour of the reality of the material world, one would have to assume that we
would naturally undervalue our response to interior events.
Therefore, it is probably safe to say that dreams and reveries have
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a greater effect on our daytime moods and actions than we tend to

believe.
One would have to imagine that there is a real release for Eliza
in My Fair Lady when, suffering under the torments of Professor
Henry Higgins, she has him brought before an imaginary firing
squad, and sings, When they lift their ries higher, Ill shout ready,
aim, re! And what of Dorothy when she wakes from the dream
of The Wizard of Oz? Must she not have felt braver, stronger, more
worldly? It may be that one cannot overcome lifes problems with
a song, but the unconscious mind is unstintingly at work. A
constant beneath the surface address to the problems faced by the
ego may shape the way it apprehends them. Mental preparedness
to confront life is crucial to life success.
There are many accounts in which dreams have played a quite
specic role in individuals lives. I have had such an experience.
When working on my rst law school project, I went to bed the
night of the assignment utterly confounded. That night I dreamt the
solution and next morning straightaway put it down. The key to the
problem had been given me while I was sound asleep.
The structure and function of bodily organs varies but little
between individuals of the same species. Every normal individual,
at least within the same sex, has the same parts. We know that
psychic functioning is dependent upon the brain, and we might
assume that the functioning of the brain, like that of other organs,
is essentially the same among individuals. But, faced with the obvious fact that brain functioning produces the widest imaginable
variations among individuals, we tend to treat this organ as falling
outside the rules pertaining to the others. Or we might simply take
the position that there is a sameness in the material functioning of
brains, leaving aside the psychic aspect, notwithstanding that the
latter is what gives the brain in humans its singular quality. We are
forced to this resort, however, only because of our tendency to take
seriously into account only the conscious products of the brain. If,
on the other hand, we were to accept with Jung that by far the
greater part of psychic functioning is on a more basic level than that
represented by consciousness, we would find what should be
expected: that the brain operates, materially and psychically,
in much the same way in one individual as the next (Jung, 1963,
p. xix). Our instincts are clearly the same, although our responses
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to them, as modied by consciousness, may differ. It follows from

the fact that the collective unconscious is the samein the sense
that brains, hearts, and livers are the samein all of us that it must
function in essentially the same way in all of us. The magicthat
which gives us our individualitylies in the particular interaction
in each of us between the collective unconscious and our consciousness.
Modern physical anthropology posits that the psychic equipment of the human species developed in conjunction with its particular physical characteristics (Geertz, 1993, pp. 6669). As the
forehead broadened and the jaw receded, the mental characteristics
identifying the human, such as a brain-focused nervous system,
symbolic modes of expression, and an incest-taboo based social
structure were taking shape. Humans developed new physical
characteristicsfor example, a uniquely expanded neocortex that,
free of the demands of sensory or motor functions, might serve as
the seat of reason. And they retained old onessuch as parts of the
reptilian brain, which, virtually unchanged, continue to account for
an important range of their instinctually and emotionally determined functions (Seshachar, 1983, p. 30). As Jung pointed out, if an
animal evolved sharp claws and shearing teeth, it should surprise
no one that it should have acquired, into the bargain, a ferocious
disposition in the hunt (Evans, 1964, p. 83). Culture, in short, as
the expression of the humans evolving mental characteristics,
informed physiology just as physiology informed culture. What
this means is that the human central nervous system does not
merely enable us to acquire culture, it positively requires that we do
so. Like the cabbage it so much resembles, the Homo sapiens brain,
having arisen within the framework of human culture, would not
be viable outside of it (Geertz, 1973, p. 68).
The universality of mythic motifs taken as given

Let us recapitulate briey. The archetypes are to be understood as
organizing factors, inborn modes of functioning that are inherited
just as are the morphological parts of the human body. That is, the
brain is so designed as to activate in all humans, in given situations,
basic images or ideas drawn from the archetypes. Certain of these
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images and ideas nd themselves preserved as the core of living

culture. Their preservation, through the system of indoctrination
that the culture employs to inculcate its values, represents a hold on
a particular level of consciousness. Before we proceed to explore
how successive cultural stages mark an arrow for the evolution of
consciousness, I should rst comment on the proposition that characteristic archetypal expressions can be identied in widely differing cultures. We will review a number of examples of mythic
parallels in differing cultural settings in the course of the development of the argument of this book, but our argument begins at the
point where the common themes are accepted. The concern is to see
if Jungs understandings that go hand in hand with them square
with common sense and experience and are therefore worthy of
and indeed demanding ofgeneral recognition. For the reader who
would be more directly satised as to world-wide correspondences
in mythic imagerycorrespondences that are difficult to explain
other than in terms of the structure of the human psychethere are
numerous sources to which reference may be readily had. I will cite
a few major ones.5 Sir James John Frazer, who, having begun by
inquiring into a curious tale of priestly succession in a sacred grove
in Italy, was led to discover world-wide practices of ritual human
sacrifice relating to fertility. His monumental exposition of the
subject, The Golden Bough, ultimately filled twelve volumes, but
may be found abridged into a single volume (Frazer, 1922). Joseph
Campbell has brilliantly traced mythic patterns in his comprehensive Masks of God, making up four volumes entitled, respectively,
Primitive Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mythology, and
Creative Mythology.
It was Joseph Campbell who brought me to my involvement
with Jung. It came about obliquely, as seems so often the case in the
Jungian world. I was courting Anna, then in her last year of college.
At graduation she received a prize in English. The department head
knew and admired Campbell, and the award took the form of the
then three-volume collection of the Masks of God (the fourth having
not yet been published). I read these books with great interest. I was
wrestling with The Meaning of Life, and the Protestant church I was
raised in was not supplying the answers. Here seemed a promising
line of inquiry. Campbell, over time, led me to Jung. He had edited
an edition on Jung for the Viking Portable Library. By the time I
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came to that, Anna and I were married and had a family. Our young
children, observing me immersed in something called The Portable
Jung, deduced that I was reading up on transportable toilets.
Jung himself, in a number of works, examined archetypal material collected from a great range of sources (e.g., Jung, 1956 [1952]).
Perhaps most notable is his treatment of images surfacing in the
centuries-long pursuit of alchemy (e.g., Jung, 1953 [1944]). Alchemy,
the precursor of chemistry, was an ancient discipline practiced in
both West and East. It ourished into the eighteenth century, claiming even Sir Isaac Newton as a devotee. Jung made himself an
expert in the arcana of alchemy because he observed that contents
of the collective unconscious were projected on to the materials and
processes with which the alchemists worked. As he was able to
demonstrate, any time one encounters the utterly unknown it automatically takes on the aspect of our unconscious contents (Jung,
1953 [1944], par. 346). The alchemists, of course, had no concept of
psychology, a discipline yet to be discovered, and so, when images
emerged as the practitioners stared into their retorts, they saw them
as physical transformations in the substances with which they were
working. By laboriously following the alchemists elaborate and
sometimes intentionally cryptic descriptions of what they perceived
to be taking place, Jung was able to track the alchemists own
unconscious processes (e.g., Jung, 1953 [1944]; 1963).
Perhaps the most exhaustive analysis of a single archetype is
Erich Neumanns The Great Mother (1955). Neumann also accumulated an impressive array of archetypal imagery in support of his
thesis linking developments in myth with the development of
consciousness and culture in his seminal work, The Origins and
History of Consciousness (1954). Let us now take a look at that work.
Archetypal stages in psychic evolution

In The Origins and History of Consciousness,6 Neumann traced
stages of psychic development on the basis of Jungs conception of
archetypal functioning in the collective unconscious. The psychic
state of a people is reected in the most fundamental way in its
myths, its ritual observances, and its art. The level of consciousness
that a people has attained shows through in these forms. The gure
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of Christ on the cross, for example, has much in common with, yet
is altogether different from, the sacrice of a primitive corn god.
Neumanns categorization of mythic stages, as revealed in fundamental aspects of culture, has great explanatory power respecting
the development of consciousness. It, further, casts light on the
reality and nature of the collective unconscious. Neumanns
demonstration is especially compelling, because it unfolds a procession through the mythic stages that can be linked to an increase in
the level of consciousness in the development both of the individual and of culture. He shows us myths that can be associated with
childhood and with primitive states of culture and others that bear
the stamp of the maturing of psychic functioning in individuals and
of a more advanced state of culture. I am aware that there are many,
including many anthropologists, who do not accept the notion of an
advance of culture. A thrust of this book, however, is to demonstrate the evolution of consciousness as marked by culture. As we
shall see, the idea of such an advance is inseparable from that
undertaking.
The golden age

Let us track broadly, following Neumanns lines, these developments. We begin with the creation story. Because the universe exists
for us only in so far as we can be aware of it, myths of the creation
of the universe are quite naturally stories of the rst beginnings of
consciousness. The individuals first perception of the world as
other marks the formation of the ego, and, consequently, for the
individual, the beginning of the world. But, even before this point
in psychic development, there is a form of awareness. We know this
because the archetypal image of the preconscious state remains
with us. If we nd, everywhere, images that relate to a time before
the species attained consciousness, there is a strong suggestion that
the images are not invented by conscious humans, but are rather
lingering deposits of preconscious activity, discovered by or spontaneously revealed to consciousness (Neumann, 1954, p. 12). Such
an image is that of the lost golden age. From the fact that this image
powerfully evokes longing and nostalgia it can be deduced that
consciousness represents a loss of innocence, the departure from a
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natural state of harmony and bliss. Northrup Frye, the Canadian

literary critic who developed a sort of grand unied theory of literary criticism, described this golden age as the framework for all
literature (quoted in Lee, 1990, p. 39). We nd it in Hesiod and in
Plato, in the Bible and in Paradise Lost, in the natural state of
Rousseaus savage, and in Matisses masterwork, Le bonheur de
vivre. A less familiar, but similarly fullling image for the same
thing is the uroboros. The uroboros depicts a serpent wound in a
circle, biting its tail. It signifies unity and completion, the living
circle, endless, requiring nothing outside itself to sustain itself. The
symbol gains punch from the fact that in nature the snake renews
itself by shedding its skin. The serpent of the symbol is self-begetting and self-nourishing, issuing from its own mouth and nourishing itself upon its tail. Neumann recites its provenance, supplying
illustrations from the Eranos Archives:7
This is the ancient Egyptian symbol. . . . It slays, weds, and impregnates itself. It is man and woman, begetting and conceiving,
devouring and giving birth, active and passive, above and below,
at once.
As the Heavenly Serpent, the uroboros was known in ancient
Babylon; in later times, in the same area, it was often depicted by
the Mandaeans; its origin is ascribed by Macrobius to the
Phoenicians. It is the archetype of the , the All and One,
appearing as Leviathan and as Aion, as Oceanus and also as the
Primal Being that says: I am Alpha and Omega. As Kneph of
antiquity it is the Primal Snake, the most ancient deity of the prehistoric world. The uroboros can be traced in the Revelation of St.
John and among the Gnostics as well as among the Roman syncretists; there are pictures of it in the sand paintings of the Navajo
Indians and in Giotto; it is found in Egypt, Africa, Mexico, and
India, among the gypsies as an amulet, and in the alchemical texts.
[Neumann, 1954, pp. 1011, citations and illustrations omitted]
From a state of completeness, thus symbolized and vaguely

remembered, consciousness emerges. In the words of Wordsworth,
Not in entire forgetfulness, / And not in utter nakedness, / But
trailing clouds of glory do we come / From God, who is our home
(Wordsworth, 1961 [1807]). The conscious ego experiences a longing for a previous state of wholeness.
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Without the hypothesis of a collective unconscious, it is hard to

say how this state of imagery might obtain. Given, however, a
collective unconscious, autonomously functioning, one has in place
a mechanism to organize unconscious contents so that the ego
forms and develops, responding to archetypal promptings. Against
such a background, it would not be surprising to find traces of
psychic states that existed before ego development as products of a
psychic apparatus out of which the development occurred. The
question of how the archetypes came to produce this orchestration
within the psyche lends the discussion cosmic overtones and must,
at least at this point, be left in the realm of the metaphysical.
The Great Mother and the SonLover

We can, nevertheless, continue to track the archetypal promptings
through their expression in recorded images. As the infant rises out
of the lap of the mother, so does the infant consciousness. The background symbolism for the nascent consciousness takes the form of
the infants rst and crucial experience of the external world, the
experience of the all-embracing mother. The archetype of the Great
Mother, universally associated with fundamental nature images of
earth and water, represents the dark ux of the unconscious. The
arrival of her offspring, the SonLover, inseparably bound up with
the springing to life of new vegetation, is the mark of incipient
consciousness. As with the budding plant, which has its roots in the
dark soil, the SonLover both springs from and is nourished by the
Great Mother. Though her lover, he is by no means her equal, and
shortly he must be sacriced to her power. She will then preside
over his rebirth, but he remains, for now, a transient thing.
One imagines the individual at the early stages of the development of consciousness slipping in and out of an awareness of a
distinction between self and environment. There is a pull and tug
between the conscious state, with the satisfactions and risks of
making choices, and the automatism of the unconscious state. A
symbol of emerging consciousness is the phallus, which in the
erotic cycle rises and falls, is alternately pre-eminently proud and
utterly depleted. It plays prominently in the myths of the Great
Mother and her SonLover. The earliest societies were cults of the
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Great Mother (Neumann, 1954, pp. 39ff). The SonLover exists only
to serve her fecundity, expressed in the fecundity of the earth. He,
like the grain at harvest, has to be sacriced, cut down, later to be
reborn with the resurgence of spring. Ritual built upon imagery of
the youthful corn god, sacriced to ensure the return of the crops
in season, characterized primitive agricultural societies the world
over (Frazer, 1922, pp. 376ff).
There was nothing metaphoric about such gods to those who
entertained them. They were real, and the rituals associated with
them carried the necessity of divine command. Thus, even as late
as the days of the Roman Republic, there could be seen, in the
sophisticated streets of Rome, Galli from Phrygia, priests of Attis,
who had emasculated themselves in the service of his mother, the
goddess Cybele (Frazer, 1922, p. 404). Attis was a typical SonLover.
He fatally castrated himself. The loss of phallic power equates with
the surrender of consciousness.
Tammuz, the dead and resurrected SonLover of the Babylonian
great goddess, Ishtar, was the prototype for Adonis, likewise the
consort as well as the son, by virgin birth, of a Great Mother gure,
Venus (Campbell, 1962, pp. 3940). Adonis suffered a fatal wound
from a wild boar, the carriage of which beast, as well as its identication with the terrible aspect of the Great Mother, assures that the
wound was to the same effect as that of Attis. So it was also with
Semeles son, the youthful wine god, Dionysus.
The gure of the SonLover sometimes goes under the name of
the puer aeternus, the divine youth who never grows up. A northern
European example is the graceful Baldur, who is killed by a dart
made of mistletoe. Mistletoe is a parasite of the oak tree and grows
high in its top, suspended between heaven and earth. Its dependence upon the tree, a symbol of the Great Mother, echoes the inability of the SonLover to separate himself from her. It can strike no
roots in the real world. The wound from the mistletoe inicted upon
Baldur is the analogue of the wound by the boars tusk. When the
Druid priest, amid solemn ceremoniesfrom which surely derive
the practice of the kiss under the mistletoe (in honour of the goddess
of fertility?)climbed the tree and severed the mistletoe, he
performed an act of symbolic castration (Jung, 1956 [1952], par. 392).
The myths in their elementary form were not conscious. They
expressed contents of the unconscious as projected upon the exter-
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nal world. The cutting up of the esh of a human being does not,
as far as we know, actually ensure that spring will return, and the
crops will grow. Working these images out through nature in the
form of fertility rites enabled early societies to give expression to
the things that were going on in the collective psyche. The rituals
were never thought up. They were simply performed; the act
preceded the thought. Thought is a relatively late arrival in the
course of human existence, and, before it, unconscious factors alone
moved people to actions. Only after a very long time was there set
in play the process of reection, so that reasons became attached to
action (Jung, 1976 [1964], par. 553). Rituals were observed with
great devotion and at no small cost to the celebrants, without
having the least effect on the immutable processes of nature. Yet
their psychological effect was profound. The external rites replicated and reinforced the psychological processes by which
consciousness was coming to life. They substituted intentional
action for unwitting impulse, and so served to strengthen the
conscious system (Neumann, 1954, p. 126). The presence in the
world of the SonLover, representing consciousness, was brief and
impermanent, but assurance was gained of his return.
Modern rituals are much the same. Their participants may be
aware or unaware of what actually underlies, say baptism, but in
either case its psychological effect can be real, serving to reinforce
the ties among the participants and holding out to them all the
prospect of spiritual rebirth, which is in fact a psychological imperative. If the object of the ceremony is an infant, the question of
whether there is an effect upon the infant is a metaphysical one. On
that score we may be left to stand with the southern gentleman who
was asked whether he believed in infant baptism. Believe in it, he
exclaimed, Ive seen it done! How many, to take another example
of the often unthinking nature of the ritual act, of those who erect
a tree at Christmas time are aware of it as a symbol of the Great
Mother, coupled, in the lights which adorn it, with the symbol of
the newborn Christof whose crucial association with the tree
symbol, albeit not evergreen, the evidence is ample.
From the SonLovers point of view, the experience of the Great
Mother is brief and disastrous. The Egyptian God, Osiris, was torn
to pieces and reassembled, but, in the process, the phallus went
missing. It had been swallowed by shes. The Great Mother, Isis,
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went right about her business with the use of a substitute wooden
phallus attached to Osiris for the purpose. At this point those with
a tendency towards the literal must be reminded that myth is a
protean thing, for they will have objected that Isis was in fact the
sister, not the mother, of Osiris. It is true that Isis was the sister and
twin of Osiris, with whom he mated in the womb, and that their
brother, Set, is the one who killed and dismembered Osiris. But
overlapping roles and shifting meanings lie at the heart of myth.
Only through plumbing the language of symbols can we understand what is signified. Symbols carry their power precisely
because they cannot be pinned down to a single delineable meaning. The prohibition against contradictionthe insistence, for
instance, that a thing cannot be two things at onceis a rule of
reason, of the logic of the conscious mind. Myths, however, spring
from the unconscious and speak a different language. Over time the
stories have, in the main, come to terms with logicalthough there
often remain inconsistent versionsbut the meanings of myth have
never been literal. Thus, it should not surprise us that, regardless of
lineage, Isis stands in relation to Osiris as the Great Mother to the
SonLover. Indeed, Frazer demonstrated that the myth of the dead
and resurrected god, Osiris, closely resembles those of Tammuz and
Adonis (Frazer, 1922, pp. 420ff). As mother, Isis creates Osiris anew.
And she insists on the recognition of the paternity by Osiris of her
son, Horus, who comes to stand in the place of Osiris and in whose
place Pharaoh came to stand. Thus, Isis is the mother of Osiris (and
Pharaoh) through his identity with her son.
The person who has become comfortable with the layered character of mythic expression will be able to accept, further, that Isis is
also a virgin, though by no means in the sense that she is chaste.
She is, rather, virginal in that she is self-fecundating. And should
this image strike a resonance with that of the Virgin Mary, one
might reect that her son, the sacrice, is, like Osiris, torn to bits
and spread among the faithful in the celebration of the Eucharist.
The shifting, complex nature of myth can be seen in a powerful,
puzzling, and clearly symbolic work of art of our own era: Picassos
great 1937 etching, Minotauromachy, in The Museum of Modern
Art in New York. I see it as a depiction of the Great MotherSon
Lover duality. The Minotaur, half man, half bull, is an absolute
symbol of the Great Mother in her terrible aspect. In the classic
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myth, the Minotaur roamed at the centre of the Cretan labyrinth,

like a spider in its web, another classic Terrible Mother image. There
every year he devoured seven Athenian youths and seven maidens.
The hero, Theseus, with the help of Ariadne and her ball of twine,
finds and kills the Minotaur and escapes the labyrinth. But, in
Picassos etching, no such hero work is achieved. Quite to the
contrary, there, a Minotaur, standing at the edge of the sea, towers
over a lifeless female matadorborne, her suit of lights in disarray,
on the back of a disembowelled horse. He shields his dim eyes from
the light of a candle held up by an innocent young girl. From a
gender standpoint, the Great MotherSonLover imagery here is
reversed. As we shall see shortly, the bull is a primary image for the
SonLover. Yet, in Picassos work, the Minotaur is overwhelmingly
dominant, as the Great Mother always is in myths for this stage of
psychic development. The SonLover is cast in the role of
vanquished matador. Whereas matadors are usually male, in this
case Picasso has made the matador a woman, keeping the sexual
opposition in place, and, because the matador is female, her disembowelled horse serves the castration imagery. I am not saying that
Picasso had the Great MotherSonLover motif consciously in
mind. I doubt if he himself knew exactly what produced the
complex image, beyond his love for bull-ghting, and his penchant
for drawing and painting Minotaurs and, of course, bare-breasted
young women. Even so, and notwithstanding all the reversals
indeed, because of themthe imagery seems powerfully on the
mark.
We see in Michelangelos Pieta in St Peters Cathedral in
Rome the touching grief of a very human mother for her lost son,
but there might also be glimpsed in that ineffable image the enfolding power with which that mother welcomes the dead son back into
her bosom, to be born again. The presence of the Great Mother
cannot be fully masked by all the countervailing imagery built
up over centuries by a patriarchal church in the struggle to keep
back the threatening tide of the unconscious. Indeed the churchs
deant assertion of the spirit against the darkness has itself perhaps attained no more pre-eminent a statement than in
Michelangelos frescos in the Sistine Chapel. Yet, in the museum of
the Duomo in Florence, one can nd another Michelangelo Pieta,
unfinished, but intended for his own tomb. And there one sees
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without embellishment the expended son sinking back into the

mother, no longer distinct from her, but merged into her in a single
form.
We shall see that with a more secure consciousness the hero
bursts free from the grip of the Great Mother, and that Christ is just
such a hero, vanquishing Satan, the stand-in for the dragon image
of the Great Mother in her Terrible Mother aspect. The image of
the SonLover nevertheless lies beneath the maturer symbol. And
at the stage of the SonLover, the desperately tenuous grip on
consciousness held by the ego is demonstrated by the complete
subordination of the SonLover to the Great Mother. His role is to
be loved, destroyed, mourned, and reborn, all by her. In the individual, this stage marks the emergence from childhood. One may
imagine the purchase on consciousness slipping away, but to be
gained again. The SonLover, by differentiating himself from the
unconscious through the assertion of his masculine otherness, is
seeking partnership as the lover in place of subordination as the
son. But still the mother is too strong for him, and, as the Terrible
Mother, she emasculates and devours him. In cultural terms, at the
very dawn of civilization the SonLover was the principle,
honoured in ritual, by which the earth renewed herself.
Recent archaeological evidence

If we are right, that the struggle towards consciousness in the individual, for which the Great MotherSonLover motif supplies the
imagery, is marked, culturally, by the concern of the fecundity of the
earth, then one would predict a literal, historical link between
emerging consciousness and the onset of agriculture. As it happens,
there is modern scientic evidence for just such a link. It may be
found in a persuasively reasoned book by a French archaeologist,
Jacques Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture
(2000). Cauvin pulls together scientific evidence, in the form of
recent archeological ndings and the insights of botanical genetics,
in an effort to explain the inception of food production in the Near
East. Cauvins findings, though coming from another direction,
mesh neatly with those of Jung and Neumann. Scrutinizing the
background out of which agriculture and then stock breeding rst
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arose in the Fertile Crescent, Cauvin could nd no climatological,

food supply, or population causes that might have pushed the
hunter-gatherers of that region away from their aeons-old mode of
living and towards a sedentary mode of life grounded in subsistence production (ibid., Chapter Six). It must be borne in mind that,
until that point, every human society that had ever populated the
earth had lived as hunter-gatherers (Diamond, 1997, p. 104). As it
happened, there seems to have been available to the peoples of the
Near East at the time in question an ample plenty of the resources
on which their traditional way of life depended. Not only was that
the case, but the resources and conditions necessary to the birth of
agriculture had been in placeunexploitedfor several thousand
years before agriculture actually developed. There is, therefore, in
Cauvins view, no explanation for why agriculture did not make its
arrival more promptly, other than that human culture simply was
not ready to receive it (Cauvin, 2000, p. 72). Accordingly, Cauvin
rejected the usual economic explanations for the beginnings of
subsistence production and concluded instead that the breakthrough, when it came, could be explained only in terms of a development in culture:
From [subsistence production] began the rise in the capability of
humanity of which our modernity is the fruit. We have rejected an
economic causality as an explanation for its emergence, since the
change was in the rst instance cultural. [ibid., p. 207]
Thousands of years more might readily have passed before agriculture came on the scene, save for the singular development
Cauvin adverts to. However, just on the eve of agricultures birth,
it appears that there was a momentous shift in the way the people
of the Fertile Crescent looked at themselves and the world. They
came, it seems, for the rst time to view themselves in relation to a
divine principle (ibid., pp. 6971). Cauvin concludes that this new
orientation became the source of the psychic energy that launched
the human race upon what is called the Neolithic Revolution.
Cauvin makes an interesting point about the famous prehistoric
cave paintings of Western Europe, widely celebrated for their
sophistication and elegance. They suggest nothing in the way of a
religious belief system (ibid., p. 69). Dating from times before the
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onset of food production, and widely removed from it in space, the

FrancoCantabrian paintings were devoted to either naturalistic or
schematic depictions of animals. Such, likewise, was the nature of
the art objects produced in the Fertile Crescent, up until a few
centuries before the emergence of villagefarming societies there. In
the four or five hundred years preceding emergence of these,
however, a shift occurs in the art of the Fertile Crescent. There, in
the place of objects depicting animals, principally gazelles and deer,
there appear representations of human forms, exclusively female.
The most telling of the nds of objects of the new sort, made at
the site of Mureybet in the Euphrates valley, dates from between
9500 and 9000 BC, on the eve of the appearance in that region of an
agricultural economy.8 The Mureybet site yielded eight female
gurines in stone or baked clay, most with pronounced sexual markers (ibid., p. 25). Similar gurines from subsequent dates have been
unearthed throughout the Levant. With the build-up of examples,
this female gure takes on the unmistakable stamp of a Goddess.
Within a short time she comes to be found in association with
another gure, that of a bull (ibid., pp. 2829). The bull, over time,
metamorphoses into a masculine human gure. The gures carry a
clear association with fertility, that being obvious enough in the bull,
and pointed to by an exaggerated lower torso in the Goddess.
Cauvin, based on the proliferation and elaboration of these
images in varying media and their centrality in the focus of the societies that produced them, nds them to be symbols demarking a
religion centred upon the Goddess, and he nds in her all the traits
of the Mother-Goddess who dominates the oriental pantheon right
up to the time of the male-dominated monotheism of Israel (ibid.,
pp. 2931). It is difcult in the context of our discussion to draw a
conclusion other than that the female images on which Cauvin
focused are expressions of the Great Mother Archetype. That the
bull is clearly depicted as secondary in relation to the Goddess, and
that she is sometimes represented as giving birth to him, establishes
him rmly in the role of the SonLover. Cauvin is not dealing with
the JungNeumann scheme. Yet he saw the profound cultural reorientation that these images betoken as opening the way to the development of agriculture and all that followed from it. It is reasonable,
indeed, to conclude that Cauvin has put before us the rst concrete
evidence of the emergence of consciousness as we know it.
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Cauvins scientically based ndings provide solid support for

the parallel findings of Jung and Neumann grounded in the
insights of depth psychology. In Jungs conception, the image of the
Great Mother presented itself to an incipient consciousness as a
symbol of the awesome power of the collective unconscious, from
which consciousness was struggling to free itself. Culture, in its art
and ritual, records this imagery, and thus the cultural record is that
also of the symbolism by which consciousness reacts to the images
of the unconscious. That the inception of agriculture was attendant
upon the surfacing of the Great MotherSonLover motif suggests
that agriculture was the first great cultural fruit of an emerging
consciousness. Subsistence production marks such a radical and
far-reaching advance in human culture that it is altogether natural
that it should be the concomitant of this profound milestone in the
evolution of the human psyche.
Myth and gender

In dealing with the unconscious we have to deal with the world of
symbol and metaphor. We, of course, seldom stop to think that the
very words with which we think, and therefore which condition
our thinking, are nothing more than signs. They are not the things
they refer to; they merely stand for those things. The mode of
expression of the unconscious is less concrete still; it is rooted in
symbols. A sign, such as the noun, tree, which stands for the
concept of the tree, is always less than the thing pointed to. A
symbol, on the other hand, always embodies more than appears on
its face. No one invents symbols; they just present themselves
(Jung, 1976 [1964], par. 482).
As we have seen, the unconscious is symbolized by the Great
Mother, and this is so regardless of whether the individual experiencing the symbol is male or female. This observed fact is not without an appreciable logic, in as much as the collective unconscious,
being collective, is the same for everyone. It has evolved with the
species and will exist for as long as the species does. This is not to
say, however, that the two sexes will respond in the same way to
the experience of the collective unconscious. On the contrary, the
responses of the sexes to the internal images of the unconscious can
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be expected to differ, just as they may be expected to differ in everything else. Not only are women physically different from men, they
encounter the world, psychically, in a different way.
In a patriarchal world, one would be surprised to nd recorded
and preserved numerous myths drawn from the feminine perspective. Some, nevertheless, do exist. Examples are the Demeter
Persephone myth, which served as the basis for the great Eleusian
mysteries, and was characterized by Jung as being deeply rooted in
the feminine,9 and Apuleius story of Amor (Eros) and Psyche, scrutinized by Neumann from the same point of view.10 It also strikes
me that Dorothys quest in The Wizard of Oz is an excellent example
of the heros journey as seen through the eyes of a girl.
One is on uncertain terrain when, as a man, he ventures a take
upon female psychology. Beyond doubt women writers, having
now come fully into their own for the rst time in world history,
will in time thoroughly chart through literature the course of
womans psychic development.11 We can nevertheless speculate for
the present that the dragon fight, transmuted into the feminine,
might frame itself in terms of a sexual union with a frightening, but
god-like, male gure, the Jungian Animus. So it is with Demeter
Persephones encounter with Hades and with Psyches encounter
with Eros. Ultimately, this gure is joined as an equal, and through
this union a balanced relation with the unconscious is established.
It is signal that in these myths the representatives of the Terrible
Mother, Hades and VenusEros, respectively, are not overcome, but
rather are come to terms with.
Carol Gilligan, in her groundbreaking feminist work, In a
Different Voice (1982), demonstrated that modern psychological
models fail to take into account the feminine perspective. She made
the point that separation and individualism, stressed by the culture
in the development of boys, are ill-suited to the outlook of most
girls growing up. Gilligan speaks of feminine values as focused on
the web of relationships necessary to sustain our lives as social
animals. These values stress caring for others and favour at, as
opposed to hierarchical, organizational structures.
Though the DemeterPersephone and Eros and Psyche stories
have been advanced as models for how the female psyche might
respond to the hero archetype, they encounter in this capacity a
serious obstacle. Save for Psyche, who in the end takes her seat
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among them, the principles in these stories are gods. Yet a crucial
attribute of the hero is the simple fact that he is human. Wagners
Ring, for example, with its wonderful mix of characters, mortal,
semi-mortal, and divine, pivots at its climax upon the status of the
hero, Siegfried, as a mortal. For love of him, Brunnhilde surrenders
her own immortality. A stage, indeed, in the development of
consciousness is marked, in the Neumann scheme, at the point
where myths come to be about heroes as opposed to gods.
Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz presents no problem in this respect.
Analysed according to the Gilligan model of feminine values,
Dorothy, I submit, makes a formidable heroine and suggests the sort
of course the feminine hero might take. The book, itself, The Wizard
of Oz, was written by a man, Frank Baum, and it is hard to imagine
that there was much in the way of feminine sensibility around M-GM in or before 1939, when the lm was released. Still, the story speaks
for itself. I base these observations on the film. In the course of
Dorothys quest she takes others under her wing. She is sympathetic
and non-judgemental as to their rather marked shortcomings.
She thus wins the loyalty of Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the
Tin Woodman, and together they dispatch the Wicked Witch of
the West and unmask the Wizard. In the process, each of those whom
Dorothy has made a partner discovers in himself the virtue he formerly lacked, and is made whole. Although she demonstrates great
bravery in the process, Dorothy prevails not primarily by aggression,
but rather through compassion and understanding. In exposing the
humbug Wizard, Dorothy is able to see him as human and therefore
to encounter him on a relational basis. The unmasking of the Wizard
clearly symbolizes the attainment to a higher level of consciousness.
Dorothy manages to see what no one else could see. And Dorothy
accomplishes all this without ever literally leaving home; that is, it
had not been necessary that she effect an overt break from the maternal gure of Aunt Em and home in Kansas.12 We shall talk, in Chapter
Four, on the subject of individuation and the archetype of the Self, of
the holistic symbolism of the quaternity. Dorothy and her three fellows form a textbook quaternity.
After I left the practice of law, I turned to two occupations:
painting, and study and writing along the lines of this book. I had
had from childhood a faculty for drawing, and I felt the need, given
the chance, to develop the one gift of nature that enabled me to do
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a thing that most around me could not. This is how I came to work
with artists models. I found that a special relationship can develop
between painter and model, especially in the case where the painter
can, as I can, carry on a conversation while painting. This facility
got me into trouble on more than one occasion as a schoolboy. As
the teacher addressed the class, I could entertain myself by drawing in my notebook without losing the thread of the lesson. The
problem arose when I tried to do faces. When attempting to reproduce a particular expressiona smile, a scowl, etc.I would
unconsciously adopt the same expression myself. At such times I
was invariably, as they now say, busted. Even so, drawing served
me well all through my schooling, and, indeed, in the course of
many a deposition and in the boring parts of trials.
I once got into hot water for it in the law practice as well. I have
always been fascinated with the human gureI cannot for the life
of me nd this surprisingand so nudes have been a staple of my
drawing and painting. When I was a younger lawyer, one of the
secretaries took some of the yellow pads that populated my les,
the margins of which were so decorated, to our rms senior partner. Why, she exclaimed, he leaves nothing to the imagination!
There was a positive side as well. A fellow who sat next to me in
class told me later that I had helped him through law school by
relieving, with my nude sketches, some of the boredom of class. The
same was so for me. But, back to the models. Nude models are typically young women who can use the few extra dollars they get
through posing. As I came to painting relatively late in life, I found
the models to be generally different from me both in circumstances
and in age, and therefore in outlook. I nd talking to them during
painting sessions remarkably refreshing. Naturally, over the years,
because of my interest, I have turned the conversations to the
subjects of this book, and I have collected a number of the models
dreams that speak to them.
One such dream ts nicely here. The model is Jessi, a stately
young woman, six feet tall, who had had what might best be
described as a mixed upbringing, but who, by dint of brains and
enterprise, is now attending college. One time, when Jessi was a
girl, her younger sister rushed screaming from the bathroom of the
familys older, somewhat run-down, house. Jessi and her mother
rushed in to nd a huge rat in the toilet. Obviously, the experience
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stayed with Jessi. Recently, enrolled for the rst time in a four-year
college and working at the same time as a waitress, Jessi found
herself wrestling with the stress. She had the following, seemingly
simple dream. She encountered a large rat carrying the mood elevator, Xanax. Rather than recoiling, Jessi addressed the rat. She asked
it if she could score some Xanax. The rat declined in a disagreeable fashion and went on its way.
What can this dream have to do with our tale? We were talking
of the female experience of the heros journey. Jessi, who was
certainly acting heroically in her waking life, confronted in the rat,
as I see it, the Terrible Mother dragon of the unconscious. A large
rat may be considered forbidding enough to a young woman, but
consider whence it came. Conating the dream with Jessis childhood experience, one links the dream rat with the toilet of the real
one, an excellent image of the unconscious, lled with water and
lth, reaching down through its pipes into the bowels of the earth.
One would expect that the task of the male hero would be to kill
the rat dragon and take possession of its hoard, drugs in the place
of gold. Jessi, it seems chose rather to come to terms with the adversary. She negotiated for a part of the dragons hoard to get what she
needed to relieve her stress. In this dream she was not successful,
but I think she will be. It seems to me that this dream shows us two
relevant things: one, a female approach to the heros task, and, two,
how the language of a dream may mask its mythic content. In the
latter regard, Jessi was aware of hero mythology, but she did not
recognize, until it was pointed out to her, what appears to be the
mythological theme behind the dreams imagery.
The simple fact that the unconscious, from which consciousness
arose, is archetypically linked with the feminine has been the source
of endless strife and of bottomless misunderstandings between the
sexes. For that which we rightly prize, consciousness, must naturally stand in opposition to the unconscious, as represented by the
feminine. Accordingly, the masculine must assume the opposing
role of consciousness. So potent are the images of the archetypes
that, as sophisticated as we think we are, we remain a far cry from
being able to divorce the symbol from the reality. The inability to do
so exposes the inadequate level of consciousness we have attained.
To risk belabouring the point, the long struggle to wrest consciousness from the unconscious always presents itself in terms of
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conflict, so that the feminine (the unconscious) appears as the

enemy, the dragon to be slain, to be kept back at all costs. In consequence, the patriarchal cultures that presently exclusively populate
the globeand in which the men hold the power to oppressare
still characterized by a fear of the feminine, and an implacable
determination to keep her under the heel. It is depressing to reect
that all the evil and absurdity inicted upon women by the patriarchy over the ages and up to the presentfrom clitorectomies to
witch burnings to bans on abortionhas its roots in this symbolic
set-up. Given the colossal scale on which the confusion of the
symbolic with the personal is played out, we must realize how far
we are from being able comprehensively to distinguish deep-lying
images from objective fact. There is much of consciousness yet to be
gained. Still, one has reason to hope that, by extending our ability
to recognize and come to terms with unconscious parts of the
psyche through an increased knowledge and understanding of
psychology, we will come increasingly to the power to separate out
what is fact and what is projected image.
The separation of the world parents

The event which was foreshadowed in the youthful lover of the
Goddess, but which collapsed in his destruction, is fullled in the act
of the separation of the world parents, typically portrayed as the
earth and the sky. Where before there stood the all-dominating Great
Mother, now the masculine principle is established in parity with her.
Thus, in the Egyptian myth, Shu, the god of the air, parted the sky
and the earth by stepping between them. In so doing he made room
for light and space (Neumann, 1954, p. 108). Light is the quintessential symbol of consciousness, and consciousness can function only
through the concept of space (McGinn, 1995). This separating act is
an act of assertion and assuredly a heroic act, but it brings with it guilt
and punishment. The acquisition of consciousness is original sin; for
with consciousness comes choice and, with choice, error. It is for this
reason that, of the two trees mentioned as standing in the garden of
Eden, it was the tree of knowledge of good and evilof awareness
and the consequent necessity of moral decisionand not the tree of
life, from which Adam took and ate the forbidden the fruit.
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The acquisition of consciousness is an act of separation from the

unconsciousa distancing of the ego, represented by the hero, from
the Great Mother. Leaving the mother is attended by a sense of
guilt, even where the mother has been transmogried into a raging
monster. This stage of early ego development is characterized,
therefore, not only by creation stories describing the separation of
heaven and earth, but also by stories of sacred theft and accompanying punishment. The account of the creation in The Book of
Genesis contains both (Genesis 1: 13, Genesis 2: 19). The rst story
recounts the accomplishment by Yahweh of the creation in six days,
on the second of which, notably, he separated the firmament
(heaven) from the waters. The second story describes Adam and
Eves sin in taking and eating the forbidden fruit, and their punishment. Prometheus heroically stole re (light, consciousness) from
the gods for the use of humanity, but in consequence he was
chained to a rock on a mountaintop where an eagle forever tore at
his entrails. We all experience from time to time an internal gnawing, what James Joyce termed the agenbite of inwit. It is said
in the Jewish Midrash that only with the separation of the World
Parents was the world made dual (Neumann, 1954, p. 116). The
principle that the original unity was cleft asunder by some prehuman guilt and that the world thus born must therefore suffer
runs through Orphism and Pythagoreanism (ibid., p. 118). The
Gnostics depicted the feeling of loss accompanying the world
division as the driving force of the world process (ibid.).
The hero
The stage is now set for a more human hero (Adam was a god-man,
Prometheus a Titan). Jung finds the source of this next image
pattern in physical nature. The course of the sun and the alternation
of day and night must, he says, have imprinted itself upon the
human psyche from earliest times. Thus:
Every morning a divine hero is born from the sea and mounts the
chariot of the sun. In the West a Great Mother awaits him, and he
is devoured by her in the evening. In the belly of a dragon he
traverses the depths of the midnight sea. After a frightful combat
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with the serpent of the night he is born again in the morning. [Jung,
1960 [1931a], par. 326]
The golden heros glorious struggle against darkness undergoes

many mythological elaborations. Impressive examples include the
stories of Perseus, Theseus, Odysseus, Moses, Jonah, Jesus, Perceval,
Siegfried, Faust, Hamlet, and Jack of the beanstalk. The ordeal of the
hero reects, in the dragon ght, the struggle to establish and assert
consciousness. The battle is, then, against the unconscious, and the
threatening dragon or monster is a form of the Great Mother.
Now all this may strike one as exceedingly strange if it is to be
taken out of the realm of storytelling and introduced as a factor in
the lives of esh and blood human beings. In response to such an
objection it is first to be pointed out that these stories have a
remarkable vitality and durability. There must be something going
on with them, beyond a capacity for supercial entertainment. But
how, when the world around seems orderly enough, does one
account for the bizarre nature of such stories? How often does one
meet a dragon anyway? To this we must say that we cannot account
for why the unconscious is designed so as to give forth such strange
images, but only point out that it is pretty clear that it is so
designed. Most people will acknowledge having, on occasion,
dreams of undeniable strangeness. Moreover, serious people in our
society go about in the daylight world accepting of the idea that a
long time ago God spoke to Moses from a burning bush and that
Jesus rose from the dead, with angels on hand to assist. And, saying
it is childs play, many of us have decorated and hidden Easter
eggs. But eggs from a rabbit? And brightly coloured eggs to boot?
Surely this is strange. We fail to focus, however, as we indulge
them, on the strangeness of such images and practices simply
because we have grown used to them from childhood. But these
rituals stem from projections of just the sort of unconscious
processes we are talking about.
Returning to the story of the hero; in the full story, the hero
must, in addition to killing the dragon, attain to a higher goal, be it
the Grail or the hand of a princess. In other words, in the myth at
full extension one must rst liberate ones self from the unconscious
and then thereafter enter into a proper relationship with it. Oedipus
obviously falls short here, at least in the first play of Sophocles
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trilogy. He should have seen that he had not properly disposed of

the Sphinx merely by answering her fairly obvious riddle, and
killed her instead. As it was, he fell the prey of the Terrible Mother,
of whom the Sphinx was a representative, regressing to the womb
in his incestuous marriage and ultimately tearing out his eyes with
the pin of his wifemothers girdle. The symbolic link between the
mutilation of the eyes, emasculation, and the surrender of consciousness is most direct, both light and the phallus being emblems
of consciousness. In spite of his stature and dignity, therefore, King
Oedipus replicates the tragedy of the self-castrating SonLover.
The imagery associated with coming to terms with the unconscious part of ones self lies in the heros liberation of the damsel.
In early adulthood the unconscious gure of the Anima/Animus is
typically projected upon a member of the opposite sex, which
accounts for the intense compulsion of romantic love. The lover is
in fact drawn to an unknown part of herself or himself in the person
of the beloved. When this projection is withdrawn, owing to the
heightened degree of consciousness through which the individual
sees the other person in objective terms and not as the bearer of an
unconscious projection, there may result either disillusionment or
the basis for a realistic loving relationship.
The damsel must not only be liberated, but ultimately won. The
pearl of great price must be secured. This aspect of the myth
applies most compellingly later in life, when the ego has been fully
differentiated. The individual has typically become established in
life. Now the task is individuation, the attaining to a centredness,
or wholeness of the personality. A new archetype is implicated, that
of the Self, to be discussed in connection with individuation. Often
the goal is characterized mythically as the marriage with the
maiden. The hero myth, then, recirculates in the psychic experience
of the individual well into life, having a different focus or effect at
different points in ones experience. The battle must be fought over
and over, the quest continually pushed forward.
Secondary personalization
Once the stage of the hero myth is reached, the process of what
Neumannn calls secondary personalization proceeds apace.
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Secondary personalization holds that there is a tendency in developing humankind to take primary archetypic contents and reduce
them to secondary, or personal, factors (Neumann, 1954, pp.
337339). Such a conversion depotentiates the psychic elements,
rendering them, if not controllable, then at least easier to deal with,
and it therefore stands in aid of consciousness. Projections of
unconscious ideas and impulses upon the external world are taken
back inside and to a greater or lesser extent recognized as ideas and
impulses present in the individual.
Secondary personalization in cultural unfolding

The Old Testament says that Yahweh created man in his own image.
This is another way of saying that mans image of God had become
an anthropomorphic one. God is perceived as a being that looks
and acts more or less like a man. In what Neumann designates as
the historical period of cultural advance, there increasingly occurs
an intermingling of the human and the divine. Gods incarnation in
the divine pharaoh, in Caesar, in Jesus, and in countless other godmen through history exemplify this phase. The characterization of
Louis XIV as the sun king and the Jacobean notion of the divine
right of kings are in this tradition.
Neumann identies a marked enlargement of consciousness as
occurring at this stage of development. As ego consciousness and
individual personality gain in importance and thrust themselves
increasingly to the fore in the historical period, there is a marked
strengthening of the personal element. In consequence, the human
and personal sphere is enriched at the expense of the divine or
transpersonal.
The increase in ego consciousness makes for a consciousness of
ones self as an individual, whereas in the stage of unconscious
non-discrimination the individual was, for the most part, a purely
natural being. The widespread practice of totemism in early societies, in which gods and ancestors took on animal forms, expressed
the individuals oneness with nature. The fact that in totemism
one can equally well be an animal, a plant, or even a thing is
an expression of an undeveloped awareness of self (Neumann,
1954, p. 337). Vestiges of totemism appear in subsequent ages in
the attendant animals, called attributes, likely to be found in the
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representation of a deity: the eagle, for example, as a symbol or

attribute of Zeus, or the raven for Wotan. Neumann traces the
development of secondary personalization from these animal
beginnings through the two-thousand-year course of the Egyptian
dynasties. In prehistoric times the ensigns of the various nomes
were animals, plants, and objects. In the First Dynasty the hieroglyphic record reects that falcons, shes, etc., had sprouted arms.
By the end of the Second Dynasty the animal gures have become
anthropomorphic gods, with human bodies supporting the
animals heads. From the Third Dynasty on the gods in fully human
form reign supreme as lords of heaven. Finally, Horus, son of Isis
and Osiris, having established himself above all other gods, nds
his earthly embodiment in Pharaoh.
In classical mythology one can trace these stages in Zeus and his
retrogressively indistinct antecedents. Vague forms, father sky,
Uranus, and mother earth, Gaea, represented the world parents.
The next generation consisted of monsters, the Titans, whose leader,
the violent Cronus, killed Uranus, his father. The Titans were then
deposed by the Olympians, led by Zeus, who in turn killed his
father, Cronus, and cast his genitals into the sea. The Olympians
were well differentiated, each being especially identified with
specic human domains or personal attributes: love, war, wisdom,
the seas, the winds, and so forth. They were restrictedeven Zeus,
the ruler of Olympusin what they could do or get away with, so
that they found themselves bound by a certain morality, or at least
convention. They were further given to the same foibles as mortals.
In this way, otherwise incomprehensible natural or human events
could be ascribed to the actions or passions of the gods. More
important, divinity became at least in some sense understandable;
the divine was humanized. Of course, because familiarity breeds
contempt, in time a progressive personalization of the numinous, of
the awesomely spiritual, led to its decline. Humans came to see
themselves as mentally and morally superior to the gods, or at least
no worse than they, and the gods lost the power to attract human
awe and devotion. The old divine order collapsed. It was a time of
great human consternation: the last days of Rome. A new order was
born, in a lowly infant in a manger.
The round of secondary personalization in Western history
began again on a higher level. The numinous reality of the God of
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the early Christians ultimately lost much of his lustre in the all too
human venality of his representatives in the church. The Reformation then brought about a God who stood in a directly personal
relation to his subjects. Finally, fteen hundred years after its emergence in the minds of the faithful, the blessed Trinity that presided
over the universe fell victim to human science. The divine spirit
was projected on to nature, and God, as the embodiment of material world, became knowable. Science, in other words, by explaining
the material world with increasingly marvellous accuracy, stole
Gods thunder. The thunderbolt was captured in the laboratory and
reduced to the electron and then to the quark. That which was
beyond human understanding became, at least in principle, so it
seemed, knowable. In their knowledge and power, humans became
gods. Thus had Nietzsches Zarathustra come down from the
mountain and declared that God is dead.
Secondary personalization is the process by which God matures.
This process may or may not have anything to do with a real God. It
traces, rather, the development of a people and their culture through
the way they see God. An increase of consciousness has occurred
when the apprehension of the exterior world has progressed beyond
one in which objective reality is pasted over with subjective
imagesideas of an anthropomorphic God, for example, taking a
hand in natural events, as when the Reverend Pat Robertson prays
to have a hurricane taken off its course to avoid discomting his
home town. What has shouldered its way into its place is a reality
that ts more congenially with objective experience. The process is a
cyclical one, driven as it is by the archetypes, which seem to portend
an endless round of death and rebirth. The advance of consciousness does not necessarily entail an increase in spiritual well-being.
The death of belief can be a very painful thing, even as it opens the
way for further advance. The cyclical nature of the process nevertheless affords us, in an age of alienation, the prospect of new beginnings in which there may be more to give us comfort.
Secondary personalization in individual development

As we have said, the same archetypal path taken in the development of culture occurs in the psychic growth of each individual. In
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the child, images of god-like authority are projected upon the

parents, vesting them with seemingly illimitable power. With a
proper development in the child, the clay feet of the parents become
exposed. That is, the real parents inevitably failto stay with the
foot imageryto ll the shoes the archetype has set for them in the
mind of the child. Thus it is that in heroic myth the protagonist is
typically reared by commoners, though being, of course, himself of
royal blood.13 The images of the Father Archetype, which, as the
apotheosis of the spiritual, have separated out from the all encompassing archetype of the Great Mother, are then transferred to
important gures in the individual or cultural sphere, to mentors or
heroes or leaders, or to organizations or institutions. It is important
to the culture that such projections be to some extent sustained.
Nevertheless, the person who, at a later stage, is able to withdraw
such projections, comes to see individuals and institutions more or
less as they are, and neither overvalues nor undervalues them. For
such a person, the unconscious image loses its power and, by the
same token, the persons consciousness is enriched.
We have also seen that by the time of ego formationprobably
corresponding to the time of the individuals rst childhood memoriesthere is already the sense of a previous blissful wholeness,
correlating to the mythic golden age. The myth of the SonLover
marks the early stages of an individuals ego-consciousness, when
consciousness itself is still an ephemeral thing, confronting a
powerful impulse to relapse to where the child ceases to experience
itself as an entity distinct from the environment. The imagery of the
separation of the World Parents afrms the sense of the ego as a
thing separate from all that surrounds it. The onset of incest
imagery supplies the impetus towards emotional independence.
Thus is the former SonLover impelled to take up arms against the
Great Mother, who now appears in her Terrible Mother aspect as
the dragon. Incest, obviously, was the hallmark of the SonLover,
but this universal taboo is now invoked to move the child away
from psychic dependence upon the parent. The ego, now identied
with the hero, must summon the courage to prevail. Puberty rites
in most cultures, save, in the main, our own, reinforce the imagery
of the emergence of the hero. The independence achieved by the
bold and adventurous hero is paralleled in the practical independence the individual must attain from the parental household, but
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psychically what must be gained is a secure separation of egoconsciousness from the unconscious.
Secondary personalization, as we have said, is a mechanism that
serves the withdrawal by degrees of the projection of interior
psychic contents. We are, as a society, persuaded that we presently
see the objective environment pretty much as it in fact exists, and
this is true enough by comparison to earlier stages of cultural development in which external events were seen as the work of spirits or
gods. Likewise, each individual passes through phases of life much
coloured by fantasy, until the mature adult comes to see reality with
a clearer eye. The potency of the parental archetype releases itself
from the earthly parents or their ancestors, and parents come to be
seen as people. Institutions, such as the school, the team, the
company, the party, the church, or the state, on to which the
parental (specically, the father) archetypal image might have been
transferred, come, too, in time, to be seen as merely hierarchical
organizations of individuals. The devotion and zeal that each
attracts spring no longer from archetypes projected upon them, but
to a much greater degree are granted or withdrawn by conscious
choice. This process progresses at different rates with different individuals and reaches to varying extents.
The second part to the hero myth reects events in the second
half of life, when the differentiation of consciousness is secure. At
that point the heros focus is on coming to terms with the damsel
who must be taken to wife. She can be seen as the contra-sexual
aspect of the personality, which must be integrated to make the
individual whole. The encounter with her is part of the process that
Jung calls individuation, of which we shall speak later.
The shift of the evolutionary focus to the individual

Before the emergence of consciousness, the impetus of evolution lay
at the genetic level. Consciousness, however, introduces a new, nongenetic factor into the evolutionary scheme. It provides the means
for changes in adaptive behaviour on a fast track. Without
consciousness, a species that nds itself at odds with its environment is at the mercy of chance. If the limited range of behaviours
that fall within the compass of the species instinctual set will not
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sufce for necessary adaptation, the species is doomed, unless an

accident of genetic change happens to provide a new adaptive
wherewithal in time. Genetic change is the work of millennia; yet
conscious individuals may devise in a relatively short time a type
of shelter, a technique for obtaining or preserving food, or some
similar means of coping with environmental change. Cultural
forms can change rapidly if the psychic climate is right, and thus
the human race has been able to try an endless variety of cultural
styles as a means of adaptation, without having to wait upon
genetic selection. Successful strategies are reinforced and passed on.
Although culture is a group product, the instrument of change
is the individual. It is the extraordinary individual who strikes the
chord of the future. Thus evolutions thrust has, with the emergence
of humanity, shifted in focus from the gene to the individual. Before
the development of human consciousness, the individuals of a
species could be seen as inextricably bound by the dictates encoded
in their genes, dictates held in common with all other members of
the species. The range for individual expression was extremely
narrow. In modern humans, by contrast, this range is virtually
limitless. A monkey may have the potential in dexterity to play
the piano, but the performance of a Mozart sonata is out the question. A human, on the other hand, a very special human, could even
compose one.
Furthermore, a special human, a Great Individual or a collection of them, coming when the time is ripe, can, through self-realization, bring to bear a new expression of the archetypes. Through
that heroic accomplishment, the whole of a society may be pointed
in a new direction (Jung, 1964 [1934], par. 315). Such a revolution
occurred in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, when
Copernicus, Gutenberg, Luther, Columbus, Michelangelo, and
Leonardo all emerged, with their differing, but collectively
profound, contributions. Neumann sees their arrival as accompanying a shift of dominant archetypes from those of the Father to
those of the Mother (Neumann, 1959, p. 32). The images of the
Father Archetype tend to be of the skies or heavens; they implicate
the spiritual. Their apotheosis is the Gothic spire, stretching
skyward. Typical mother images are of earth and water. The focus
upon the earth that inspired the Renaissance found expression in
the spanning of the globe in geographic exploration, in perspective-
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based naturalism in painting, and in the emergence of science

and technology.14 The latter became the dominant development in
the West in the ensuing era. The scientic spirit seeks to know the
earth and grasp it in its most intimate detail. This is true also of the
heavens, but in the material, and not the spiritual sense. The materialism that characterizes our society, its preoccupation with things,
is a natural concomitant of the scientic spirit.
During that period of human existence when a sort of protoconsciousness resided in the tribe or group, it operated through the
participation mystique, with individuals not fully distinguishing
between themselves and the group. There was little change within
societies over time, as all members acted through the collective, and
therefore conservative, unconscious. As consciousness came at last
to be realized in the individual, there occurred for the rst time the
conception of new ideas, the striking of new paths. This development, as understood by Neumann, accounts for the eforescence of
societies and cultures of the widest variety during the last ten thousand years (Neumann, 1989, pp. 344346). Spurred by the Great
Individual, who achieved a fresh engagement with the archetypes,
new social structures emerged. Those that were best adapted
attained dominance within their spheres and persisted over
protracted periods. Central ideas wrested from the unconscious and
made conscious were preserved by the society through reinforcement in myth and ritual.15 Where such ideas afforded a felicitous
integration of the society with its surroundings, the cultures
embracing them tended to persevere.
Jung worked it out that the collective unconscious evolved
through natural selection: that it consists of mnemonic deposits
accruing from all the experience of [our] ancestors (Jung, 1960
[1928], par. 99). Neumann focused on a parallel evolution in
consciousness. Neither, however, seems to have deliberated upon
the different time scales involved. Here we encounter an idea that
I have not found in a fully developed form in other sources. It is, I
think, implicit in the systems of Jung and Neumann, but they did
not address it directly. The idea guides us around the problem
of the inheritance of acquired characteristics that would otherwise
be encountered in any scheme for the evolution of consciousness,
given the rapid development of consciousness in the last ten
thousand years. If changes in consciousness were predicated upon
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structural changes in the collective unconscious, we would be

confronted with the notion of inherited ideas, as genetic change
could clearly not have occurred at pace commensurate with that of
the advance of consciousness, at least as measured by cultural
advance. Yet we posit that the collective unconscious is an inheritedthat is, genetically basedelement of the psyche. The answer
is that nothing about consciousness is inherited. The inherited
archetypes of the collective unconscious can nevertheless present
themselves in new ways to consciousness, with the result that
consciousness can leap forward. These leaps are entirely in the mind
of the individual, however. When the individual dies they would
cease to exist if they had not been communicated to the group, to be
preserved by it. The way of preservation is, in broad terms, the
education of succeeding generations. In early times the new psychic
acquisition was incorporated into the myths and rituals of the tribe
and passed through them to posterity. Now, of course, we have
many ways to preserve the ideas that stamp our culture.
We have, then, a mechanism by which consciousness might
evolve. The mechanism is directly analogous to genetic evolution
and operates according to the basic formula of genetic evolution:
replication (through education), subject to chance mutation (the new
idea of the Great Individual), selected according to environmental
fitness (of cultural attitudes). Thus it is that consciousness has
enabled humans to experiment with a wide array of social forms,
fast-forwarding, as it were, the evolutionary process. Typically aeons
are necessary to bring about a fundamental change in the social organization of a species. This is so because what is involved, in species
other than Homo sapiens, is essentially the progression to a new
species. With the advent of consciousness there developed a new sort
of evolution, an evolution, not through genetic selection, but through
selection among archetypically grounded ideas. Consciousness,
then, has its own form of natural selection, in the development of
culture. We will follow up on this point in the next chapter.
Notes
1. The chick does not learn how to come out of the eggit possesses
this knowledge, a priori (Jung, 1956 [1952], par 505, n. 39).
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2. Well into this project, I came upon the valuable works of Anthony
Stevens. We cover much of the same ground. His On Jung (1990) takes
a therapeutic approach; The Two-Million-Year-Old Self (1993) and
Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self, (2003) place
Jung within an evolutionary framework as informed by the ndings of
sociobiology and ethology.
An interesting argument that disputes the genetic basis of archetypes
is made by McDowell (2001), who postulates that archetypes derive
from the self-organizing principle inherent in dynamic systems.
3. Confronting the seemingly inexplicable emergence of consciousness
late in the course of human development, psychologist Julian Jaynes
proposes a rather startling physical explanation for the shift to
consciousness. He speculates that, as the capacity for speech was
evolving, there was less coordination between the two hemispheres of
the brain. There was a period, therefore, coming to an end late in the
second millennium, BCE, when authoritative speech was generated in
one hemisphere of the brains of humans, as yet relatively unconscious,
and heard in the other as voices of the gods (Jaynes, 1976). Jaynes
takes no account of the Jungian explanation of the rise to consciousness through a progression of archetypal images as expounded here.
From the Jungian point of view, the demands and instructions of the
gods that imposed themselves upon humans in early states of
consciousness were projections of unconscious contents.
4. William James spoke in terms of a presiding arbiter in what Jung
was later to personify as the unconscious.
Reason is only one out of a thousand possibilities in the thinking of each of us. Who can count all the silly fancies, the
grotesque suppositions, the utterly irrelevant reflections he
makes in the course of a day? Who can swear that his prejudices
and irrational beliefs constitute a less bulky part of his mental
furniture than his claried opinions? It is true that a presiding
arbiter seems to sit aloft in the mind, and emphasize the better
suggestions into permanence, while it ends by dropping out and
leaving unrecorded the confusion. [James, 1890, p. 552]
5. A collection of representational material, demonstrating marked similarities from a wide array of cultures, can be found at the Warburg
Institute, London. Photographic duplicates, known as the Archive for
Research in Archetypal Symbolism, are held by the C. G. Jung Foundation of New York, the C. G. Jung Institute in San Francisco, and the
C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
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6. Jung wrote many prefaces to works of friends or followers. His

assessment of Neumanns achievement in The Origins and History of
Consciousness given in his Foreword to that work bears quoting.
As I read through the manuscript of this book it became clear to
me how great are the disadvantages of pioneer work: one stumbles through unknown regions, one is led astray by analogies,
forever losing the Ariadne thread; one is overwhelmed by new
impressions and new possibilities, and the worst disadvantage
of all is that the pioneer only knows afterwards what he should
have known before. The second generation has the advantage of
a clearer, if still incomplete, picture; certain landmarks that at
least lie on the frontiers of the essential have grown familiar, and
one now knows what must be known if one is to explore the
newly discovered territory. Thus forewarned and forearmed, a
representative of the second generation can spot the most
distant connections; he can unravel problems and give a coherent account of the whole eld of study, whose full extent the
pioneer can only survey at the end of his lifes work . . .
[Neumann] has succeeded in constructing a unique history of the
evolution of consciousness, and at the same time in representing
the body of myths as the phenomenology of this same evolution.
In this way he arrives at conclusions and insights which are
among the most important ever to be reached in this eld.
Naturally to me, as a psychologist, the most valuable aspect of
the work is the fundamental contribution it makes to a psychology of the unconscious. The author has placed the concepts of
analytical psychologywhich for many people are so bewilderingon a firm evolutionary basis, and erected upon this a
comprehensive structure in which the empirical forms of
thought nd their rightful place. [Neumann, 1954, pp. xiiixiv]
7. See Note 5, above.
8. What would appear to be Mother Goddess gurines, such as the famous
Venus of Willendorf, appear in other parts of Eurasia at earlier dates.
9. The DemeterPersephone myth is far too feminine to have been
merely the result of an anima-projection (Jung, 1959 [1941b], par. 383).
10. Neumann (1956). Neumann has also provided insightful essays on
feminine psychology from the Jungian standpoint in The Fear of the
Feminine (1994).
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11. Many of the disciples who carried the torch of analytical psychology
after Jung were women, but, to my ear, they for the most part present
the Jungian view from much the same standpoint as would Jung have
himself. Typical examples are, Jolande Jacobi (1959); Aniela Jaff
(1989); and Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).
12. Ann Belford Ulanov (1971, pp. 277285) provides a thorough treatment of Dorothys journey, which she describes, in Jungian terminology, as a paradigm of a young girls series of encounters with the
Animus function and with her egos integration of the contents that the
Animus brings to it.
13. Freud ventures a breath-taking explanation of the reverse situation in
the story of Mosesa child of commoners raised in Pharaohs royal
householdin Moses and Monotheism (1939).
14. Compare Rudolph Arnheim (1954, p. 283):
Central perspective came about as one aspect of the search for
objectively correct descriptions of physical naturea search that
sprang during the Renaissance from a new interest in the
wonders of the sensory world, and led to the great voyages of
exploration as well as to the development of experimental
research and the scientific standards of exactitude and truth.
This trend of the European mind generated the desire to nd an
objective basis for the depiction of visual objects, a method independent of the idiosyncrasies of the draftsmans eye and hand.
15. Professor Toynbee gives an excellent account, from the historians
perspective, of how this comes about:
The problem of the relation between civilizations and individuals has already engaged our attention in an earlier part of this
Study, and we concluded that the institution which we call a
society consists in the common ground between the respective
elds of action of a number of individual souls; that the source
of action is never the society itself but always an individual; that
the action which is an act of creation is always performed by a
soul which is in some sense a superhuman genius; that the
genius expresses himself, like every living soul, through acting
upon his fellows; that in any society the creative personalities
are always a small minority; and that the action of the genius
upon souls of common clay operates occasionally through the
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perfect method of direct illumination but usually through the

second-best expedient of a kind of social drill which enlists the
faculty of mimesis (or imitation) in the souls of the uncreative
rank and le and thereby enables them to perform mechanically an evolution which they could not have performed on
their own initiative. [Toynbee, 1946, p. 533]
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CHAPTER THREE
Archetypes and the collective

unconscious
Archetypes described
hat is an archetype? On one level the concept is perhaps

not too hard to grasp; on another it may be beyond being
fully understood. Remember, Jung related the archetypes to the instincts. The instincts, as William James described
them, are the functional correlatives of physical structure. With
the presence of a certain organ goes, one may say, almost always a
native aptitude for its use (James, 1890, p. 383). In the same vein,
Jung referred to instincts as the pattern of behaviour in biology
(Jung, 1976 [1951], par. 1158). Jung proposed the term archetype to
delineate what he described as inborn modes of psychic behaviour
(ibid.). The instinct is a pattern of physical behaviour and the archetype is a pattern of psychic behaviour. The one is to jump out of the
way of a train; the other is to pick up a train of thought. Just as
everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images (Jung, 1960 [1919], par. 281). The shelves lined with
this stock of images make up the collective unconscious.
Thoughts adhere to these images, so in one sense archetypal
images can be thought of as a mechanism for breaking up
75
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experience. They have been designed into our minds through

natural selection as a simplifying device, to render the chaotic
multiplicity of experience manageable. Whatever we encounter is
automatically tted to an internal image. If no image can be made
to apply, the object tends to go unnoticed. Sometimes objects have
to be bent to t an image, and they may consequently end up tted
to the wrong image. In a thicket we start at a sinuous form in the
leaves. Where in our minds eye lay a snake resides in reality only
a curved stick. We are walking at dusk, somewhat ill at ease. We
apprehend something in the offing. Our anxiety is heightened.
Might there be behind that anxiety a primordial demonic image?
We grow closer; the image is gathered into the category embracing
animals. A wild beast? Now the shadow is close enough to be made
out clearly: a neighbourhood dog. Theseus, in A Midsummer Nights
Dream, makes the point with characteristic Shakespearean compactness: Or in the night, imagining some fear, / How easy is a bush
supposd a bear! (Act V, Scene i). Artists have always relied on the
pre-supplied images in the mind to hold artistic representations
together and enhance their verisimilitude. Modern artists like
Matisse and Picasso pushed the boundaries of the form of objects
in order to achieve a psychological effect in the viewer as the
viewers mind worked unconsciously to t the created image to the
preset one.
The instincts are, in one sense, physical; they go to the very core
of the animal organism. They are nature itself. But they also have a
psychic aspect to them. Action pursuant to an instinct, at least in the
higher animals, implicates the brain or central nervous system.
Between a stimulus and the corresponding instinctive reaction,
there is an intervening psychic operator. A severed frogs leg in the
school laboratory will jump when electrically stimulated, but
something in a live frog determines which way to jump, when the
shadow of a heron passes over. It goes without saying that humans,
however conscious, retain and employ their instinctual apparatus.
But in us the instincts often present themselves to consciousness.
Take, for example, what we feel when we are hungry. We may not
reflect, I am under orders from the instinct to obtain nourishment, but we will be motivated to get something to eat. And it
becomes a conscious act to acquire and eat food. We have said that
behind such needs and feelings are images.
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Given this psychic element in the instincts, it would seem logical to see the archetypes as giving form to them, as well as to the
collective unconscious. A way of conceiving this is to include the
psychic aspect of the instincts as a part of the collective unconscious, conditioned by the archetypes. The instincts might be seen,
in other words, as a special case of the collective unconscious. Thus,
one has a psychic continuum reaching from the basic instinctual
responses to conscious functioning. The instincts plus the broad
middle ground between them and consciousness can be characterized as the collective unconscious (Jung, 1960 [1919], par. 281). The
archetypes are the structures, or one might say, the properties, of
the collective unconscious. As at the instinctual end of the psychic
spectrum the archetypes ensure basic behavioural responses, so at
the other end they afford the predicate for consciousness.
Such is the psychic setup of all humans, regardless of individual
conditioning or experience. We experience consciousness as affording us volition and freedom of thought. Focusing naturally upon
these aspects of psychic functioning, we generally fail to take into
account the high degree of sameness in our unconscious psychological responses. But there is a sameness. In Jungian terms, it ows from
the fact that we are all endowed with the same unconscious archetypal set-up, although we may think of it simply as human nature.
From the unconscious there emanate determining inuences which,
independently of tradition, guarantee in every single individual a
similarity and even a sameness of experience, and also of the way it
is represented imaginatively (Jung, 1959 [1954a], par. 118).
Archetypes as inherited
The wherewithal for the whole psychic continuum is transmitted
through heredity. It is normally accepted without question that the
instinctual pattern of the species is passed, along with the bundle
of physical attributes, from one generation to the next. At the other
end of the spectrum, howeverthe archetype-driven modes of
psychic behaviourthe inheritance factor seems much more problematic. In suggesting the inheritance of archetypes that condition
conscious activity one runs the risk of being taken as arguing for
the genetic transmission of acquired characteristics. One might
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erroneously infer that attributes of consciousnessmental attitudes, say, or learned materialcan be passed on hereditarily. The
transmission through inheritance of acquired characteristics,
whether in terms of physical make-up or intellectual attainment, is
a concept known as Lamarckism, and it has long been discredited
as a scientic doctrine. Embracing Lamarckism was a charge early
laid, incorrectly, at Jungs door. Indeed, Jung adapted the term
archetype because his initial term for describing unconscious
psychic structures, primordial images, had a Lamarckian avour
(Jung, 1960 [1919], par. 270, n. 7 (Eds.)).
At an earlier time Lamarckism exercised a great deal of appeal
in intellectual circles. The idea is named for an early nineteenthcentury thinker, the Chevalier de Lamarck, who anticipated Darwin
in arguing the existence of an evolutionary process in species development (Dawkins, 1986, pp. 288289). In trying to ascertain how
evolution might proceed in the absence of natural selection, which,
of course, had not yet been thought of, he espoused a scheme that
relied upon the inheritance of acquired characteristics. If one went
barefoot, the soles of the feet became thickened, and ones children
were likewise born with tough feet. If the blacksmiths son had
heavy arms and shoulders, that was to be expected, because the
blacksmith had passed them on to him. In fact, the blacksmith no
doubt had passed on heavy arms and shoulders, but it was not
because he had built them up through manual labour and then sent
them down the hereditary line. It was because he, himself, had the
genes for those features, which may be why he became a blacksmith. That it turns out that acquired features are not passed along
genetically should be a comfort to those of us who happen to think
that, except for the children themselves, the best things we have
acquired in life have come well after we nished having children.
Jung repeatedly emphasized that he was not talking about
inherited ideas. Rather, he depicts an inherited psyche that has a
certain structure. In as much as nothing about the psyche is material, in the sense of being palpable, its structure, too, must be nonmaterial. To be sure, neural pathways are formed in the brain that
have a physical reality. But, assuming science can pin down such
physical attributes of the brain, we will not in all likelihood be
much closer to linking that physical reality to the living thought or
feeling.
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Another way to think of the archetypes is as moulds or shapes

that make up the collective unconscious. Irrepresentable in themselves, they are immediately tted out by the conscious mind with
related representational material. They present themselves to
consciousness, that is, in the form of images or ideas. Although the
archetypes themselves are timeless, these images or ideas will naturally be conditioned by the experience of the individual and take on
the character of the individuals particular time and place (Jung,
1967 [1954], par. 476).
I am sensible of a certain uneasiness in characterizing the unconscious as having a structure, or in analogizing the archetypes to
moulds or shapes. The problem is that of using material terms for
an immaterial reality. Another way to state the problem is to point
out that we think of structures and moulds and the like as having
extension in space. But that which we are trying to understand here
seems to be by its nature non-spatial. The brain occupies space, but
the things that spring from itthoughts, emotions, subjective experiencethese do not, so far as we can tell, either consist of matter
or take up space. We have suggested that we are so constructed
mentally as not even to be able to conceptualize except in terms of
space. If, therefore, it is a bit fuzzy to speak of clothing or lling an
archetype with the material of thought, it is because the very terminology at our disposal is incapable of expressing the thing as it
really is. However hard it may be to describe, there is a part of the
psyche that has the demonstrable characteristic, in a given situation, of consistently producing more or less the same effects in an
individual and of producing likewise similar effects in different
individuals. We know the thing is real: what goes on in our minds
is real. But unless and until we are able to derive an entirely new
conceptual framework, we must accept the necessity of speaking of
it by way of analogies. The alternative seems to be to give up any
attempt to understand that which lies at the very heart of human
experience.
We already have on our screen the objective part of the psyche:
that part which is pretty much the same in all of us, and which Jung
calls the collective unconscious. There is also a subjective, or personal, part of the psyche. Ones conscious thoughts are, of course,
personal and specific to the individual. So also is the personal
unconscious, which may be seen as consisting of contents that are
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not presently conscious, but are nevertheless a part of the individuals psychic constitution, things that we know for example, but do
not happen to be thinking of at the moment. The personal parts of
the psyche, conscious and unconscious, are not inherited, but are
accumulated in ones lifetime. They, in contrast to the collective
unconscious, account for our individuality. We will describe the
personal unconscious in more detail in the next chapter. In our
present attempt to get a handle on the archetypes, we must focus
on the collective unconscious: the objective, the universal part of the
psyche. Jung sees the archetypes as the dominants of this unconscious part of the psyche, the things that make it identiable and
replicable.
Archetypes and evolution

To a certain extent, psychic behaviour derives from the way the
exterior world is perceived. The early human, lacking the tools of
consciousness with which to fashion an objective view of reality,
grasped it, rather, in symbolic terms. The symbols that presented
themselves, moreover, as it falls out, lay typically quite far from a
realistic rendition of the world (Jung, 1959 [1954a], par. 117). The
sun, for example, so it seems from the mythological record, transformed by unconscious ideas projected upon reality, presented
itself to the early thinker as a mighty warrior, who, at the end of his
journey across the sky, is devoured by a dragon in the sea. Such
symbolic imagery, however strange in form, led our forebears to
react to the external world in a way that had a selective advantage
over the raw application of the instincts. Those whose psyches were
so contrived as to generate symbols prompting responses that
afforded an evolutionary edge passed that psychic structure,
complete with edge, along to their descendants. It did not matter
whether the external world were accurately apprehended, it mattered only that it was apprehended in such a way as to produce a
response to that world superior to the unvarnished, instinctual one.
The development of a symbol-producing unconscious of the
sort antecedent to our own obviously afforded a selective advantage. If hominids who acquired the ability to form and project a
wide array of images had not found a competitive advantage over
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others operating on a more primitive instinctual set, the latter

would have been the ones to survive. We, then, clearly would not
be here. Neanderthals, say, or some precursor to them might be
instead. It is an accepted tenet of evolutionary theory that, when
two roughly similar species compete for the same environmental
niche, the better adapted will exclude the less well adapted
(Dawkins, 1986, p. 239). To use a silly illustration, imagine early
hominids whose psychic make-up led them to visualize the world
in a way inconsistent with survival. Suppose they saw the sun hero
as beckoning them to follow him into the sea, and consequently
jumped off cliffs. Such a response might account for why our inherited store of archetypes does not produce the image of a beckoning
sun hero at the edge of a cliff.
The lineage of the concept of archetypes

Regardless of how they materialized in the psyche in the course of
human development, the archetypes, as Jung conceived them, exist
outside of the psyche. As we shall see in Chapter Five, Jung envisaged the archetypes as timeless and eternal, threaded into the very
warp and woof of the universe. In this sense they resemble Platonic
forms. Plato depicted the forms as pre-existent paradigms or
models, of which real things are but copies (Jung, 1960 [1919], par.
275). Jung borrowed the idea of the archetype from St Augustine, in
whom it stood on a Platonic footing (ibid.). The term archetype,
itself, appears to have been first used by the first century Greek
philosopher, Philo Judaeus (Edinger, 1999, p. 97). The concept of
Platonic forms as a non-material reality lost force in the course of
the development of Western philosophy. In the seventeenth century,
Descartes struck a seemingly ineradicable division between the
mental and the material, and from that time forward, owing to
Europes blossoming scientic spirit, the emphasis in the West has
been upon the material. In Kant, the forms lost some of their
grandeur, becoming mind-dependent, as categories that condition
thought. Kant saw the forms, in other words, not as timeless ideas
that exist independently of us, but as a necessary concomitant of the
way we develop thought. Even so, he believed that some knowledge is innate, and he held that it lies beyond the power of reason
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to demonstrate either that everything came into existence according

to mechanistic laws or that there is something that pre-existed such
laws. The systems of Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hegel, and Schopenhauer
also allowed for something outside and beyond the causal laws that
govern the material world. The scientic approach, based on objective observation, was meanwhile having such phenomenal success
in explaining the empirical world that any view not amenable to
scrutiny under scientic methods came to be disregarded. This state
of things accounts in some measure, no doubt, for the obliviousness
of the scientific community to Jungs concept of the archetypes.
Nevertheless, Jungs perspective anticipates a revival of the
Platonic way of looking at the world that has been prompted by
discoveries in modern physics. The subtle mathematical wonders
latent in general relativity and quantum mechanics have given new
force to the idea of a timeless realm that somehow stands above the
laws of causality. As an example, contemporary British mathematicianphysicist Roger Penrose has described the world of pure
mathematical Platonic forms as the primary world of existence
(Penrose, 1994, p. 417).
The nature of archetypal images

No one ever saw an archetype. Archetypes lie behind mental
images. They cause images to coalesce, but they are not themselves
the images. Again, we have not inherited a set of images, but a
predisposition to form certain images. The archetype is not itself a
material, or, in one way of thinking, even a psychic, thing; it is
rather a latent disposition of the psyche, and perhaps of the world
at large. Atoms and molecules act according to the laws of thermodynamics, but they are not themselves the laws of thermodynamics. Those laws can only be observed by their effects, in the
behaviour of atoms and molecules or the larger things they make
up. It is the same with archetypes. They can be seen, by analogy, as
laws of psychic functioning, known only by their effects: by the
images produced in our minds and through our reactions to those
images.
Going a step further, the archetype cannot even be directly
represented by the image. The image is true to the archetype, but it
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does not depict the archetype. The archetype of the Great Mother,
for example, can be faithfully represented by the image of a spider
or by that of a stone, but no one image, even a very complicated
image or set of images, can exhaust the reality of the Great Mother
Archetype.
We have been speaking rather freely of that which consciousness receives from the archetypes as images. Jung said, I call all
conscious contents images, since they are reections of processes in
the brain (quoted in Van Eenwyk, 1997, p. 68). That establishes the
breadth of the notion, but perhaps it would be well to explore the
term a bit, so as to be able to esh it out in the readers mind. I
propose to consider the image as the backbone of thought, so we
might be warranted in reflecting for a moment on the thought
process itself. Here thought or thoughts should be taken
broadly to include anything that might occur in conscious experience, but yet not so broadly as to include, as in another context
might be justied, certain unconscious processes. Neuroscientists
struggle to identify the mechanism whereby one moments
conscious experience might be linked with that of the next.
Logically speaking, each instant should carry its own packet of
experience. Even if the firings of neurons across synapses in the
brain were of an identical pattern at two successive moments in
time, they would not be the same rings. One would have occurred
before the other. However, presumably because our conscious experiences of consecutive instants are typically similar and because the
succeeding instant is coloured by the memory of the preceding one,
we develop a sense of continuity in thought, much as a succession
of images on a lm blurs together to form a moving picture.
The thoughts that seem to string themselves together through
time to form experience are themselves complex. All the data that
are recorded in a frame of lmto carry the lm analogy forward,
each detail of the clothing of the actors or of the furniture of the
roomsomething as rich as thiscan be seen as compressed into
a single thought, and here we are almost compelled to say, into a
single image. The data of the frame of lm can be broken down by
focusing on the separate items pictured. But this is not so of the
thought. Each of our thoughts is complete in itself. A thought
cannot be broken down into separate components because to break
out the components of a thought is to have a new thought (James,
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1890, Vol. 1, Chapter Six). If, moreover, the thought cannot be

reduced, then it must follow that whatever the thought is based on,
and I am calling this an image, is likewise indivisible and irreducible.
Now let us remind ourselves that thoughts as we are dening
them extend to include all the bodily sensations, intuitions, and
feelings of which we become conscious. We are saying that each
conscious experience must be taken as an indivisible whole, and
each as inseparably linked with an image. If we postulate thought
as borne upon archetypal images, then the images we speak of are
things no less complex than a whole slice of conscious experience.
We do not, it is true, tend naturally to think about the vast and
varied experience known to our consciousness as just a sequence of
images. Still, we would be hard pressed to say what else it might
be. We formulate our thoughts in words. Yet we can, usually at
least, tell that the thought comes first, because we can watch
ourselves, so to speak, formulate the word pattern. A common turn
of phrase is to put a thought into words. We can tell, then, that
the verbal expression is formed around the thought. Still, it is less
than clear what the thought is formed around. Perhaps we would
feel more secure in envisioning an image behind thoughts if we
could put aside the idea that the image is perforce a pictorial thing.
Let us choose, therefore, to use the term image to stand generally
for the sort of core impression we have been talking about, and not
for now trouble ourselves too much as to whether it is necessarily
pictorial or not.
Marcel, in Prousts Remembrance of Things Past, was transported
back to his childhood by the taste of a little cake, the famous petite
madeleine. In Marcels mind, where he became a boy again, there
must have been a taste. But it could not have been, as it came back to
him (or, as is probable, to Proust) through memory a real, physical
taste, an actual stimulation of the palate. It was not, moreover, just a
memory of a taste; otherwise it would not have been so charged
with meaning or emotion as to have become the core of a seven
volume work of art. So one may say it was an image of the taste.
As I have acknowledged, the archetypes that we are asked by
Jungs theory to build into our way of looking at the world
are perhaps not altogether congenial to our practical take on how
we experience the world. We take ourselves too seriously to be
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receptive to the suggestion that our daily lives are borne along
upon something as insubstantial and seemingly inconsequential as,
for example, the stuff of dreams. In short, the whole idea of our
thinking in terms of images that spring from parts of our psyches,
of which psychic parts we are by denition unaware, can be a little
hard to digest. Let us try, therefore, yet another way of conceptualizing the problem. Let us think of the situation from outside in.
Consider how consciousness, when it finally arrived upon the
evolutionary scene, might have been expected to have registered
signals from the body or from the unconscious. In the absence of
conscious intervention, instincts, both in ourselves and in animals
we observe, result in action. Let us introduce an observerthe
egobetween the instinct and the act. How would this impulse to
action appear to the observer, that is, to ego consciousness? Would
not one good possibility be that the impulse present itself in terms
of an imagesomething in the nature of the flash of an idea or
impression or mental picture, or some mix of the same, of the sort
of which we have been speaking?
Accepting this possibility as our best bet, let us see if we are not
induced further to accept that the most likely bearer to bring to
consciousness the message from the unconscious, whether generated in the senses or elsewhere, would have a pictorial aspect. For
one thing, visual impressions carry a lot of information in a concentrated fashionremember all the detail in the single frame of lm
in our earlier motion picture analogy. And, perhaps for this reason,
they also carry a natural impact far beyond that, for example, of
verbal communication. Now, it is true that verbal expression can be
seen as generating a similar impact when it is in the form of poetry.
But poetic language is pictorial language; that is, poems conjure
visual images. We speak in terms of the imagery of poems. What
the visual image lacks, comparatively speaking, is the linear focus
of verbal thought, with its consequent ability to develop an idea
with great precision. It may be, however, that this linear focus is a
quality that surfaced later on in the development of our faculties,
that it grew hand in hand with an advancing consciousness. The
linguistic or verbal element would, in that case, stand in a like relation to the pictorial imageif that is what indeed we should settle
upon as the primordial vehicle for archetypal expressionas
consciousness stands to the collective unconscious.
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Let us take an example of imagery in action. It is from the dream

of a former model of mine whom, because I do not now know
where she is, I will call by the ctitious name, Kit. Kit is a beautiful
woman, born in England and raised in Australia, mother of two
young girls. She was an aspiring artist when I knew her, and that is
how she came to pose. Married to an American engineer, she was
having trouble adjusting, both in her marriage and to the Virginia
community where, by reason of her husbands transfer, she found
herself. Kit reported a dream in which she was chased by cowboys
and Indians. She hid in a cave in the desert-like setting. The dream
shifts, and she approaches a sort of outpost. She realizes that it is a
gift shop. In it were Native American women. One holds out a baby
to her. The baby has a beautiful jewel around its neck.
How succinctly being chased by cowboys and Indians expresses
the sense of alienation a foreigner might feel in America; how
graphically hiding in a cave captures the urge to withdraw. Yet the
dream offers hope. The women in the shop, though different from
the dreamer, react to her with kindness. Not a word is spoken in the
dream, but it contains a great deal of information, and it was quite
moving to Kit as she came to reect on it. The dream seems to operate on several levels. The baby and the jewel are symbols familiar
to Jungians, implicating the possibility of psychic rebirth. The
imagery of dreams, it can be seen, has exceptional power both to
communicate and to stir the emotions.
In order to get a better grip on the image, we have been speculating on how the impulse deriving from the senses or the unconscious might have presented itself to consciousness. In citing the
image as a likely mechanism, we are not, however, suggesting that
images speak only to consciousness. Jung took the view that we are
capable of deriving images directly from the substrate of the
nervous system; that is, without their being processed by the cerebral cortex (Jung, 1960 [1952], par. 957). It is known that some
emotions derive from the limbic system, which is distinct from,
and prior on the evolutionary scale to, the cerebral system
(Ornstein, 1991, p. 80). It is, or was, something of a revolutionary
idea that there are forms of thinking that do not involve conscious
processing. It means that we have direct, non-conscious ways of
apprehending and responding to the environment in what would
appear to be a rational way. The concept of a direct response to the
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environment ts in nicely with an evolutionary timetable in which

hominids were responding to the environment, presumably
through unconscious imagery, long before consciousness was a
physical possibility. It is largely in this interval of aeons that Jung
conceives there to have occurred in the collective unconscious,
through natural selection, the accumulation and recordation of
human experience. The image-making faculty would have been
built into the organism in the course of its development long before
there was a consciousness to apprehend its products. It is improbable that we would evolve a capacity to form images that could
only be apprehended by consciousness when consciousness did not
exist. The instincts and the extension beyond them, the collective
unconscious, must respond to images as well. Of course, we cannot
know what really it is that tickles the unconscious. What registers
to consciousness as an image might be something else to the unconscious. Even so, it is all of a package. We are talking now about
whatever it is that presents itself to consciousness as images. The
point is that it must be, and must have been in the preconscious
state, operative at the unconscious level.
The idea of the direct reception of images without conscious
processing does not pose a contradiction to Jungs Kantian stance
that holds that we cannot know whether we perceive the world as
it actually is. Even direct perceptions must nevertheless be considered as affected by the psychic apparatus, whatever it may be, upon
which they register. There is no reason to assume that images stemming directly from the nervous system are more literally reective
of outer reality than are those routed through consciousness.
Let us revisit that wily woodland bird, the ruffed grouse. The
four-wheel drive vehicle that comes upon the grouse on a back road
might not spook it, whereas anything on foot almost surely would.
This is because there is no pattern in the grouses brain matched by
that newcomer to the forest scene, the sport utility vehicle. As it
moves towards the grouse, perhaps at some point the vehicle will
conform to the pattern of charging beast wired into the grouses
brain. Then the grouse roars off into the brush. Some butterflies
feed as caterpillars only on a single species of plant. The buttery
does not it about like Goldilocks checking every sort of plant until
it nds just the right one on which to deposit its eggs. It knows
right from the beginning the single type of plant on which its future
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larvae can feed and grow. There is probably not room within the
cranium of the bird or the equivalent space in the buttery to house
the incomprehensibly complex neural apparatus necessary to what
we would call consciousness. What I am saying is that the complex
patterns that the buttery is able to recognize in the ower and that
the grouse is unable to recognize in the vehicle are the same things
that come to us as images.
I am a y sherman. I get satisfaction from inducing a trout who
is feeding on insects oating on the surface of a stream to mistake
a patch of feathers tied to a hook for a bit of food. Thats right, I take
pleasure in outsmarting a sh. But it is not as easy as you may
think. The trout is hovering just beneath the surface of a crystalclear stream selecting from among bits and pieces of matter oating three or four inches from its nose things that look like the
particular insect abundant on the water at the time that is serving
as lunch. And a trout can be very discriminating. But what about the
leader? The leader is a clear length of lament joining the relatively
thick line to the y. For difcult sh, a very ne tippet to this leader
is selected. Most fishermen believe, no doubt, that this is so the
trout will not see it. Think of it! The trout is able to reject a tiny y
because it is not precisely the right size or because its wing does not
lie just so, but it cannot see a leader? I think the trout sees the leader.
But, for the trout, the leader does not count. It is not in the trouts
computer. But the mayfly, Baetis, most decidedly is, although
presumably not by its technical name. What is in the computer is
the pattern of Baetis, in all the forms in which generations of trout
have encountered it, nymph, dun, and spinner. Replicate the form
on which the trout is feeding, and you are on. The leader and, for
that matter, the hook are seen by the trout, but as far as the trout is
concerned they do not exist. Why then, the ne tippet, which experience shows affords an advantage? Because its greater exibility
allows for a more natural oat. Anything coming down the river in
an unnatural way is denitely not on for lunch.
We had an old Pointer named Jake, who was apparently eating
road-kill up on the highway when he was rolled under the undercarriage of an eighteen-wheeler, miraculously, without being killed.
The encounter clearly made a strong impression on Jake, so I
thought to take advantage of it. Every Sunday when I took Jake up
to get the paper I would stop him short of the road and point to
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where the incident had occurred, saying firmly: Careful, Jake,

Truck! And I could see the response forming behind his earnest
yellow eyes. I dont know about truck, but I can tell you one
thing: Im not having any more of that possum. Perhaps if the
truck had taken on the image of charging large animal . . .
Well, you might say, the animal might not have had a mental
picture or anything like that, it might have just felt a certain way.
Certainly at very primitive levels of biological organization image
formation is inconceivable, say in bacteria. There would simply be
stimulus and response. But, at the level of consciousness, the sort of
feeling just suggested is one of the kinds of manifestations we are
describing. It would be, say, an emotion. Although we are usually
not aware of them, images in the sense in which we are using the
term seem to lie behind the emotions in the same way they lie
behind our thoughts. Jung is said to have commented that one of
the things he tried to do late in his life was to penetrate to the image
lying behind a particular feeling or emotion he was experiencing.
What if the instinct in a certain situation were to be to ee? The
emotion, of a piece with the instinct, is fear. Sometimes it is possible to catch the underlying image. We are in a dark place and hear
a noise behind us. We may see in our minds eye a threatening
gurea gure that somehow gets placed behind us at the site of
the noise. We have imagined something, and coupled with the image
that has come to us is the onset of the emotion, fear.
What we are now able to recognize through our consciousness
as emotions were being experienced by our ancestors in the
absence of conscious imagery. It is easy to think of examples of reactions that might have occurred before the advent of conscious
reection. Consider a typical reaction to the onset of pain. Initially
the reaction may be disproportional to the level of pain actually
experienced. On reection, we may conclude that the exaggerated
reaction sprang from the anticipation that the level of pain might
increase. But the impulse was immediate and not itself the product
of reection. It was due to an image or feeling about where the pain
might go, which, because it was instantaneous, could have had little
to do with the initial extent of the pain, and nothing to do with an
analysis of its cause and the possibility of its continuing or increasing. Indeed, many people, some sitting in dentists chairs, have a
strong reaction in anticipation of pain even as their reason tells
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them that the pain will surely be much more contained than the
reaction warrants. The feeling, in other words, may be reviewed by
consciousness, but it is not the product of consciousness.
The projection of archetypal images

The archetypes shape all conscious and unconscious functions, but
there are times when an archetype is especially activated or
constellated. Jung suggests that every psychic reaction which is
out of proportion to its precipitating cause should be investigated
as to whether it may be conditioned at the same time by an archetype (Jung, 1964 [1931a], par. 57). Everyone has both witnessed
and experienced over-reactions. The term over-reaction itself
suggests that there is something beyond the precipitating cause to
account for the magnitude of the reaction. In such cases the stamp
of the constellated archetype is its numinosity: its ability to fascinate or compel.
Let us hark back for a moment to the illustration of the imagined threatening gure in the dark. A further observation is that the
unconscious image of the lurking gure was projected into the
unknown of the darkness. As we know, interior images may be
projected on to the exterior world. When the fact of such a projection is made conscious, when we realize that the image sprang from
something within us, we see it as again inside our minds. The term
for this is introjection. When the image is introjected it tends to
lose its numinous power. If, for example, we stop to consider that
the shadowy gure behind us in the dark exists only in our imagination, we may calm down.
Today we recognize a psychic disturbance as a part of psychology. In a former time it would have registered as a part of the physical world. An alluring nixie from the dim bygone, says Jung, is
today called an erotic fantasy (Jung, 1959 [1954a], par. 54). It was
not so very long ago that a woman found to have such fantasies
could have been condemned as a witch and burned at the stake
for having literally consorted with the devil. We look at a tree and
think with condence that what we visualize has some direct and
fairly accurate reference to the object before us. Accepting that we
can never know the thing in itself, we take our perception to be
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of the real object, coloured though it may be by the process by

which we perceive it. In any event, we normally expect that we are
seeing it relatively independently of the contents of our unconsciouses. The projection of unconscious contents upon the tree has
been withdrawn through the mechanism of increased consciousness. Our relative objectivity rests upon our underlying knowledge
that the tree consists of wood and leafy vegetation, of which we
have some understanding, and that it came about in a certain way
and functions according to certain biochemical processes. These
notions are largely incompatible with the idea, say, that the tree is
inhabited by spirits, or is our ancestor.
The cave person, let us call her Alice, existing in a quasiconscious state, saw the exterior world in terms, not of objects and
events separate from her, but of the unconscious contents that were
a part of her ancestral psychic make-up. As her ego was not differentiated so as to become a distinct centre of consciousness, Alice
still saw no clear distinction between herselfi.e., the still forming
egoand the exterior world. Thus, she saw things that were going
on in her mind as a part of world around her. Of course, she did not
know she was visualizing unconscious contents. Projection is the
unconscious imposition of an inner image upon an external object or
event. An occurrence was not, to the preconscious Alice, the product of a natural causeshe had, no doubt, at best a somewhat
confused sense of cause and effector a chance event, but an omen,
a development infused with archetypal imagery and therefore
freighted with meaning. Only gradually did human beings obtain
a measure of control over their world by giving things names; that
is, by becoming conscious of them as things distinct in their own
right. Adams naming of the animals in Genesis betokens this sort
of differentiation. At this point (of course there was no point, in the
sense of a specic point in time, but rather a long progression at
different paces in different places and with many a regress) the
things of the outside world took on what we may call their literal
meaning.
To the primitive mind, activated portions of the unconscious
associated with an archetype may show themselves as the hand of
a deity, actively producing effects in the natural world. A psychologically more sophisticated person, responding to the activation of
the archetype, might be aware at least that an unconscious element
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is generating an emotional response to a certain situation. Yet even

the superstitious Alicelet us move her forward in time to the early
stages of civilizationwas conscious of the attributes she saw the
Goddess to possess and of what her relation to the Goddess was.
She had a clear idea, that is, of what the Goddess could do to or for
her and of what the Goddess might require by way of invocation or
propitiation. This is, of course, a far cry from a recognition that the
forces that demanded obeisance sprang from her own psyche.
Much, but not everything, remained unconscious.
The more conscious stance allows a more realistic adaptation to
the exterior world. Something is lost, however, in the process of
withdrawing the projections of unconscious contents: most
profoundly, the conviction with which they present themselves, the
conviction, as in our example, that attaches to an encounter with the
Goddess. In appropriate circumstances this conviction can endow
one with supreme condence, and in any event there is little about
it in the way of doubt. An enlargement of consciousness, on the
other hand, makes psychic energy, or libido, subject to the disposal
of the individual will. Psychic energy is, as it were, released from
the bonds of the projection. The conscious individual can direct and
focus attention, whereas the individual fixated by projection
perceives this power as springing from the object of the projection.
Attention is commanded. The associated psychic energy is therefore
not available to the individual to deploy at will (Harding, 1971,
p. 76). Jung gives a simple example. The term physical matter
(from mater) is a lifeless term. It has been stripped of its numinous
connotation of the Great Mother, and has thus lost the emotional
energy evoked by the image, say, of Mother Earth (Jung, 1976
[1964], par. 584). The person for whom the concept of matter
invokes Mother Earth, say a Native American addressing sacred
ground, may not be in full control of the emotion which that
concept imparts. The person, on the other hand, who contemplates
physical matter is not caught up with that emotion and may
approach the subject with relative objectivity. The psychic energy
that the rst person projects upon Mother Earth is not expended
by the second person, who may then otherwise, and, usually more
usefully, gain access to it. But the very ability to dispose of libido
implies the ability to make choices, and with that, of course, comes
doubt. The person who has withdrawn the projection, while at
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much greater liberty to do what she wants, enjoys little of the

compelling certainty of primitive Alice, who was rmly in projections grip.
Suppose I am exceptionally fastidious in manners. The likelihood is that some early developmental pattern or event fixed
unconscious contents upon an archetype, the effects of which
continue to inuence my behaviour. I may, for example, have been
led by the archetypal set-up rigorously to repress any disposition of
my own towards slackness in manners. At the same time, I will
have, in all likelihood, continually observed slackness in the
manners of others. Seen from the outside, my own repressed inclinations towards unruliness have been projected on those around
me, so as to produce in me a disproportionate reaction to their
conduct. I, in time, may come to realize that I am over-reacting,
perhaps by observing that conduct that offends me rarely bothers
anyone else. If other, perfectly refined people are undisturbed,
perhaps my reexive response is unwarranted. If, now, I tailor my
reactions in accordance with this observation, I will have
supplanted an unconscious motive with a conscious one, even
while remaining unaware of the basis for my reexive attitude. The
projection, in other words, will have been partially withdrawn. I
will have gained the power to regulate my own behaviour by
containing what I now recognize to be an unjustified sense of
outrage or disgust. I may, moreover, nd myself less preoccupied
with others behaviour and have therefore more energy to devote to
useful things. If, further, I come to understand the unconscious
basis for my initial reaction, I may in time become free altogether of
compulsive fastidiousness.
The language of the unconscious

We have said that the language of archetypes is symbolic. In as
much as the unconscious preceded consciousness, and therefore
rational thought, one would not expect the unconscious to speak in
the language of reason. The unconscious blithely ignores the strictures of logic, the tool of reason, such as the observance of temporal sequence, strict spatial relationships, and cause and effect.
Rather, it employs symbolic representation. In the language of the
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unconscious, at least as it communicates itself to consciousness, one

thing invokes another through association, analogy, opposition.
Dreams and fantasies can be quite contemporary in their material
a soaring bird of yore may be a plane or rocket todaybut their
mode remains symbolical. One must remember that we are not
speaking of a conversation with a friend on the street. On the
contrary, the unconscious that Jung postulates is an overwhelming
mystery. The deeply archaic, resonant, ambiguous, encompassing
language of symbols is suited to the majesty of that mystery.
Here again we observe the connection between poetry and the
workings of the unconscious. The magic of poetry lies in its symbolic
speech. A good poem delivers its impact with economy; rather than
being spelled out, things are suggested. The image reaches beyond
the words. The symbolic process is an experience in images and of
images, says Jung, 1959 [1954a], par. 82). The thrill in penetrating to
the meaning of an allusion in a poem must certainly have at its heart
more than the gratication of ones having been clever enough to
get it. I suspect the feeling has more to do with the fact that, in penetrating to the message of the poem, conscious processes are keying
into the natural symbolic paths of the unconscious. A gratifying connection with the unconscious is thus established.
Symbols, Jung observes, are never simple. Signs and allegories
are simple, admitting of complete conscious comprehension, but the
symbol always covers a complicated situation which is so far
beyond the grasp of language that it cannot be expressed at all in
any unambiguous manner (Jung, 1958 [1954a], par. 385). Both the
eye and the sun, for example, stand as symbols of consciousness.
They can also serve in the more literal sense as a simile or metaphor
for the same thing: as where one might say that sunlight, like
consciousness, dispels the darkness. When the meaning is on the
deeper, symbolic level, the link with the archetype is more immediate. Remember, though, that the archetype is not, itself, the symbol.
When a myth or dream evokes the eye or the sun, the archetype is
not the eye or the sun, nor is it consciousness, which is being
symbolically suggested. It is rather an unknown third thing, itself
inexpressible directly. Thus, the import of the archetype is carried
symbolically through the collection of images that form about it.
A myth in which archetypal expression is embedded is so vastly
ramied that, as Jung said, books would be required to achieve an
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explanation of a single point. What Perseus is compelled to do

with the Gorgons head, for example, would never occur to
anyone who doesnt know the myth (Jung, 1959 [1941b], par. 319).
And, of course, one could know the myth without being aware of
the signicance of what Perseus does. Having slain the dragon (the
Great Mother or the unconscious) in the person of the Gorgon,
Perseus gives the severed head to Athena, the goddess of wisdom,
who afxes it to the aegis, the celebrated shield given her by Zeus.
Thus is the unconscious, when heroically overcome and dismembered, placed in the service of wisdom, or elevated consciousness.
It might not, moreover, be inapposite to note that from the blood of
the severed head of the Gorgon sprang Pegasus, the winged horse,
whom Athena trains and puts at service of the muses, and, therefore, of course, of poets (Bullnch, 1962, p. 162).
Notwithstanding the complexity with which it typically confronts us, archetypal material can, to an extent, be dealt with in a scientic way. Just as with anything that requires analysis, one breaks
the material into its identiable parts and then compares and classies them according to their similarities (Jung, 1961 [1913], par. 326).
It was just this process that led Freud, Jung, and others to x upon
the correspondence between the material of dreams and fantasies
and that of myth. Indeed, studies in mythology and comparative religion proceed in the same way. Obviously, the process is not easy, and
the results are not always clear-cut, but neither of these conditions is
necessary to a scientic approach. At the same time, when one deals
with the archetypes within the context of the experience of the individual, one is confronted with the subjectivity of the individual, a
thing from which science has traditionally stood apart. That fundamental reservation of science has been compelled to undergo a reevaluation in view of the fact that quantum physics has found
observation of the physical world at its deepest levels to be necessarily conditioned by the subjectivity of the observer, and of the further fact that science must confront the human mind as the last
frontier into which it has been unable to make appreciable inroads.
Jung saw the unconscious as primarily compensatory in its
functioning. He theorized that it provides a counterweight to the
conscious standpoint, constellating images that serve to promote an
appropriate balance between the two aspects of the psyche. Jung
accordingly took the position, contrary to that of Freud, that there
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is no reason to believe that manifestations from the unconscious are

designed to mislead. He held, on the contrary, that the depiction
brought forward by a dream constitutes a frank representation of
the state of affairs as between the conscious and the unconscious
parts of the psyche. Of the dream Jung said, So owerlike is it in
its candour and veracity that it makes us blush for the deceitfulness
of our lives (Jung, 1964 [1934], par. 305).
Jung saw the unconscious, then, as manifesting itself in such a
way as suggest the direction that consciousness should take. He saw
it as generative, goal-orientated, and directed towards the future.
Freud, by contrast, sought to look behind manifestations of the
unconscious to nd their meaning in some past event. Freud found
that, as much of what appears in dreams has been repressed as
incompatible with the conscious attitude, dream material is often
disguised. What Jung, on the other hand, tended to see in the notorious inscrutability of dreams is the difculty consciousness has in
deciphering symbolic meaning. The resistance of the rational mind
to relinquishing its categories in deference to the non-rational parlance of dream symbols is extremely strong. There are, moreover,
inherent difculties in the process. Jung illustrates this point with the
example of the opposing aspects of the Great Mother as encountered
by the hero. Logic nds it hard to accept that a thing is one thing now
and, in the next moment, its opposite. Yet the Great Mother appears
alternately as the nurturing source of life and a terrifying demon:
This image, taken as a kind of musical gure, a contrapuntal modulation of feeling, is extremely simple and its meaning is obvious. To
the intellect, however, it presents an almost insuperable difculty,
particularly as regards logical exposition. The reason for this lies in
the fact that no part of the hero myth is single in meaning, and that,
at a pinch, all the gures are interchangeable (Jung, 1956 [1952],
par. 611).
The opposition between the archetypes and the instincts

The archetypes describe their own courses, often in direct opposition to our conscious volition. But by their numinous character they
inuence the conscious attitude, presenting now a fascination, now
a repulsion. Jung characterized the archetypes and the instincts as
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opposites, because the role of the archetypes in directing consciousness is to curb the instincts, channelling the energy that is their
natural resource into paths that can be controlled by conscious
judgement. This is not to say that the instincts, themselves are not
driven by the archetypes. Archetype and instinct are just words
that describe different aspects of a basic thrust in nature. It is not
inconsistent to consider that the archetypes both underlie the
instincts and direct consciousness so as to regulate them. We cannot
prescribe how nature should behave, or choose the routes by which
she brings about the development of her creatures. But precisely
through this strange opposition she has brought Homo sapiens to the
state that, for all its precariousness, and for better or for worse, has
given him dominion over all of the other creatures of the earth.
Each form of life has a particular pattern of behaviour, which
leads us to distinguish it from inert matter and from other life
forms. This pattern of behaviour we recognize in more developed
creatures as instinct. The instincts could be viewed as the blueprint,
or, as Jung puts it, the ground plan, of a species. We have traditionally accepted a division between what in the make-up of the
creature is tangible, the cells, say, and what is not, i.e., that which
causes the creature to function. But Jung compels us to accept that
a transition must logically be made between the two. We observe,
he points out, that the bodily organs are in all humans much the
same, and that the brain is such an organ. The psyche stems from
the brain, and it should follow that the mental processes that the
brain generates should be organized in much the same way in all
of us (Jung, 1963, p. xix). So beguiled are we by the seeming freedom we have in our own thought-making, however, that we tend,
while knowing perfectly well to the contrary, to think that
consciousness is entirely independent of the organ that generates it.
When one drops this illusion, one may more readily grasp that all
human brains will logically generate at least their unconscious
emanations in the same fundamental congurations. Consciousness
may indeed enjoy a measure of freedom, but the instincts and, as
we shall see, the unconscious at its deeper levels are bound to be
genetically basedand therefore rooted in the physical, just as are
our tangible bodily organs.
Instincts evolve with their respective life forms. But we must
conclude that something further happens in the case of humans, for
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we know that we developed consciousness. We have made the case

as best we can that consciousness grew out of and rests upon the
collective unconscious. If that is so, then, at least in humans, the
collective unconscious must have become broader than what is
necessary to drive the instincts. Another way to say this, though it
tampers with the traditional terminology, is that in humans there is
a particularly elaborated set of instincts that initiate and guide a
movement towards consciousness. That same consciousness then
stands outside the instincts and serves to regulate them.
Even preconscious or liminally conscious humans managed a
much greater diversity in the way they lived than the other higher
animals. The making of tools, re, clothes, baskets, pots, and objects
of art seems to have been going on when the light of consciousness
was at most but dimly lit. These enhancements of adaptation must
have arisen with, and aided in shaping, a collective unconscious
that reached well beyond the purely instinctual. Finally, that collective unconscious arrived at the point from which it launched the
great expansion of consciousness that is marked by the development and advance of civilization over the last six thousand years.
The human ground plan is so constituted that the natural or
instinctual side of every individual actually pushes the individual
towards the conscious state. This urge is countered by the strong
attraction of the unconscious state, the pull of the oblivion of the
purely instinctual response. But the construction of the psychic
mechanism is such that the ego resists that return at all costs, because
for the ego to succumb is to yield up consciousness, to surrender the
priceless evolutionary edge that makes human beings human.
The genetic evolution of the collective unconscious

The deposit of mankinds whole ancestral experiencerich in
emotional imageryof father, mother, child, husband and wife, of
the magic personality, of dangers to body and soul, has exalted this
group of archetypes into the supreme regulating principles of religious and even of political life, in unconscious recognition of their
tremendous psychic power. [Jung, 1960 [1931a], par. 337]
Jung postulates that the primary regulators of the daily behaviour

of both individuals and societies are the archetypes. Our attention
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is galvanized, our thoughts organized, our motives prompted by

ideas and images that spring from them. But he goes further to say
that these ideas and images are the product of humanitys ancestral
experience. How did this experience become encoded in the collective unconscious? For, as long as humans have been able to experience the psyche, the archetypes must have been in place. Indeed, as
the drivers of the instincts, they must in some form have been
present for at least the greater part of the evolution of the human
being as a species.
Jung tended to believe that the archetypes are timeless and
immutable. We have had a glimpse of Jungs essentially Platonic
spirit, and we will take up further later on the idea that the archetypes are timeless forms, knit into the very fabric of the universe.
At this stage of our inquiries it is not necessary to the argument.
Indeed, at this stage there is no point of departure between the
idealist (Platonic) and materialist views. Let us say, for argument,
that we accept the concept of the archetypes, but are given to a
materialist/deterministic view generally. We would hold that life
arose through a fortuitous combination of events and that the same
is so of consciousness. In arriving at this latter conclusion, we
would have had little difculty in nding that the archetypes, in the
form of a disposition to generate certain images in response to
external or internal stimuli, found their way into the species by way
of Darwinian natural selection. The modern idealist would see it
the same way.
When Jung says that the fruit of human experience is accumulated in the collective unconscious, we can visualize that that accumulation took place in the human organism alongside of the
development of its physical attributes. Why, asks Jung (1959 [1939],
par. 518), should we believe that the structure of the psyche is the
only thing in the world that has no history? Even our consciousness, he observes, has a history of thousands of years (ibid.).
Instinctual behavioural characteristicstimidity or ferocity, say, or
the tendency to form a cocoon on only a particular kind of plant
are the products of DNA, just as are physical structures such as legs,
livers, or the pattern of spots on the coat. They evolve with the
organism through natural selection. We accept this genetic basis for
the instincts. If we take the instincts, further, as being grounded in
archetypes, then we might also reasonably postulate a genetic basis
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for other parts of the collective psychethose parts, for example,

that dispose us to form the images that register on consciousness. It
would follow, in other words, that the collective unconscious, also,
is encoded in us through our genes.
The non-genetic evolution of consciousness

Jung made the distinction between consciousness and the collective
unconscious on the ground that the former develops individually
whereas the latter is inherited (Jung, 1959 [1936/37], par. 90).
Obviously, ones consciousness is specic to ones self, alone. It was
not implicit in Jungs scheme, therefore, that consciousness should
have become, like the collective unconscious, ingrained in the
collective psyche. It is tempting to imagine that in the course of the
expansion of consciousness the psyche has indelibly recorded
earlier conscious experiences and built upon them in arriving at
later, higher, levels of consciousness. One must shy away, however,
from such a speculation, for it is to say that something personal, i.e.,
conscious experience, might somehow become imprinted in the
genome. First and foremost, to say so is to enter upon the scientically untenable ground of accepting genetic transmission of individually acquired characteristics. Conscious experience is a thing
that one acquires during a lifetime. To propose that it gets incorporated into the DNA is pure Lamarckism. We need not worry about
that theoretical trap, however. Other considerations will steer us
away. Let us take a few of them in account.
The rapid expansion of consciousness

There are radically different time-scales involved between the
evolution of the collective unconscious and the evolution of consciousness. Our bodies are presumably still in the process of evolving, but it is a slow enough process as to be practicably meaningless
to us. In consequence, the human being strikes us as being morphologically xed. The psyche can be looked at in the same way. Given
that our physical apparatus and our psychic apparatus evolved
jointly and interdependently (Geertz, 1973, pp. 6768), it follows
that the collective unconscious would, along with the physical body
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and brain, have been operationally complete by the time we became

recognizable as Homo sapiens. In other words, the collective unconscious, like the body, would have developed incrementally over
vast spans of time, and it would continue to do so only at a pace so
slow as not to be discernible at all in historical time. Yet, in the last
the six thousand years, a period beginning with the birth of civilization, psychic advances in Homo sapiens have occurred at a rate
unparalleled by anything in the course of evolution. The vehicle for
this dramatic change has been consciousness. Here, as shall shortly
be made clear, I am not speaking of advances in intellect, but in the
ability in the collective objectively to apprehend the world. Simply
put, in a state of relative consciousness one has a better handle on
reality than in a state of relative unconsciousness.
The mark of a societys level of consciousness is in its culture.
For hundreds of thousands of years, human societies lived in a
primitive state. They distinguished themselves neither by agricultural nor architectural achievement nor by the development of
elevated religious or political institutions. As to all the things we
might think of as attributes of an advanced consciousness, the
record of primitive cultures is largely blank. Humankind was, as
the historian Arnold Toynbee suggests (1946, pp. 4851), in a
prolonged state of repose. About six thousand years ago societies
suddenly burst into creative activity. Civilizations rst appeared on
the face of the earth. Thereafter they surged and relapsed, but after
each relapse there was a resurgence, and usually in consequence of
a new or altered cultural style. It is our thesis that what drove these
changes was the creative force of consciousness. But, if that is the
case, this ourish of creative activity has occurred over so short a
span of time as not feasibly to have allowed for concomitant
changes in the collective unconscious. So rapid a procession of
changes could hardly have occurred through the mechanism of
genetic natural selection.
It is appropriate to note here that, when I speak of primitive
cultures, I would not have the reader envision tribesmen to be
found today in remote places. By the theory we are advancing,
these latter societies have, by their very existence, demonstrated a
potent adaptation to their environments. If we take consciousness
to be the adaptive tool par excellence, the level of consciousness
attained by such peoples cannot be inconsequential, for their
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societies emerged as survivors in the competition that must everywhere have raged among cultural styles to secure a niche in the
environment. A distinction should be made between these peoples
and peoples who existed at the very dawn of consciousness. If the
presence of culture, however basic, is to be our guide, we can
suppose that incipiently conscious peoples existed among the rst
humanoid toolmakers, long before humans had acquired their
present physical conguration and mental capacity. Culture would
have evolved slowly among such peoples. We can deduce that
before the advent of agriculture and stock breeding, less than 11,500
years ago (Cauvin, 2000, p. 25), variations among cultures were
rather limited. There were only so many cultural patterns available
to hunter-gatherers in a given environment. Thus we can opine, on
the basis of observable diversity in historical times, that, as peoples
experienced the beginnings of consciousness, there occurred an
efflorescence of widely varying cultural patterns. Such rapid
cultural change could not have had genetics as its base.
The context for consciousness is but little changed

Conscious experience translates, as one of its primary offshoots,
into knowledge. Yet if human experience continued to be hardwired into the psyche beyond the point when modern humans
emerged, the additions would not be those reected in expanded
knowledge. The fact is, our experience of external reality has not
changed in any fundamental way. That is to say, the needs, the
dangers, and the calamities that have been faced by conscious
people have been, in the fundamental sense, pretty much constant.
There have always been love, lust, privation, war, natural disaster,
and just plain luck, good and bad. The faces or frequency of these
elementary conditions may have varied from place to place or have
been altered by changes in social organization, but at base they
remained unchanged in human experience. As to life after, say, the
industrial revolution, one may ponder whether the events we
encounter, along with the stresses attendant upon them, are different in kind from those confronted by members of archaic societies.
Regardless, any difference would be but a small deviation in the
long record of human culture. Thus, there do not seem to have been
the changes in the external situation of the species requisite to impel
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knowledge-based structural changes in the psyche, regardless of

the time-scale involved.
The psychic unity of all humanity

Finally, we must consider the contradiction between the idea of
consciousness-related structural changes in the psyche and the
generally accepted anthropological doctrine of the psychic unity of
humankind. The latter holds that there are no essential differences
in the fundamental nature of the mental processes among humans
anywhere in the world (Geertz, 1973, p. 62). There are observable
physical differences, and, at least arguably, mental differences,
between the various peoples of the earth. These, except for supercial genetic differences, relating to skin colour as an example, one
must take as products of adaptive or preferential breeding within
groups. There may be in consequence of cultural or environmental
differences greater concentrations of, say, tall people or stocky
people as between populations, but the possibilities in virtually the
whole of the human genome are potentially exploitable within
every existing society. The point could hardly be made more
resoundingly than by the simple presence in the National Basketball Association of Yao Ming of China, the seven-foot, five-inch
standout for the Houston Rockets
This is to say that the primitive tribesman of today operates
intellectually in just the same way as everybody else. Yet, if the
psyche has changed appreciably in the last six thousand years with
the onrush of civilizations, the consequence would be that the
fundamental mental make-up of a person today would be different
from that of the person who lived at the dawn of civilization. The
latter would have a mental apparatus less evolved than that of
modern people. The evidence, however, is to the contrary. Aristotle
is closer to us in time than to the earliest civilized thinkers. Yet there
is no basis upon which to suppose that the human brain of which
his was a specimen was more advanced genetically than that of the
earliest city dwellers. By the same token, we can suppose that a
person of the present era, Einstein, say, might expect to be
equipped, genetically, with no more powerful a mental organ than
Aristotles. None the less, it is fair to say that developing the theory
of general relativity was not a possibility for Aristotle. Of course,
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Einstein was able to build on knowledge developed by Aristotle

and others after him, but, more importantly, there was available to
Einstein a way of looking at the world that was simply not available to one of Aristotles day. This way of looking of looking at the
world is, I posit, the product of advances in consciousness.
Moreover, as we shall see, through the instrumentality of culture, it
can be retained for succeeding generations.
Natural selection among cultures

As we have suggested, there is a way, one that does not involve
genetic selection, whereby consciousness might build upon itself,
preserving what has gone before while nevertheless creating new
forms. That way is culture. Physical evolution, in order to work its
marvels, must attend upon the combination of genetic change,
natural selection, and vast spans of time. Consciousness, on the
other hand, through the medium of culture, allows for experiments
to be launched which may lead, within a relatively short time, to a
potentially enhanced cultural form. The process of natural selection
is at work, but it works, not upon genetic change, but rather upon
changes in cultural styles. These styles reflect, largely, conscious
applications of unconscious impulses. Styles that afford the group
the most successful adaptation to its surroundings are those most
likely to be preserved. The cultural patterns of apes and monkeys
vary hardly at all within their respective species. They are hardwired into the species as instincts. But the lifestyles of human
beings can take on the widest imaginable range of variations. And
this is because consciousness has to a large extent freed humans
from the rigid forms of the instincts.
What, then, might have been altered in the actual structure of
the psyche in the course of the expansion of consciousness marked
by the advent and advance of civilizations? The answer would
appear to be, little, if anything. It seems that we are pretty well
stuck with the proposition that we are not innately smarter than
human beings, generally, have been for a very, very long time. Still,
we can recognize that real changes have occurred in historical
times, if not in how peoples have operated mentally, then in how
they have responded psychically to the basic conditions of life. The
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response, for example, to the loss of a loved one by an Egyptian of

the Old Kingdom, a Greek of the classical age, or a modern Westerner would no doubt differ. And all would no doubt differ from
that of an archaic tribesman, convinced of the work of evil spirits or
the magic of an enemy. What seems to have changed is the way we
encounter the world psychically, and in this encounter the change
wears the face of culture.
Our evolving psychic responses represent, in Jungian terms, a
progression in our ways of experiencing the archetypes. New
expressions of the archetypes, rst registered in individuals, would
have been captured and preserved by a particular cultural cast for so
long as that culture survived, or until it changed in response to new
conditions. New challenges prompt new archetypal expressions,
resulting in new cultural congurations. These are passed on as a
part of the culture from generation to generation for as long as they
remain congenial to the conditions in which the culture nds itself.
Thus, innovations that with increasing efficacy reflect reality are
successively preserved. These innovations are achieved through a
heightened consciousness in the extraordinary individual. And they
are preserved, not through genetic change, but through the mechanisms of culture.1 Nor are the best of such innovations likely ever to
be lost. Take writing, for instance. It has stayed with us from the
dawn of civilization. It may be, and has been, improved upon, but it
is unlikely, as long as there are humans, that it will ever be lost,
though it could conceivably one day become, owing to the development of more effective forms of communication, a dead mechanism.
The images that supported a dawning consciousness, so the
argument goes, were given expression in culture through myth and
ritual. These latter, on their part, served to bolster the purchase on
consciousness they reected. Religious rites, for example, tend to
enshrine unconscious contents as projected upon the divine gures
they celebrate. But, at the same time, they are consciously performed and consciously preserved, so they afford a conscious orientation to the external world. In the more primitive stages of the
practice of magic and religion, the orientation established would
have been, to be sure, a somewhat unrealistic one. Nevertheless, as
we have earlier observed, it evidently provided a better adaptive
tool than blind instinct. Even as a group engages in what may be
seen as wasteful and bizarre sacrificial rites, say in the effort to
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make the Goddess fructify the earth, those rites nevertheless serve
to focus the group upon the planting and cultivation necessary to
the project. It is easy to imagine the agrarian primitive, without
something powerful to concentrate the mind, as lapsing into
confused, aimless, or indolent behaviour. Or we might conceive
that, in the absence of an entrenched ritual, the husbandman might
fail of the wherewithal to keep proper track of time and seasons,
and to relate to them their appropriate activities. Yet divinities who
beckon in the stages of the moon or the equinoxes of the sun might
summon the worker to the necessary tasks.
In similar fashion, initiation rites, almost universally present in
culture, serve to reinforce the differentiation of consciousness.
Typical of them are rituals through which the youth is reborn; the
child dies and the youth steps forward into the state of manhood
and independent self-assertion. For girls, social observances attendant upon menstruation, marriage, and motherhood serve similar
ends. Culture both arose with and sustains consciousness. It is the
mechanism by which the progress of conscious experience is xed
and preserved. Culture serves in respect of consciousness, in other
words, as the analogue to the process by which the unconscious
experience of humanity was collected within the human genome as
the collective unconscious. The new experience is not recorded and
preserved in the DNA, but rather in the collective consciousness of
the culture.
Recapitulation from the materialist standpoint

For the propositions put forth in this book to be persuasive to a
broad readership, the most central of them must stand the muster
of the essentially materialist point of view of our culture. I believe
that what we have covered so far does so. The materialist approach
to the development of consciousness through the archetypes does
encounter, however, one problem. Why, one might ask, would the
archetypes be so constituted as to accommodate, indeed activate,
consciousness, if they themselves evolved in our species during the
period when the species was, in the main, unconscious? What, in
the absence of consciousness, would afford a selective advantage
to a collective unconscious set up so as to serve the needs of
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consciousness? Remember, however, that we are notoriously unable

to follow the paths that evolution has taken to arrive at a particular
phenotype. Francis Crick, co-discoverer with James Watson of the
DNA molecule, has said, wryly, that it is a rule that: Evolution is
cleverer than you are (Dennett, 1995, p. 74). Consciousness is obviously an excellent adaptive device, and there might easily be explanations of why the collective unconscious evolved in such a way as
to support consciousness that in no way suggest that consciousness
was in some way the goal all along.
The materialist view, then, would go something like this. It is
postulated that all the basic experiences of hominid creatures came,
through natural selection, to be embedded in the collective unconscious, in the form of archetypes. This archetypal imprint of the
history of the creature led to inner promptings, though not at rst
experienced consciously, that caused the creature to react in certain
situations in certain ways. Archetypes that produced such promptings as favoured survival were preserved in the genetic make-up of
the species. Given the long accumulation of archetypes and the
marvellous exibility that consciousness has demonstrated itself to
have, when the time came, consciousness simply appropriated from
within the archetypal matrix whatever was necessary to its advance.
We have observed that it appears that early humans lived in a
state of participation mystique. This state of quasi-consciousness
obtains at a time before a clear ego development has transpired. It
presupposes the lack of a rm differentiation between the individual and the external world, because there was no clearly emerged
ego to which everything else might be related. Early humans
projected manifestations from within their own unconsciouses
upon their surroundings and accordingly perceived them as being
actual parts of those surroundings. Thus, in response to the
hunters imprecations, the antelope spirit might submit the quarry
to the kill. Over long stages, and with many ts and starts, these
projections were increasingly withdrawn, and the psychic contents
giving them rise became conscious. That is, the world began
increasingly to appear to people as we see it today, rather than as a
stage on which unconscious fears and desires play themselves out.
What had previously been seen as existing outside, in nature, came
to be accepted as interior, mental, images. It became, that is to say,
the basis for conscious thought.
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Seen from the standpoint of religion, which is a good marker

of culture, we find that, over the extended period of conscious
development, vague uncontrollable demonic forms evolved into
specic divinities, whose motives might be grasped by conscious
reflection. These personalized divinities in turn developed into
personied ideas, and nally into abstract ideas (Jung, 1967 [1929],
par. 49). Through this process human beings gained the power to
manipulate the material whose origins lie in the archetypes, and we
have thereby acquired the wide compass that consciousness at our
present state can offer. The same process that prompted cultural
advance is identiable in the psychic maturing of each individual.
Some impulse, over and apart from parental and societal nudging,
seems to guide the process in the individual. Consider, for example, the psychological changes that inexorably attend upon puberty.
Teenager implies a lot more than the indicated number of
years of age. Jung sees the collective unconscious itself as this
motivating forceas spontaneously producing images that lead
the way towards psychic differentiation and consciousness. In
other words, whatever drives the collective unconscious has
led human beings, through the images and ideas that come to
them, over the long haul, to increasingly expanded levels of
consciousness.
One must take as mustering considerable explanatory power
Jungs suggestion within the context of his thoughtfully workedout system that spontaneous psychic developments are brought
about by autonomous movements of the collective unconscious.
The materialist approach to that suggestion would say that natural
selection produced, as yet another of its wonders, a collective
unconscious uniquely constructed to do just this. Myths and rituals
whose function it is to strengthen our hold on an as yet unsteady
consciousness are themselves consciously observed, even if it is
not consciously known why. They are attributes of culture. The
driving force of evolution in humans shifted from the genetic to
the cultural. Its focus was redirected from changes in the DNA
within the cell to changes in the conscious stance of individuals,
echoed in culture. Yet, in its essence, the process is the same.
Characteristics promoting survival are preserved, and, within
culture as in biology, virtually inconceivable degrees of renement
can be achieved.
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Cultural movements
In the individual, dreams and fantasies may point the way for the
adjustment of an out-of-balance conscious orientation. Sooner or
later a change in the conscious orientation will be brought about
or stagnation in the life of the individual, or worse, will result. By
the same token, on the societal level, movement in the unconscious
prepares the ground for new cultural attitudes. When the general
system of adaptation breaks down, unrest ensues. A new attitude
towards life is required. The ground for such an attitude has long
been being prepared in the unconscious. Prevailing social, political,
and religious conditions have required the repression of nonconforming attitudes towards life, and these repressed attitudes,
over time, have effected an activation of corresponding contents in
the collective unconscious across the society. Certain highly intuitive
individuals become aware of the changes going on subliminally and
translate them into communicable ideas. Because parallel changes
have been going on in the unconsciouses of individuals all around,
these ideas are widely received and take currency (Jung, 1960 [1948],
par. 594).
Consider the rapid onset of Christianity arising out of the spiritually threadbare world of first century Rome. Moral decay,
brought on by the loss of vitality in the images of the Roman gods,
produced a malaise that could only be redressed by a new vision.
The alignment of the unconscious, in compensation of the
unhealthy state of affairs in the realm of the conscious, was ripe for
a new expression of the archetypes. At just this point Christianity
arose to provide a formulation of archetypal myths more suited to
the forthcoming age. The new connection it established with the
archetypes accounts for the great vitality with which the Christian
rite was so obviously imbued (Jung, 1963, par. 744). In just a few
hundred years Christianity took over the whole of the Roman
world.
At such times, the tendency towards enantiodromia is to be
observed. Enantiodromia, a running contrariwise, is a psychological
law given its name by Heraclitus (Jung, 1953 [1917], par. 111). He
meant by it that, sooner or later, everything runs into its opposite.
The concept bears a close identity to the interplay between the
Chinese yin and yang. The alchemists symbolized the tendency of
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the archetype to run into its opposite by the many-faceted uroboros,

the snake biting its tail, which we have encountered before (Jung,
1960 [1947], par. 416). Contrast the stern authoritarianism reective
of the mentality of Imperial Rome with the elevation of meekness
as a virtue in the Christian ethic.
Momentous historical events are often seen as the cause for
changes in world view that attend upon them, but to Jung they
were more appropriately seen as occasions in which adjustments in
the collective unconscious make themselves manifest (Jung, 1960
[1948], par. 594). Major shifts in world view followed the two world
warsattitudes, for instance, in Europe and America about women
and their place in society. Is this the sort of shift that might have
been gestating in the collective unconscious? If so can all the horror,
destruction, and dislocation of those wars be conceived as a means
to such an end? Could, in other words, cataclysms of such scope
and magnitude be reasonably seen as the product of something so
ephemeral as movements in the collective psyche? But, one might
ask, what other than psychological mechanisms produced the
wars? Is not the thirst for power or even an urge for economic
advantage psychological? Seldom are these motivations seen
clearly as such by those who act upon them. Rather, the impulse is
cloaked in an image or ideal that is more acceptable to consciousnessnationalism, for example. And, thus, they remain unconscious and derive their force from unconscious energy. From Jungs
point of view, the violent psychic forces given vent in the world
wars were indeed released in consequence of broad movements in
the collective unconscious. Taking the long view, moreover, in
respect of the change in attitudes towards women, should that in
fact be a part of what was operating, who can say that the potential
liberation from domination of half the worlds population is not a
worthy predicate for upheavals even so great as these?
The forces behind the wars likewise represented an enantiodromia. The extraordinary technological products of European culture
were mobilized to lay waste the lands from which they had sprung.
Thus the rational attitude of culture necessarily runs into its opposite, namely the irrational devastation of culture (Jung, 1953 [1917],
par. 111). Jung wrote that sentence in Two Essays on Analytical
Psychology during the First World War. He let it remain in a revision
made in 1925, in as much as it had been conrmed more than once
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in the course of history. He noted in the next edition, in 1942, that

the next conrmation had not been long in coming (ibid., n. 13).
If one reflects that, as posited by Jung, all the forces of the
psyche, from instinctual drives to conscious thought, are given their
structure or shape by the archetypes, it is easier to comprehend the
possibility that great movements in history are inuenced by developments in the collective unconscious. It is through the archetypes
that religious ideas take their form and derive their strength (Jung,
1960 [1931a], par. 342). The archetypes lie as well beneath the core
ideas of philosophy and science, again supplying not only the categories which frame such ideas but also the attraction that draws
adherents to them (ibid.). We like to think that we are the masters of
our thoughts, but, viewed this way, it is the thought that takes over
the thinker and not the other way around (Jung, 1954 [1931],
par. 147).
The initial conception of the atom in modern science was as a
sort of mini-solar system: a nucleus with electrons revolving
around it in various orbits. This image was undone by Niels Bohr,
who, in 1913, supplied a quantum picture of the atom (Barrow &
Tipler, 1986, p. 304). The image of the stars wheeling around the
earth must be a deep-seated one indeed, going back as far as
humanitys fascination with the heavens. It translated readily into
the earth-centred conception of the solar system, which could then
be neatly reversed by the Copernican understanding, with earth
and its sister planets revolving around the sun. The ability of Bohr
and those working with him to break away from this ingrained
picture was a triumph of consciousness. A major advance in the
understanding of objective reality was achieved, by freeing thought
from the compulsion of a nave image. This does not mean,
however, that the archetype underlying the image of the planetary
model has given way to an intellect that is no longer beholden to
unconscious structures. Rather, the incompatibility of the earlier
image with scientic observation gave rise to a new image, a more
appropriate archetypal reading, this time taking the form of the
wave. The Copenhagen interpretation, the description of the quantum world advanced by Bohr and his colleagues was elevated
almost to a dogmaa fact that may be taken as a strong indicator
of an archetypal grounding. Scientists are not above the archetypes.
They can sometimes be their prisoners, trapped like anyone else by
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an idea with unconscious roots. But science is also the beneciary

of the archetypes, for it is by the attraction of new images, born of
the unconscious, that science makes its advances.
Some specific archetypes

Jung had a rare faculty for symbolic thinking, and this stood greatly
in aid of his insights into the unconscious. In addition, of course, he
accumulated observations from the psychic workings of a great
many patients. Even so, he could nd no way to convey in his writings the experience of the archetype: an incapacity he lamented. In
an attempt on one occasion at least to suggest the experience, he
pointed to the example of three commonly encountered archetypal
gures: the Shadow, the Syzygy, or royal pair, and the Self (Jung,
1959 [1951], par. 63). The Shadow is clearly recognizable in myth
and literature as the dark adversary, be it Iago, Mephistopheles, or
Darth Vader, and the Syzygy is the source behind all divine couples.
The Self, nally, underlies the supreme ideas of unity inherent in all
religious systems. We have mentioned the Shadow and shall come
again to it shortly, and, in the following chapter, on individuation,
we will try to impart a greater sense of the central gure of the Self.
The romantic pair perhaps needs no further elaboration.
In spite of Jungs own reticence in trying to pin down particular
archetypal gures, I will, in an attempt to bring some specicity
into the discussion, talk about some others of them. In doing so,
however, we must keep in mind that an archetype cannot be pinned
down. A gure that is brought to ground as a metaphor and captured by analysis is no longer the immediate embodiment of the
archetype. Such a gure will, in the process, have become entirely
conscious, and the vitality that attaches to the archetypal realm of
the unconscious will have slipped away. In the place of the archetypal image there will be concepts, by which conscious understanding is achieved. We would be operating, in other words, at a
further remove from the feeling-toned core of the archetype.
The Great Mother

The individuals primary experience of the Great Mother begins
before consciousness. There is every reason to believe that the child
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is the subject of unconscious experience while yet in the womb.

Certainly the infant partakes of unconscious experience in the rst
year of life. In that rst year, the human alone of all the animals lives
in a state of total dependence upon the mother. This is the equivalent of intrauterine time, and the child is psychically in the mother
during it (Neumann, 1994, p. 230). The unconscious psyche is
observably active in infants in this dependent state. Typically, not
until the third or fourth yearabout the time from which our rst
memories appearhas the ego become sufficiently differentiated
that conscious experience on a sophisticated level takes hold. It is
not surprising therefore that the image of the mother should be a
particularly powerful one in the archetypal world. Indeed, the Great
Mother is herself the symbol of that world (Neumann, 1959, pp.
184185). The Great Mother in her most elemental form is uroboric,
containing the opposites, including the masculine (Neumann, 1994,
pp. 188190). She can appear positively as the nurturing, embracing
mother, or negatively as the ensnaring or devouring mother. She
may appear in myths, dreams, and fantasies as Mother Earth, as the
Dragon, or as the interceding Mother of God. Or she can be the earth
itself and its fruit, the tree or the grain; or she can be the sea, the
vessel of life. In her transformative aspect she can be the moon, the
embodiment of the feminine, with its changes and rhythms.
The Father
As the Great Mother is the embodiment of the earth and sea and with
them all the depths of the unconscious, the Father reects the sky and
the spirit. Thus, it is our Father who art in Heaven. The fatherland
is not the land itself, but the nation, the cohering principle of the people. The Father image emerges out of the Mother Archetype, and
stands in opposition to it, just as in antiquity patriarchal religions
succeeded the chthonic cults of the Great Mother. The Father represents the world of moral commandments and prohibitions, as it is the
function of the world of the spirit to oppose pure instinctuality.
The Persona
The following archetypal gures are hard to discuss without entering the realm of personal psychology, but I shall tread lightly.
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Broadly put, the Persona is the image one establishes of oneself. The
image, of course, is particular to the individual, but its source is
archetypal, for it is necessary that every individual develop a
personality that she or he presents to the world. This personality
will always diverge from the real individual, because all of us
conduct a part of our psychic lives in secret. A person who let her
or his psychic impulses show through without in any way monitoring or regulating them would immediately be taken as an idiot
or a lunatic, or perhaps a criminal. At the same time, a basic level
of consciousness requires that we be aware that we are not the
precise person we present to those around us.
As it falls out then, we all carry around in ourselves an image of
our self that is the Persona. It is the way we tend to see ourselves,
although we are able on reflection to recognize the incongruity
between this image and who we actually are. Nevertheless, there is
a substantial risk that a person might completely identify herself or
himself with the Persona. As it is impossible for one to be just whom
she or he wants to be, a reaction in the unconscious in such a case
is sure to set in. The consequence will be moods, obsessions, vices,
or other behaviour that is inconsistent with the Persona (Jung, 1953
[1928], par. 307).
The Persona as I have described it may strike the reader as a
perfectly ordinary thing, familiar to all. Why, then, dress it all up as
a Jungian archetype? Consider, though, that I have described the
Persona as a potent image that everyone experiences in one way or
another. That is, in the main, how I have tried to depict archetypal
images generally.
The Shadow
The Persona is what we expose to the light of day; the Shadow hides
in the dark. In the Shadow are collected those parts of ourselves that
we find repugnant or that are otherwise inconsistent with the
Persona. We repress these traits and think we have got rid of them,
but in fact we have only pushed them down into the unconscious.
The Shadow is typically projected on to another person suitable to
the purpose. In our worst enemy we are likely to nd the parts of
ourselves we most despise. Much socially unsuitable sexuality lurks
in the Shadow. The Shadow makes a great subject for literature. Jung
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pointed to the relationship between Faust and Mephistopheles in

Goethes Faust as characterizing the relationship with the Shadow
(Jung, 1959 [1939], par. 513). Satan in Paradise Lost and Iago in Othello
are also great Shadow gures. We can recognize, therefore, that the
Shadow is a gure with a great deal of power. Often, what we push
out from the Persona are our idiosyncrasies. Yet, in some ways, these
more accurately reflect who we are than anything else.
Reincorporated into the overt personality, they can be liberating.
The Shadow, then, consciously accommodated, can work for us
rather than against us.
The Anima and Animus

Also related to the Persona is the gure described by Jung as the
soul-image: the Anima in men and the Animus in women (Jung, 1971
[1921], par. 808). As the Persona is the image by which we relate to
the world outside, the Anima and the Animus relate us to the unconscious within. The soul in a man is personied by a feminine gure;
correspondingly, the Animus has a masculine character in women.
The two gures are counterparts, but they function differently in
the two sexes, in as much as the relation to the unconscious differs
between the sexes. As with the Shadow, the Anima and Animus
often register through projection, in their case usually upon a
member of the opposite sex. The compelling attraction of romantic
love is typically the result of such a projection.
Other archetypal figures

The Trickster and the Wise Old Man or Woman (the Crone) are
other archetypal images commonly appearing in dreams, fantasies,
myth, and literature. Jung points out that archetypally-based functional or situational motifs also make regular appearances.
Examples are ascent or descent, a crossing, as of a ford or strait, the
world of darkness, helpful or dangerous animals, etc. (Jung, 1976
[1951], par. 1158).
In the light of day it might seem improbable that one should
actually experience the presence of such gures, but I think we all
do. For those not attuned to pronouncements from within, the
figures may not be recognized. But to one who recognizes them,
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regardless of whether or not their meaning is grasped, their reality is

beyond denial. To object to such an image because of its strangeness
or because it does not square with ones view of the world is like
objecting to the plausibility of the bodily conformation of the duckbilled platypus. The objection is of no consequence to the platypus.
The voucher for the living reality of these archetypal gures, said
Jung, lies in the experience of them by multitudes of people.
The religious impulse: an example of

archetypal images in operation
We have seen how the archetype of the Great Mother asserts the
earliest inuence upon the psychic development of the child. The
Great Mother embraces both sexes. She is the embodiment of the
unconscious, in the chaotic world of which there is no differentiation, sexual or otherwise. The build-up of consciousness implies
differentiation. The ego must accomplish a series of separations. It
must separate itself from the mother, from the environment, from
the body, and from the contents of the unconscious (cf. Wilbur, 1977,
p. 279, Figure 18). In step with that process, a progression of archetypes comes into focus.
Early on, the Father image splits off from that of the Great
Mother. It presents itself as the emblem of authority. The reason for
this development, says Jung, indeed its very possibility, stems
from the fact that the child possesses an inherited system that
anticipates the existence of parents and their inuence upon him
(Jung, 1961 [1949], par. 739). Thus, behind the biological father
stands the archetype of the Father. As the child grows up, there
occurs a struggle between the infantile attitude towards the parents
and the perceptions of increasing consciousness. The developing
child senses the incompatibility between the archetype-borne image
of the parents and the role and station of the parents in the real
world. As we elsewhere observed, the hitherto god-like parents
develop clay feet.
In the face of this incongruity, the paternal influence of the
infantile period is repressed and sinks into the unconscious. But it
is not eliminated. Like everything that has fallen into the unconscious, the infantile situation still sends up dim, premonitory feel-
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ings, feelings of being secretly guided by otherworldly inuences

(ibid.). With normal development these feelings, as they relate to
the father, are deflected towards a divine figure or figures. This
transfer is universal, says Jung, and occurs partly spontaneously
and partly through education (ibid.).
Because of its unconscious roots, the feeling of a relationship with
the divine, i.e., a religious conviction, is to a high degree impervious
to the objective analysis or criticism of the conscious mind. Thus,
Jung considers us to be inherently religious (ibid.). That which is the
province of faith is not provable one way or the other, but what can
be observed and demonstrated empirically is the intensity with
which metaphysical convictions are advanced and denied. The emotion, in other words, attaching to religious statements is a reliable
indicator of their connection with something that lies outside the
range of the consciousness of those who make them.
The inner promptings in the individual that derive from the
Father Archetype lead naturally towards religious expression in the
collective. Thus, in early societies religious rituals sprang up as
naturally as grass. Jung speculates that religious rites developed in
much the same way as language (Jung, 1958 [1954a], par. 339). They
were not made up, they were simply acted out, and long before
they became the subject of conscious reection. People performed
them, as is by no means exceptional even today, without knowing
why (Jung, 1958 [1954a], par 410; 1959 [1954a], par. 22).
The observance of rituals and the retelling of myths and fairy
tales energize the underlying archetypes and cause them to be
re-experienced. There occurs in this process simultaneously a
conscious apprehension of the thematic matter and an unconscious
response to it. In this way a connection between the conscious and
the unconscious is established (Jung, 1959 [1951], par. 280). The
liturgy of the Catholic Church supplies a case in point. It is built
around the archetype of the family, with Christ as the bridegroom,
the Church the bride. According to Jung, in the Catholic rite
of baptism, the baptismal font is the womb of the church. To fertilize the womb, a candle as a phallic symbol is thrust into it
three times. Salt has been added to the water in the font, making it
parallel amniotic fluid and seawater. The priest performing
the ceremony is the representative of the mana personality or medicine man, which is the Pope (Jung, 1960 [1931a], par. 336). The
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symbolism of the ceremony can be very moving, regardless of

whether the participant is consciously aware of its specic references.
A new myth
The images that emerge from the archetypes give an adequate
expression of the state of the unconscious. When they are given
conscious consideration and accepted as meaningful, often a connection with the unconscious is made. When, for example, as suggested above, the symbolism in a religious observance is received
with conviction, the individual or the group experiences a renewed
spiritual vitality. When the core of religious experience dries up, a
natural interchange between the conscious and the unconscious is
interrupted. The resulting attitude is, as Jung puts it, lacking in
conviction:
If, however, certain of these images become antiquated, if, that is to
say, they lose all intelligible connection with our contemporary
consciousness, then our conscious acts of choice and decision are
sundered from their instinctive roots, and a partial disorientation
results, because our judgment then lacks any feeling of deniteness
and certitude, and there is no emotional driving force behind
decision. [Jung, 1954 [1951], par. 251]
The immediate role of consciousness is to temper the instinctual

urge. As consciousness is enlarged, it increasingly supplants
instinctual and intuitive responses with rules and modes of behaviour built up through thought and practice. In the absence of a
strong connection with the unconscious, the tendency is for the
conscious ego to set its own will entirely in the place of what is
natural and instinctive (Jung, 1956 [1952], par. 673). The result can
be an arid rationalism, if not an outright psychological disturbance.
Rationalism dominates our day.2 Science and reason enjoy the
same sway in our time that the church held in the Middle Ages.
And, like those of the church, their teachings are deeply believed
even when, knowingly or not, they are being disregarded. A churchman may, in his reason, reject essential parts of his churchs metaphysics, and a woman of science may be secretly superstitious,
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but each considers himself or herself a faithful adherent of the

creed in question. It is not hard to see why we tend to prize reason
to the exclusion of all else. Not only does it normally work for us,
but it affords a sense of power and control. Man, however, does
not live by reason alone. In spite of what we may wish, we are
motivated by the unconscious, as well as the conscious, parts of our
psyches. The unconscious, as embodied, say, in ones emotionality,
will have a powerful effect on ones life, no matter how much its
expression may be at war with the objective of rational control. We
chafe that the unconscious will not just be clear with us. Rather, it
seems to manifest itself indirectly, through feelings, hunches,
impulsesinklings the rational mind reexively mistrusts. In developing linear reasoning to our present high degree, we have suppressed, as incompatible with it, more intuitive ways of confronting
the world. We must in the future nd our way to where, while holding on to the power of reason, we are comfortable with non-rational
processes. If this is to contemplate the combination of incompatibles, perhaps there is a symbolic way to arrive at such an outcome.
In just such achievements lies the magic of symbols.
The conscious and the unconscious stand as antithetical aspects
of the psyche: reason and will on the one hand, emotionality and
instinct on the other. Neither end of the spectrum can be safely
neglected. Nor can the two extremes, being opposites, unite of
themselves. By denition the conscious cannot be unconscious, and
vice versa. The conscious and the unconscious can only come
together in a third thing, a thing that derives in part from both, but
yet is exclusively neither. This is the symbol. The symbol, to a certain extent, admits of intellectual apprehension, as when we grasp
the meaning of a story or image, and so it has a conscious element.
At the same time the symbol evokes an emotional response, and so
partakes of the unconscious. If a symbol is completely understood,
it has lost its charge: it is mere allegory; yet, if it is not understood
at some level, its subject remains wholly unconscious. Standing
above these extremes, the true symbol has the power to mediate
experience that partakes of both realms.
In the hands of the church, Christian symbolism ourished for
the better part of two thousand years. But, as the scientic spirit took
possession of the soul of the West, that part of the mystery upon
which the church insisted as fact was rejected as absurd, and that
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which was preserved as mystery failed to strike as deep a chord. We

are thus in our society left largely without living symbols to mediate
between our conscious and unconscious selves. There is every
reason to believe that our age is not unique in this predicament. An
uncomfortable rootlessness has characterized other periods of interregnum between times of belief. Our age, however, is unique in one
sense. Because our traditional symbols have become so depotentiated, we have been able to see behind the faade of the gods to
recognize, hiding there, the elements of our own psychic structure:
that is, the archetypes of the collective unconscious (Jung, 1959
[1954a], par. 50). This circumstance suggests that modern discoveries in psychology will necessarily play a role in the way the archetypes bring themselves to bear upon us in the future. Levi-Strauss
characterized Freuds discovery of the Oedipus complex as nothing
other than the modern telling of the Oedipus myth (Paz, 1978, p. 61).
To some future generation, then, our understanding of psychology
may appear as simply the myth that prevailed in our day. The gods
are continually evolving. Thus, Jung says:
Every attempt at psychological explanation is, at bottom, the
creation of a new myth. We merely translate one symbol into
another symbol which is better suited to the existing constellation
of our individual fate and that of humanity as a whole. Our science,
too, is another of these gurative languages. Thus we simply create
a new symbol for that same enigma which confronted all ages
before us. [Jung, 1923, p. 3143]
Notes
1.
2.
3.
Richard Dawkins (1976, Chapter Eleven) comes to this conclusion from

a different directionthrough his concept of memes: non-gene-based
replicatorsideas, tunes, ways of doing things, ways of viewing
thingsthat propagate themselves through the medium of culture.
I speak from the standpoint of the patriarchal posture of Western
culture. The one-sidedness of the attitudes referred to might be much
mitigated if the note of the culture were to be struck from the attitudes
and outlooks of women.
Quoted in Jacobi (1959, p.118). The passage as it appears in the
Collected Works, is rewritten (Jung, 1971 [1921], par. 428).
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CHAPTER FOUR
Individuation
Layers of the unconscious
n Jungs scheme there are two distinct layers of the unconscious. In addition to the collective unconscious, inhabited by
the archetypes, there is the personal unconscious. Its contents
are catalogued by Jung as including:
everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment
thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now
forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my
conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without
paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all
future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come
to consciousness . . . [Jung, 1960 [1947], par. 382]
The personal unconscious is attributable to the individuals own

development and experience. By contrast, the collective unconscious, being an inherited structure, is fashioned by the experience
of the whole gamut of the individuals ancient ancestors.1 Because
they spring more immediately from the archetypes, the images of
the collective unconscious are fundamentally symbolic. A thing in
121
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a dream or fantasy will, in all likelihood, not represent that specic

thing in the quotidian world, but will rather stand for something
else, something abstract, something not fully known and which
cannot be fully known. The nearer the archetype is approached
that is, the deeper we go into the collective unconsciousthe more
symbolic is the image. A person in a dream who has been a mentor
to the dreamer may, for example, embody, in all its complexity, the
archetype of the Wise Old Man. The image could thus invoke the
entire accumulation of human or social values.
The images of the personal unconscious, on the other hand, tend
to be signs, standing for instances in the individuals personal experience. As Jung puts it, an expression that stands for a known thing
remains a sign and is never a symbol (Jung, 1971 [1921], par. 817).
In the shallower depths of the personal unconscious, lying as they
do closer to the daylight world, images have shed much of their
symbolic character (Jacobi, 1959, p. 107). An individual in a dream
stemming from the personal unconscious will perhaps represent
the actual individual dreamed of, or will stand for another person
or for a specic thing, place, or event. For instance, the garbage man
could stand for the real-life garbage man or he might stand for
Thursday, the day the garbage is collected.
The figures underlying the images become, at deeper levels,
collective and universalized, losing reference to specic individuals, things, or events (Jung, 1959 [1941a], par. 291). Encountering
images drawn from these depths is like looking at the light of a star.
We are looking back in time. Just as the starlight seen tonight shows
us the state of the star, not now, but millions of years ago, so the
deep images of the mind show us the state of the human psyche in
its early beginnings.
Farthest down in the psychic realm lie the autonomous functions that control the body, without the intervention of consciousness or even of instinct. Below that, the stuff of the psyche becomes
one with physical substance. We are left essentially with the chemistry of the brain. At bottom, as Jung said, the bodys carbon is
simply carbon (ibid.).
In having this discussion about layers of the unconscious, we
must keep in mind that layer is a purely metaphorical term; even
as between the personal and the collective unconscious it must be
taken that there are no clear demarcations and that the personal and
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the collective interpenetrate each other. For one thing, the archetypes of the collective unconscious provide the operating structure
of the personal unconscious, just as they do of conscious thought.
A slip of the tongue, for instance, may betray an unconscious attitude that is purely personal in its origins. In all probability it
betrays in some way what we really think or feel. Yet what
produces it can be said to be an autonomous action of the collective
unconscious, because obviously the slip occurs in contravention of
our conscious volition.
An example: conscience
A sense of how the personal and collective aspects of the unconscious operate together can be taken from the example of a basic
constituent of human nature, conscience. Conscience is affiliated
with the superego, identied by Freud. Jung describes this element
of the psyche as the accumulation of all those traditional, intellectual, and moral values which educate and cultivate the individual
(Jung, 1963, par. 673). Because it is culturally derived, it is not itself
a part of the collective unconscious. Basically, ones conscience
urges conformity with the collective values of the society. But the
unconscious pressure to heed the voice of conscience is archetypically driven, for the impulse to adhere to the collective values is
present no matter what the values might be. The source of the
compulsion that we call conscience is, in other words, distinct from
the prevailing mores that it tends to enforce. It appears, in other
words, that the motive power that gives conscience its sting is bred
into us as a part of the collective unconscious, whereas the cultural
mores that trigger the sting are impressed upon the personal unconscious after birth.
Hamlet could not bring himself to murder Claudius, because his
sensitive intelligence rebelled against the prevailing medieval standard, which prescribed justice through blood revenge. His oedipal
complicity in Claudiuss desire for Hamlets mother, Gertrude
(Freud, 1900, pp. 163164), reinforced his realization that the presence of the sinner in us all stands in ethical contradiction of the idea
that justice may be procured through revenge. Shakespeare, fully
understanding, of course, the invalidity of revenge as a moral solution, nevertheless had Hamlet, in his inaction, suffer pangs of
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conscience because of the dictates of the contrary mores of his own,

earlier time. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite / That ever I
was born to set it right! (Act I, Scene v). Hamlets feelings were
superior to the primitive mores of his medieval setting, but the
innate drive within him insisted upon them none the less.
It is said that the German ofcers who attempted to assassinate
Hitler rst debated whether it is morally permissible, in effect, to
kill the king. Huck Finn was conscience-stricken because, contrary
to law, he protected Jim from a return to slavery. Today most people
would probably feel it a moral wrong to kill Claudius in order to
avenge the death of Hamlets father, and, on the other hand, would
feel it a moral obligation to assassinate Hitler and to help Jim.
Different societies, in ne, can produce moral dictates directly in
opposition to each other. But there exists a psychic mechanism
prompting adherence to whatever societal norms have been inculcated in us. The norms are culture-specific, but the impulse is
universal. We have noted that the archetypes tend to produce
symbols clothed in imagery that derives from contemporary experience; what might have been an eagle in an earlier time could be a
jet plane today, and so on. In this example pertaining to conscience,
it could be said that the archetype compelling action in accordance
with social mores is merely clothed in the imagery of the mores of
the society in question.
The cultural unconscious?

It is interesting to postulate other layers of the unconscious, lying
between the personal and the collective. Might there not be a layer
of the unconscious corresponding to the culture from which the
individual springs? We may imagine cultural traits of which one is
neither conscious nor may ever become conscious, but which
nevertheless affect ones conscious stance. Does not the famous
introversion of the East, when compared with the obviously extraverted stance of Western civilization, mark a distinction suggesting
a layer of the unconscious where culture shapes imagery even
beyond the experience of the individual? It seems to me that the
question takes us into the nature/nurture dichotomy, which is
generally a dead end. The effects of culture upon ones upbringing
and therefore upon every aspect of the personality are so profound
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as to make it very difcult to determine whether a particular trait

is genetic (nature) or environmental (nurture) in its origineven
assuming the trait is not inextricably a product of both. If a little girl
in a rmly feminist household reaches for the doll rather than the
toy truck, do we attribute that to the absence of a Y chromosome,
or has she received subliminal signals from the environment? We
have yet much to learn about how the cultural background is
absorbed by the voraciously expanding psyche of the infant.
Will there be something of the Frenchman in the French child
adopted at birth into a German family, or vice versa? It has been
charged against Jung that he thought so (Bair, 2003, p. 375), and
certainly Jung was alive to the powerful effects of culture on an
individuals psychology, but it is doubtful whether, if brought to it,
Jung might have ascribed any part of the genetic hereditability of
the collective unconscious to cultural orientations. The time-frame
discussion of the preceding chapter would seem to resolve at least
this last question to the contrary. As we have seen, culture, at least
in terms of identifiable historical cultural forms, is too recent a
phenomenon to play a role in the genetic selection of the collective
unconscious. So, on the question of whether there is a cultural
unconscious lying beneath the personal unconscious, the cultural
unconscious must fall into the camp of nurture. That being established, one might then question the utility of the concept of a
cultural layer to the unconscious. If the cultural unconscious came
into the psyche through nurture, that is, through the environment
if it be accepted, in other words, that unconscious images specic
to a particular culture are products of the culture, itself, and not of
inheritancethen there would seem to be little virtue in distinguishing between personal and cultural levels of the unconscious.
In either case the unconscious element is the product of the individuals reaction to the outside world. The collective unconscious,
on the other hand, is the product of the reaction of the individuals
ancient train of ancestors to the outside world, and is present in the
individual regardless of personal experience, be it conscious or
unconscious, cultural or individual.
We have been looking at the issue of the existence of a cultural
layer of the collective unconscious from, fundamentally, a physiological standpoint, and we have determined that, if it can be said to
exist, it is not hard-wired into us through our genes. There may,
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nevertheless, be a sense in which the concept is a useful one. If we

are right in taking culture as the mechanism for perpetuating archetypal expression and, as well, the matrix within which change in
that expression is brought about, we are impelled to recognize that
things go on collectively in the unconsciouses of a group or society.
Only in this way might unconscious psychic movements have
prepared the soil so that the paradigm-shifting vision of the extraordinary individual might bear fruit. Such an adjustment in the
collective psyche would, presumably, come about within a society
subliminally, through communication among its members. It need
not be picked up by every person within the society, and in principle it need have no effect at all upon the psychic activity of other
societies. The cultural unconscious, thus conceived, would be a
meaningful entity, notwithstanding that it be the product of living
experience within the collective and transmittable only through
cultural, as opposed to genetic, means. It is now, however, probably safe to say that the spread of communications across the whole
of the modern world makes it such that for the future there will be
but a single cultural unconscious.
The autonomy of the collective unconscious

Philosophers have long postulated a mental mechanism that lies
beneath consciousness, but the development of modern scientic
methods was required to demonstrate its existence. Not until the
late nineteenth century did the emerging discipline of psychology
prove empirically the existence of unconscious mental processes
(Jung, 1959 [1951], par. 11). It may strike one as remarkable that,
until so recently, Western society has been blind to the fact that
there is more to the psyche than consciousness. The fact is that
people were simply unconscious of the existence of other parts of the
psyche. That they do exist was, then as now, as plain as the nose on
your face, but such realities do not always count in the arena of
the mind. The reason people were so unaware, says Jung, is
that theretofore there had been no need for psychology (Jung,
1964 [1931b], par. 159). The deepest urges and longings of our
predecessors in Western culture had been projected outwards, on to
the forms of the church. The churchs dogma and rituals, having
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crystallized out of the European unconscious over many centuries,

afforded for a long time an adequate expression for the psychic
needs of Christendom, and the same was the case with Judaism.
The scientic outlook, which eroded the certainties that theretofore
the church had supplied, then gave birth to the discipline of
psychology. Knowledge of psychology, in the main brought to the
public mind by Freud, has enabled us to confront this now seemingly obvious reality: that there is an unconscious part of us operating independently of our wills. Even so, we must recognize that,
notwithstanding this knowledge, most people today still proceed
with their lives as if only conscious psychic processes exist. We can
understand how this can be so, because we know, through the
concept of repression, that it is possible to push back into the
unconscious knowledge that is injurious to, or difcult to t into,
ones view of ones self or of the world.
There is, even today, in the particular nature of the collective
unconscious as Jung described it, the power to startle. The collective unconscious is autonomous. This means that there is an entity
within us taking an active role in our lives over which we have no
control. At some level all of us accept this notion. We recognize, for
example, the possibility of falling into a particular mood for no
apparent reason. The Freudian concept, indeed, of the effects of
repressed ideas upon psychic functioning has gained general acceptance. But I expect that most people do not face directly that, in a
normal state of health, there is a part of themselves that has motivations different from, or even in opposition to, what they consider
to be their own.
What is this other will, and what can its motives be? We have
put forward that it is driven by the archetypes. As they are a part
of our evolutionary heritage, we must take it that their function is
in some important way related to species survival, or in any case to
the survival of the genes the species carries. The complementary
relationship between the conscious and the unconscious can be
seen as fullling this role. That is, the dynamics of the unconscious
constitute a counterbalance to consciousness, so that there is a
tendency towards an equilibrium between the conscious and
unconscious parts of the psyche. Such a function would logically
take its place alongside other self-regulating reexes in the body:
sweating to adjust body temperature, for example. Thus, it would
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be a good adaptive mechanism. Jung, however, believed that the

function of the unconscious goes beyond the maintenance of equilibrium between conscious and unconscious forces (Jung, 1976
[1949], par. 1418). Something within the unconscious guides and
pushes the individual, first towards a full differentiation of
consciousness, and later towards individuation. Jung, in other
words, viewed the workings of the unconscious as being teleological in nature. He saw the unconscious as pushing all individuals in
a particular direction. No doubt this attitude has struck many as
unscientific. Narrowly considered, though, a goal-orientated
unconscious disposition can be accommodated well enough to
evolutionary theory. It is entirely plausible that the species is better
able to adapt to the environment in so far as it can produce individuals having a high degree of consciousness and a fully rounded
personality.
We may gain one insight into the nature of the autonomous
dynamic in the collective unconscious by saying what it is not. It
seems clear that we are not dealing with something in the nature of
a second personality, residing in the unconscious. It is perfectly
natural for the conscious ego to see in the purposive action of the
unconscious a rational intentionality akin to its own. A moments
reection, however, will disclose that implicit in such a set-up is an
innite regression that stamps the notion of an underlying, unconscious personality as nonsense. If the unconscious had a conscious
psychology akin to the egos, then that conscious psychology
would be based upon an unconscious which would in turn have a
conscious psychology, and so on, as it is said, all the way down. The
collective unconscious, rather, is instinctive in character. Our psyches are simply so constructed by nature that the unconscious
creates an image in answer to whatever the situation of consciousness happens to be (Jung, 1953 [1928], par. 289).
As to more expansive interpretations of why the collective
unconscious might take a guiding role in respect of consciousness
and individuation, Jung would say that such speculations are
aimed at metaphysical issues. The issue of whether consciousness
in humans goes beyond what might be explained by natural selection would be, for him, the province of philosophy and religion, not
science. If, of course, it could be proven that consciousness, per se,
cannot be explained by natural selection, science would have to
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confront that issue, because we know consciousness, the sense of

subjective experience, exists. Our scientic understanding would
have to be revised so as to accommodate it. Indeed, in the developing eld of cognitive science there are well-credentialed opponents to the prevailing materialist view that consciousness will
ultimately be fully explained by the known laws of nature. One
divergent line of thought, for example, postulates consciousness as
a separate, unique, irreducible constituent of the universe, of the
same fundamental nature as gravity and the electromagnetic force
(Chalmers, 1996). As things presently stand, we must simply admit
our ignorance as to the basic nature of consciousness.
The collective unconscious and the stages of life

We first observe the autonomous functioning of the collective
unconscious in the formation and differentiation of the ego. This
activity signifies that a primary biological role of the collective
unconscious is the production of a series of images in the psyche
that brings about consciousness. After consciousness has become
established in the developing individual, a further movement of the
archetypes can be discerned. This movement, directed towards
individuation, parallels that of differentiation, or coming into
consciousness, but is quite different in what actually occurs (Jung,
1960 [1947], par. 432). The coming to consciousness can be seen as
the egos becoming the centremost and dominant of the complexes
of psychic contents formed in the unconscious. With individuation,
which typically takes place in the second half of life, the ego is, by
contrast, called upon to yield up its claim of occupying the central
place in the personality. In its stead in the central place, which in
fact it has held all along, is recognized the all-encompassing ordering principle, the archetype of the Self. Paradoxically, that which is
the whole is also the centre.
The widening of consciousness in the individual entails a corresponding diminution of the unconscious, because it is the contents
of the unconscious that are brought to light and made conscious.
There is to be no thought, however, that by this process the contents
of the unconscious might ultimately be exhausted. The realm of the
unconscious is so inconceivably vast that consciousness could not
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possibly encompass even an appreciable portion of it (Jung, 1961

[1930], par. 764). Rather, what seems to be entailed in individuation
is the integration of the conscious and the unconscious, a process
that, while expanding consciousness, yet takes us beyond it.
The archetypes activate unconscious processes appropriate to
each of the basic stages of life: childhood, youth, maturity, and old
age (Jung, 1960 [1931d], pars. 749795). In each stage there are
movements in the unconscious that direct psychic activity in a way
appropriate to that stage and prepare the individual for the stage to
come. The sensitive and alert person may be tuned in to these internal processes, but they are most readily recognized in the mythology that has arisen reecting them.
Childhood
We will see whether we can get a glimpse of these autonomous
activities of the collective unconscious, beginning at the beginning.
In the preconscious state, clots of unconscious contents precipitate
out of the blackness of the unconscious. Jung likened these concentrated contents in the psyche of the preconscious child to islands in
a sea or lighted objects in the dark (Jung, 1960, [1931d], par. 755).
The ego begins as one such aggregation of associated unconscious
contents, but gradually assumes central importance. Neumann
describes this phase of development as species-specic, because
the process unfolds in essentially the same way in all human beings
(Neumann, 1994, p. 235). Within the context of our present discussion, we would say that this is because the process is genetically
wired into the species.
Jung saw the context of the early part of the childs life as essentially an extension of the womb:
The motherchild relationship is certainly the deepest and most
poignant one we know; in fact, for some time the child is, so to
speak, a part of the mothers body. Later it is part of the psychic
atmosphere of the mother for several years, and in this way everything original in the child is indissolubly blended with the motherimage. This is true not only for the individual, but still more in a
historical sense. It is the absolute experience of our species, an
organic truth as unequivocal as the relation of the sexes to one
another. Thus there is inherent in the archetype, in the collectively
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inherited mother-image, the same extraordinary intensity of relationship which instinctively impels the child to cling to its mother.
[Jung, 1960 [1931c], par. 723]
Yet the child must ultimately become independent of the mother;

and, just as the child must become independent of the mother physically, so also must she or he become psychologically independent.
The history of every developing individual replicates the evolution
of consciousness. As the child is, in the beginning, psychically at
one with the mother and the environment, so the preconscious
primitive had no clear delineation between the ego and the world,
inward or outward. In attaining to self-consciousness, that is, in
arising from animal unconsciousness, the individual ego is established and recognizes itself as an entity, a thing separate and apart
from all other things (Jung, 1956 [1952], par. 415).
It was nature herself who led humankind away from nature.
Humans in their consciousness became in a measure independent
of the natural instinctuality that until that time had governed all life
on earth. It is in this sense that Jung places the archetypes and the
instincts in opposition to each other. Archetypal imagery led us out
of the darkness of blind instinct. By bringing archetypal images up
into consciousness, humans were able to overcome the instincts and
to a certain degree free themselves from the instincts iron control.
To say this is not to say that we know the mechanism by which this
development in the human species came about. Perhaps natural
selection could achieve even this, or perhaps it was brought about
by some other operating factor, as yet not understood, or beyond
understanding. We do, however, have some understanding of the
imagery that guides the process.
This imagery, so profound in its effect, would seem at rst blush
curious. At its core lies the incest motif. Freud, manipulating the
new tools of depth psychology, encountered the incest motif.
He gave it the now familiar name, the Oedipus complex.
Freud initially misinterpreted the images he uncovered as having
sprung from the actual life experiences of his patients. Having
discovered infant sexuality and on encountering evocations of what
appeared to have been a childhood sexual desire for the patients
motherto choose the example of a male patientand a corresponding murderous jealousy of the father, Freud drew the obvious
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conclusion. He deduced a family situation in which the child had

been, in effect, seduced by the mother and had come, therefore,
literally to see the father as his sexual rival. Freud later revised his
thinking as to the necessity of the occurrence of actual, as opposed
to psychological, events as the basis for the incest imagery. Jung
placed the motif within the framework of the archetypes.
It should not put us off that the archetypal expression for such
a crucial process as the weaning of the individual from unconsciousness into consciousness should be something we nd repugnant. Indeed, that is the point. That the incest in the Oedipus motif
jars our sensibilities underscores how potent the image remains,
even when, as in the present context, it is made conscious. The
imagery survives because of its effectiveness, not its tastefulness.
The fact that the vehicle for the expression of the archetype is sexual
in nature is, moreover, natural enough, and the symbolism is characteristically apt. If sex is the means of physical creation, what
better image than a sexual one might serve for coming into consciousness? After all, becoming conscious is the act by which, for all
intents and purposes, the world comes into being. For only through
consciousness do we become aware of the world, and, without
consciousness to apprehend it, the world is just as if it did not exist
(Jung, 1958 [1952a], par. 4652). Coming into consciousness is the
creative act par excellence.
Without being unduly graphic, one can say that maternal incest
is a going back into the womb of the mother. Symbolically, this is
the dissolution of consciousness in the unconscious. The act of sex
is commonly seen as implying a little death. Re-entering the
womb from which one came implies extinction. The unconscious
suggestion of sexual congress with the mother, then, raises the
threat of annihilation and therefore produces a conscious reaction
one of fear and loathing. Thus, incestuous images spontaneously
produced in the unconscious lead the adolescent boy to shrink from
maternal intimacy and eventuates normally in a separation.
In consequence of the incest prohibition, great guilt is associated
with the unconscious erotic attachment to the parent of the opposite sex. But guilt lies in the other direction as well. The ego, in ghting its way to consciousness, must reject that which it holds
most dear: the relationship to the mother. In overcoming dependence upon the mother, the adolescent must overcome the guilt of
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rejecting her. Put otherwise, the guilt that will attend the heros
liberation is among the array of weapons brought to bear by the
Great Mother that makes the heroic task so daunting (Neumann,
1994, p. 244).
Archetypal incest imagery is experienced by both sexes,
although in practical circumstances it plays itself out differently in
each. Typically, the withdrawal of the girl from the maternal fold is
more subtle, being achieved by an attachment to the father or other
male figure on whom is projected the Animus, the girls unconscious masculine side. Freud denominated the feminine manifestation of the incest motif the Electra complex. Electras mother,
Clytemnestra, had killed her husband, King Agamemnon, Electras
father. Electra lived only for the moment when her fathers murder
would be avenged through the murder of her mother. Thus,
Sophoclean tragedy also supplies the model for the female version
of the Oedipus drama, in which is played out the girls latent sexual
desire for the father, with an attendant hostility to the mother.
We are arguing that incest imagery is the central mechanism by
which the ego is able to separate itself from the unconscious, and
thereby establish ego-consciousness. Consciousness is given rise by
the archetypes and preserved in culture. Whereas one must conclude that the collective unconscious was informing culture in some
measure as the species evolved, it is hard to know what culture
would have looked like in its beginning stages. Were our genes so
programmed that adolescent males were driven from the pack, as
with young lions? Or did the incest prohibition have more of a
cultural cast; was it more in the nature of a taboo? In the absence of
the incest prohibition, it must be considered that humans might
have had no more compunction about mating within the family
than do most animals. Most anthropologists believe that the pervasiveness of the incest prohibition in human societies cannot be
explained by genetic selection against inbreeding. Although
inbreeding, if perpetuated, weakens a genetic strain, individuals
produced with genetic defects in consequence of inbreeding would,
in primitive conditions, simply have been left to die, and the defective genes would not have survived to be been passed along hereditarily. Biologist Richard Dawkins, however, makes the point that
there is a big price to be paid, in the evolutionary sense, in simply
producing defective offspring (Dawkins, 1976, p. 99). Even carrying
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to term a child that dies at birth imposes a serious burden. But then,
who knows, this may have been a form of genetically engineered
birth control. You cannot conceive number two while carrying
number one, even though number one is not to survive. In any case
the Jungian would conclude that incest imagery and the egoconsciousness attending upon it evolved hand in hand, either in
response to, or in the process of forming, an archetypal initiative.
It is known that incest was practiced in royal houses in ancient
Egypt and elsewhere in antiquity. In the book of Genesis, for example, Lots daughters trick him into incest, and found thereby the
tribes of the Moabites and Ammonites (Genesis 19: 3038). The fact
of such practices, however, does not undermine the ubiquity of the
incest prohibition. It is not at all uncommon for individuals considered to be godlike to indulge themselves in that which is most
strictly forbidden to ordinary people. Needless to say, there are
great practical, as well as psychological, advantages to the application of the incest prohibition, at least as to the generality of society.
Marriage outside the family and outside the tribe fosters alliances
and exchange. The scope of the group is accordingly broadened
and, into the bargain, so is the gene pool.
Youth
By contrast with the rather more rigid development that characterizes childhood, the unconscious initiatives that play themselves out
in the subsequent stages of conscious life may be highly personal in
the way they unfold. These developments vary widely from person
to person in their progress, and it is by no means the norm for an
individual to experience every stage of development to its fullest
extent. Many a person becomes stuck in a particular stage of development and never progresses beyond it. Nevertheless, we can
detect in the course taken by any individual the mechanism that
pushes it, with varying degrees of success, towards full conformity
with the ground plan in the species laid out in its genes.
Jung marked the period of youth as extending from puberty to
mid-life, which latter he saw as commencing between the ages of
thirty-five and forty. In youth one must get beyond the childish
urge to remain unconscious and to live in the indulgence of the
instincts. The task of this time of life is to widen lifes horizons.
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Oedipus, in the progression towards a secure consciousness,

advanced a step beyond that of the boyish SonLovers of the Great
Mother. In them, the ego of the incipient consciousness has not
attained a full differentiation, but remains in the thrall of the Great
Motherof, as we keep reminding ourselves, the unconscious. The
manly maturity with which King Oedipus was endowed purports
a personality that had gained a substantial measure of consciousness. The tragedy implies a subsequent lapse of consciousness.
Oedipuss fate reminds us that even the sun hero who emerges
triumphant with the dawn after the night in the belly of the monster
must begin the struggle anew. For the battle is never fully won
there are many levels of consciousnessand its object is always the
same: deliverance from the Great Mother. At bottom, the driving
force behind even the mighty deeds of Heracles was the pursuing
mother in the guise of Hera, bent on vengeance (Jung, 1956 [1952],
par. 540).3 The world is perpetually confronting us with new challenges. Retreat in the face of them can signify the victory of the
dragon, with serious life consequences, whether in terms of a
retreat into a safe normalcy or of mental or physical illness in
various manifestations.
Maturity and old age

As respects these two stages of life, I shall speak but little of one
and, of the other, a great deal. Maturity is the stage of life when the
process of individuation typically occurs. Much of what follows
will be devoted to developments in this stage. Death is a part of life.
It is the point towards which all else in life ultimately aims. The
individuated person will recognize this and will, at the appropriate
time, stand prepared to meet it. The individuated person would no
more fear death when its time has arrived than would she or he
long for perpetual youth. Individuation, then, in itself, prepares one
for lifes conclusion.
Neumann has demonstrated that a matriarchal period occurs
rst in the development of culture; just as such a period initiates the
onset of consciousness in the individual (Neumann, 1994, p. 236).
The infants experience of its mother, being the rst and, by all odds,
the most profound experience in life, is the obvious source of the
symbols clustered around the archetype of the Great Mother. This
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source does not lie in the relationship of the child born of today with
its earthly mother; rather, the symbolic structure is given rise by a
whole succession of mothers, the experience of whom over aeons
shaped the collective unconscious. Imagery from the collective
unconscious projected upon the real mother profoundly conditions
the childs perception of her.
Transposing this pattern to the realm of culture, we can imagine
the potency the image of the female deity must have held in societies at the matriarchal stage. The image of God was woman.
Nevertheless, the dominant imagery deriving from the archetype of
the Great Mother need not imply that early societies were ruled by
women or that women otherwise dominated religiously or politically. Given greater strength and aggressiveness in menthe exercise of which in the primitive context would have been but little
tempered by cultural renementthere is no reason to assume that
males did not assert their power. To what extent the sovereignty of
the Mother Archetype might have kept in thrall the raw physical
ability of men to dominate is not known. Regardless, however, of
whether political and religious power in matriarchal societies lay in
the hands of women or men or both, the archetype of the Great
Mother, translated into religious symbols, must have dominated
cultural life. Accordingly, the focus of the society would have been
on fertility, regeneration, and cycles of growth and decay. A healthy
respect for the feminine and womens mysteries would, presumably, therefore have in any case prevailed.
Both in the development of the child and in the onset of culture,
the matriarchal stage is followed by a patriarchal stage. This is the
stage of the worlds civilizations today. The focus is on the exercise
of the will, on activity, learning, values, and the inculcation of the
cultural canon (ibid.). It may bear saying again that what is at work
in this connection is not gender, but imagery. In the psychic cycle,
the progression from the Mother Archetype to that of the Father
denotes a progression from the earthly to the spiritual, from the
bosom of the unconscious to the opening horizon of growing
consciousness. Of course, this progression is usually taken as literal,
so that men at the level of patriarchal culture feel called upon to
dominate women and take upon themselves the role of spiritual
leaders. It may be seen as an unfortunate fact that the symbolism
by which the archetypes direct psychic growth tends to be acted out
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literally in culture. The more there is of consciousness, however, the

less the symbolic is taken for the factual. And, as we can make out
an overbalance, worldwide, in favour of the patriarchy, we might
reasonably suppose that the next stages in the advance towards a
heightened consciousness will proceed under the banner of the
feminine. Indeed, one can discern some movement in that direction
in the societies of the West of today.
Once the patriarchal stage is reached, there is no obvious societal
advantage in the development of individual consciousness to a
higher level. On the contrary, there are societal reasons for inhibiting
further development of the individual personality. The values of
the patriarchy, if maintained, are usually adequate to the preservation of the society. Anyone who reaches beyond those values in
pursuit of individual fullment will, on a supercial level at least,
put those values at risk. Society seeks in its members, not individualism, but conformity. To progress towards a fuller consciousness is,
therefore, strictly the task of the individual, and indeed the individual may expect to nd the values of the collective blocking the way.
In the psyche, as in life, nothing is simple. The incestuous return
to the womb of the Great Mother, to unconsciousness, can be disastrous. Yet, for the personality to develop, such a return is necessary.
The ego must be repeatedly resubmerged in the unconscious in
order to draw upon the restorative and creative powers that reside
there. Sleep is an everyday example of such a return. The risk is that
the individual who withdraws into the unconscious may become
transxed by it. In terms of the growth of the personality, the withdrawal into the unconscious and the subsequent return with a revitalization of ones creative energies is often cast, symbolically, in
terms of death and resurrection. That is why every hero must
perform a nekyia, a visit to the underworld. Dantes Inferno, an elaboration upon Aeneass visit to the shades of the dead, is a description of such a journey. The Apostles Creed in the Episcopal Church
recites that the crucied Christ descended into hell.4 The returning hero is transformed and reinvigorated.
Theseus and his companion Peirithous journeyed to the underworld, but there they found themselves bound to the rocks (Jung,
1956 [1952], par. 671, n. 76). Theseus ultimately returned, but not
every mythological hero is able to do so. And even the hero who
does return may yet have failed in the quest. Orpheus returned, but
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without Eurydice, the feminine part of himself he had sought to

restore to life. Lot escaped from the hell of the cities of the plain.
However, his wife, at the crucial moment, like Orpheus, looked
back, and so became rooted to the spot as a pillar of salt. The threat
of venturing into the unconscious is that one may become fixed
there. Possible consequences of ones having become stuck in the
unconscious include arrested development, mental disorders,
addiction, and physical illness.
It would be nice to be able to be more specic about the inner
experiences of individual people. To do so is, however, beyond the
reach of this book. Specific examples could be produced only
through psychological examination, and it is uncertain whether,
even then, therapists, even Jungian ones, could be found to agree
with any consistency. I can only point out that people do, in
common observation, encounter psychological crises in their lives.
Such crises spring from somewhere, and they gain symbolic expression that sometimes reaches consciousness. Some of the dreams I
have sketched out demonstrate this. Jung and other pioneers in the
study of psychology saw patterns in the representation of psychic
experiences that unmistakably echo the patterns of the myths. The
striking coincidence of mythic motifs around the world strongly
suggests that there is a thematic linkage between the inner experiences of individuals and the symbolic expressions of the collective
unconscious.
Because society has no obvious investment in, and indeed may
be overtly hostile to, higher levels of consciousness, those who do
confront the unconscious parts of themselves are typically led to do
so only after the concerns of family, security, and social position
have been addressed. Coming to terms with the unconscious parts
of ones self, therefore, is typically the work of the adult years,
beginning at mid-life. An unconscious disposition towards wholeness has, however, been present from the beginning (Neumann,
1959, pp. 157158). It serves to even out disturbances in normal
development, and it is evident in the day-to-day compensatory
function of the unconscious, which moves to restore balance where
the personality develops an excessive one-sidedness.
The method of consciousness is rational; that of the unconscious
is non-rational. It is very hard for the ego seriously to confront
something whose mode of operating is so essentially foreign to it.
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It cannot even begin to do so, however, until it has acknowledged

the existence of this other (Jung, 1963, par. 257). Typically, the
unconscious takes the lead in bringing about such a recognition. We
can feel strongly the presence of the unconscious; it can force itself
upon us through dreams or a vision or through otherwise inexplicable events in our lives; or we can arrive logically at the conclusion
that there must be within us something of the sort we are describing. Once one has recognized this dual set-up in the psychethis
habitation, as it were, by two beingsnatural curiosity may take
over. But, because the unconscious is impenetrable to the usual
ways of thinking, the road to a relationship with it is a difcult one
and the distractions are many. Only through the participation of the
unconscious itself is progress to be made. The myths tell us, none
the less, that the pearl of great price can be obtainedthat the
hero can prevail and take to wife the liberated princess. And when
that happens the powers of the unconscious are joined to those of
consciousness. In that situation, Jung tells us:
The unconscious then gives us all the encouragement and help that
a bountiful nature can shower upon man. It holds possibilities
which are locked away from the conscious mind, for it has at its
disposal all subliminal psychic contents, all those things which
have been forgotten or overlooked, as well as the wisdom and
experience of uncounted centuries which are laid down in its archetypal organs. [Jung, 1953 [1917], par. 196]
We now note a change in the direction of the hero myth. Once the
ego is secure and one has established a place in life, it is no longer a
matter of slaying dragons. The heros daring must give way to
humility, his aggressiveness to gentleness. In the practical world, it
does not follow that once the fair maiden is won the couple lives
happily ever after. The couple must make for themselves a real life.
The focus of the quest shifts to the pearl of great price, the Holy
Grail being the same thing under another name. For the attainment
of this, the force of arms will not sufce. The hero who would make
the quest, moreover, can no longer rely exclusively on strategies
developed to cope with the external world. Perceval, when setting
out upon the world as a young man, was advised to keep his own
counsel, and, so, not to ask questions of those he encountered in his
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travels. In the face of the formidable obstacles that followed,

Percevals unswerving self-reliance served him well. But after many
heroic adventures he nevertheless found himself utterly lost. He
attained to the Grail only when he discarded his rules and, out of
natural human sympathy, asked King Amfortas about his permanently bleeding wound. When one aspires to individuation one
must give up childish ways (I Corinthians 13: 11).
Here is the dream of Heidi, an exceptionally intelligent woman
in her early thirties, who has seen a great deal of life in the course
of those years.
I nd myself in the swamp. This is a swamp that has shown up many
times in various ways over the preceding years, and one that is rife
with alligators and nasty, dangerous things, some less recognizable
than others. It is always dark, and the water is dark as well. Even the
reeds and tall grass that grow on the bank are dark, and there are
unseen beasts that move about in its thickness, making rustling sounds.
I tread over a slatted wooden walkway (and I think there are some
bridges involved, but its not as clear now, though I do know they are
wooden as well) to the bank on the other side. As Im walking (who
knows why Ive chosen this place, but it feels as though Im out for a
bit of a stroll), I pass a clear little creek. It bubbles and ambles and has
stones in it and is generally cheery. The water is clear, and the air seems
lighter here as well. Though it is still dark, the sense is more one of
twilight. I walk farther, and to my surprise I nd a shack. Shack is
the word from my dream, but this building is quite solid, of wooden
planking, and most sturdy. It is the epitome of the basic. Inside, it is
well appointed, with a couple [of] rooms, a sink, a sound wooden table,
a chair or two. I am delighted to have found it, and am quite intrigued
with the building itself. As I putter about, I have a need for some dirt
(I think I was planting owers, but I cant be certain now). I go to the
back of the house and take the shovel from its place beside the back
door. As I am digging up some dirt and putting it in a bucket, I scrape
something definitely solid. It turns out to be an old wooden pirate
Galleon, and, though it is abandoned, its not decayed. I explore it, tickled that I might have the opportunity to find a real Jolly Roger for
Ethans [her sons] ship. Among the hatches and holds, I nd a Jolly
Roger, a veritable wardrobe of pirates clothing, cutlasses, treasure
chests packed with gold and gems, and random trap doors lled to the
brim with bright shining gold.
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I am so glad that I traipse back over the bridges and walkways to go

get Phillip [her then husband] and show him the amazing nd. When
I enter the kitchen, he is doing something (dishes? cooking?) very
homey, and I say to him, Come see what Ive found by the shack; its
a pirate ship lled with treasure. He looks at me and smiles, and says,
Heidi, there isnt any treasure there, but it will be fun to go walking
with you anyway. And so we go back through the swamp and to the
house, and I show him the ship, and we walk through it. He opens
hatches and is pretty impressed with the Galleon itself, though he nds
it now totally empty of any treasure or pirates goods. No gold, no
cutlass, no ag. He laughs a bit, nicely, and says, Heidi, I told you
there wasnt anything here. Youve obviously fallen asleep and
dreamed the treasure. But it was fun to come out with you. And as we
take hands to walk back to our house together, I think, Thats okay.
Ill come back by myself some time. Every time I think Thats okay,
Ill just come back by myself, I am lled with a sense of delight, and
a calm but undeniable joy.
In previous dreams, Heidi had been working her way through

swamp-like terrain. Now she finds herself on solid ground, and
possessed of a treasure that no one can take away from her. In the
treasure, she has attained to something very significant within
herself. On the conscious level, she has obviously gained a tremendous source of self-condence and security.
What must occur is a profound shift of gravity in the personality. The struggle of youth is to secure for the ego the central place.
Individuationwholenessnow requires that the ego relinquish
that position in favour of something much greater than itself. This
Jung calls the Self, and he describes it as representing the centre of
the whole personality, both conscious and unconscious. The ego, of
course, is loath to surrender its hard-won position. What is required
of it now is bitter medicine. It entails sacrice. The imagery that
serves as a guide along this path is of a new order; the predominant
symbolism is that of the mandala. We will come to it in due course.
Jung saw individuation as an encounter with the unconscious.
He postulated that in early societies this encounter was unique to
the shaman (Jung, 1958 [1954a], par. 448). In the later Egyptian
dynasties, the aristocracy were allowed to participate in the initiatory process of Osirication, formerly reserved to Pharaoh. The
broadening of the range of those who might be ritually exposed to
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the individuation experience proceeded to the point where initiation into the Greek mysteries became all but a trendy pastime for
Roman tourists. Finally, the Christian Mass came to embody for all
celebrants the experience of trial, torture, death, and rebirth theretofore reserved to the few. The underlying psychic processes have
remained throughout, however, hidden from the view of the ordinary participant (ibid.).
The person who pursues individuation must be prepared to
disregard the dictates of the culture. The culture expresses the
psychic state of the collective, and it works very powerfully to
enforce that psychic state upon all who are a part of it. For the
purpose of basic education, the transfer to the next generation of
the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the culture, this is a
highly benecial arrangement. But, for the adult who would recognize and conform to inner directives, the culture is the enemy. This
is not to say that individuated individuals will become lawbreakers
or find themselves at war with societal norms. Rather, they will
follow their inner directives as opposed to the external ones of the
culture, and, if they do nd themselves at odds with the culture,
they will have the courage to face that fact and to stand apart. They
will not fear the culturethat is, what others think and expect
because they will have become independent of it. It is not the
culture for which they live, but rather for a full expression of the
interior parts of themselves they have come to recognize and hold
dear.
While I can attempt to put forth Jungs concept of individuation,
I cannot, of course, say how one might attain to it. Much has been
written about individuation from a psychological perspective by
Jungian analysts and adepts. A study of such material may afford
some illumination. The process itself, however, cannot be learned;
it must be experienced. One can look to the myths as a means of
suggesting what individuation is about. The objective is the establishment of a conscious relationship between the ego, as the
central reference-point of consciousness (Jung, 1963, par. 133),
and the Self. Jung has described the Self as representing the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche (ibid.), so the relationship is of the part to the whole.
Before we direct our inquiry towards the Self, it is necessary that
we make what may seem to be a rather radical digression. We must
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discuss Jungs findings on psychological types. Elements of the

personality isolated and described by Jung manifest themselves in
a number of specic personality types. These elements lie at the
core of the individuals psychological make-up, and they are, in
consequence, necessarily implicated in the individuation process. A
lawyer, developing a point of evidence whose relevance is not
immediately apparent, may vouch to the court that she or he will
in due course tie the evidence into the case. If, therefore, I seem in
the next few sections to be straying from our subject, I ask the
reader to stay with me, on the promise that I will in time tie this
material back into what has gone before.
Psychological types
A night sea journey
Jung himself experienced a nekyia, his own trip to the underworld.
After his break with Freud in 1913, he went through a difcult time
psychologically. He became, as he put it, disorientated (Jung, 1965,
p. 170). Jung was troubled by fantasies which he found to be inexplicable and towards which he consciously felt a great deal of resistance. Finally, much as he had done as a child when he confronted
the obscene vision of Gods throne above the cathedral, he decided
to open himself to them and meet them head-on, lest, through the
unconscious, they take possession of him. In Part II of Goethes
Faust, Jungs favourite work of literature, Faust has set a quest for
no less a woman than Helen of Troy. Mephistopheles tells him that
to proceed to retrieve a person from among the dead he must rst
come to the Mothers, enthroned beyond the world of place or
time (von Goethe, 1959, p. 76). Mephistopheles gives Faust a key
and tells him, simply, to stamp his foot. This Faust does, and down
he plummets (ibid., pp. 7880). Jung did precisely the same thing.
Sitting in his study, he put aside his fears, and he let himself drop.
He felt himself plunge into dark depths, and there he encountered
a dwarf, a glowing red crystal, the oating corpse of a blond youth,
a giant black scarab, and the rising sun. In the end, everything was
engulfed in blood. Jung was at this point expert in depth psychology. He recognized the drama of death and renewal, capped by the
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Egyptian scarab, a symbol of rebirth, and the equivalent symbol of

the red, rising sun, but he could not understand the blood (Jung,
1965, p. 179). A dream a few days later, which we will take up in
due course, set him on the path towards understanding the individuation process that was going on within him. For the next four
or ve years Jung focused intensely upon the images of his own
unconscious. This turned out to be the period of gestation for his
book Psychological Types, rst published in 1921.5 The English translation bore the subtitle, The psychology of individuation (Jung,
1971 [1921], p. v, editors note).
Extraversion and introversion

One of the questions that preoccupied Jung during his night sea
journey was how it was that he should see things so differently
from his former colleagues, Freud and Alfred Adler (ibid.). Taking a
cue from William James, he developed his conception of the fundamental elements of the personality. First, there are two basic psychological attitudes: extraversion and introversion. These are, in Jungs
view, hereditary and inborn in the subject (Jung, 1971 [1921], par.
623). The basis for the distinction between the attitudes may be hard
for the reader to appreciate unless she or he has by now become
convinced of the reality and the scope of the interior world. The attitude of our culture is extraverted. Indeed, it is so strongly so that it
is difcult for us to credit the existence of the inner world of introversion, much less recognize it as of an equivalent dignity with the
objective, outside world. The extravert reading this will be especially hard-pressed to imagine an inner world as vivid and palpable
as the outer world of people, objects, and events.
To the introvert, on the other hand, the inner world may, once
identied as such, be very real indeed. Nevertheless, it is not easy
for the introvert, given the outlook of the culture, to rely upon the
subjective factor natural to that turn of mind with the same degree
of trust and devotion that the extravert bestows upon the external
object. Thus, the introvert, in spite of the potential advantage of a
ready afnity with things of the mind, with concepts and abstractions, may be left with a sense of inferiority (Jung, 1971 [1921], par.
646). Generally, the behaviour of extraverts and introverts, as
conceived by Jung, will be in line with that which is expected in the
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everyday usage of the terms. The extravert tends to be sociable and

outgoing, whereas the introvert tends to be shy and reserved. As it
is not necessary to our purposes to elaborate in psychological terms
upon the orchestration of the personality, we shall pass on to an
equally bare description of what Jung identied as the four functions of the personality. It is important that these functions and how,
in Jungs conception, they set up in the personality be grasped and
accepted at this point, at least provisionally, because they figure
powerfully in the imagery of individuation.
The four functions of the personality

Consciousness is a sort of global sense organ. It is the means of
orientating oneself to the world of outer and inner facts (Jung, 1960
[1937], par. 2566). We accomplish this orientation by taking in and
processing the data of experience. Jung identied four functions by
which this is done. All functions are present in every individual.
However, not all of the functions are equally developed for utilization by consciousness; typically some functions remain largely
submerged in the unconscious. Which functions are broken out of
the unconscious and honed and developedand to what extent
varies among individuals. The resulting mix, as orientated by either
extraversion or introversion, is the stamp of the personality.
The non-rational functions: sensation and intuition

The two functions devoted to taking in the data of experience are
sensation and intuition. They are non-rational functions;7 that is,
they do not have to do with the application of reason or judgement.
It is their role, rather, to bring data to consciousness. Jung hypothesized that these two functions were the rst to develop. The data
they bring forward are processed by what Jung characterizes as the
rational functions: thinking and feeling.
One of the non-rational functions, sensation, is easy enough to
describe. It is the mustering of the inputs of the senses. Sensation
establishes that something is there. A person in whom the sensing
function is strong will be focused upon facts and specics and will
be keen to bring them forward for analysis or evaluation by the
rational functions.
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Most people have a feel for intuition, but it is not easy to

describe. Jung defines intuition in terms, not of things, but of
relationships among things. Things, the specics apprehended by
sensation, do not exist independently of each other; all things are
related to other things in both space and time. As Jung aptly puts
it, in space, every object is in endless connection with a multiplicity of other objects; and, in time, the object represents merely a transition from a former state to a succeeding one (Jung, 1960 [1937],
par. 257). Intuition is the function by which we track these relationships. The process is a subliminal one; one simply becomes aware
of the relationships between objects and events. When it is recognized that in this connection the term objects includes people, the
connection between intuition as a psychic function and intuition
in the normal usage becomes clearer.
The rational functions: thinking and feeling

The rational functions interpret the information brought to
consciousness. Through thinking we analyse the data apprehended
by sensation and intuition and divine their meaning. The function
of feeling discriminates among data by assigning them value. It is
the backbone of what we call judgement. Through the feeling
function the subject, the individual, is brought into such a close
relation to the objectwhatever conscious attention is directed
towardsthat she or he is moved either to accept or reject it (Jung,
1960 [1937], par. 256). Feeling makes hay with this sense of connectedness, while thinking would remove it from the equation.
The essence of thinking is objectivity. The mathematician or
scientist, for example, necessarily strives to insulate the object of
inquiry from contamination by the subjective. As we have reason to
know, however, in this process, thinking can be cut loose from
common sense. The line between a brilliant thinker and a crackpot
can be a ne one. Even so, because of its opposition to thinking,
feeling can strike one as a denigrating term for a rational function. This is because the cultural bias is towards thinking. Feeling
is, in fact, a means whereby judgements can be made with a high
degree of precision. And judgements based on feeling are undergirded by assessments of value. A position reached without feeling
can be sterile or pointless. When, on the other hand, feeling
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predominates to an inappropriate extent, the reality of the situation

can be obscured or skewed by what it is felt ought to be the case.
What is so can give way to what ought to be so.
In portraying and contrasting the functions, I am speaking in
terms of polarities, and necessarily, therefore, presenting the function under review in its unmitigated extreme. In reality, however, it
should be borne in mind that the pure application of a particular
function does not exist.
Relationships between the functions

In the preconscious state, there is obviously no conscious use or
exploitation of any function. However, the ego, part and parcel with
its attaining to the central place in consciousness, seems to wrest
from the unconscious a measure of control over one or more functions. To the extent that a function is not at the disposal of the ego,
it remains bound up with or fused to the other functions in the
unconscious (Jung, 1971 [1921], par. 705). Thus, the differentiation
of the functions from the unconscious constitutes or signifies an
increase in consciousness. In the course of development, the ego
seems to gravitate towards a particular one of the functions, to
which it tends to have recourse to a greater extent than the others.
The concentration upon one dominant function maximizes the
usefulness of that function. With right- or left-handedness, the focus
in orientation upon one hand, with the familiarity, practice, and
condence attendant upon its habitual use, enhances dexterity. In
the case of right- and left-handedness, a predominant reliance upon
the one side does not mean the complete disregard of the other.
Even so, the subordinate hand and arm remain weaker and less
facile than their dominant counterparts. Yet, as one develops generally, one is often able to gain an appreciable development of the
inferior side without diminishing the facility of the dominant one.
The analogous situation with psychic functions is complicated,
as we shall see, by the essential incompatibility of the mates in each
pair of functions. Renement of the feeling function means active
suppression of the thinking function and vice versa; and the same is
the case between sensation and intuition. Typically, early in life, an
individual develops one of the non-rational functions and one of the
rational functions, each at the expense of its mate in the non-rational
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or rational pair. Furthermore, of the two developed functions, one

will become the dominant function in the personality. In trying to
adjust successfully to the external conditions of life, we are under
pressure not only to hone our talents, but also to develop a consistent and internally coherent stance towards the world. Accordingly,
we tend to rely most heavily upon the function whose use proves
most natural and effective for us (Jung, 1960 [1928], par. 64).
Thus, we nd the ordinary personality set-up as consisting of a
dominant function from one of the non-rational or rational pairs
and an auxiliary function from the other pair. That is to say, there
will be a dominant function of sensing or intuition from the nonrational pair, coupled with an auxiliary function of thinking or feeling from the rational pair, or vice versa. Moreover, one function, the
remaining function of the pair from which the dominant function is
drawn, will, to a great extent, remain undifferentiated. A person
whose dominant function is thinking, for example, may have a
well-differentiated auxiliary function, say sensation. In that person
it is also possible, especially at maturity, that the other of the pair
with sensation, intuition, will be likewise brought to a substantial
level of development and utilization. Such a person will be exceptionally well-rounded, for most of us are not fortunate enough to
overcome the inherent conict between the auxiliary function (in
the example, sensation) and its opposite number (intuition), so as to
be able to utilize either with a high degree of effectiveness as the
occasion demands. The fourth, or inferior, function (here, feeling)
will remain for most people in large degree beyond the reach of
conscious control. It, as well as the undifferentiated portions of
other functions, reaches consciousness in the main through its
effects; that is, we may become aware of the effects unconscious
functions have had on our attitudes and actions without any
conscious interventionsometimes in no small measure, to our
chagrin (Jung, 1963, p. 272). For individuation to occur, the inferior
function too, and through it an opening to the unconscious itself,
must be brought in relation to consciousness (Samuels, 1985, p. 87).
We have said that to a certain extent the reliance upon one mate
in the pairs of functions calls for the suppression of the paired mate.
Where thinking is the dominant function, the individual is orientated so as to make reasoned choices among the contents presented
by the non-rational functions. On the other hand, where feeling is
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the dominant function, the selection is value based, and the values
bearing on the choice are, in the main, unconscious. They are
grounded in the values of the culture and, at a deeper level, are
drawn from the whole range of human experience stored in the
collective unconscious. These values are not necessarily compatible
with pure rationality, which is the objective of the thinking function.
To take an example from the law, judges are constantly confronted with choices of whether to apply the law strictly or to
temper it with humanity or mercy. The choices are not always
starkly broken out, but they underlie much of the real work of judging. Where human factors are not involved, the problem may be
simply one of solving a puzzle in logic and can be definitively
resolved. Thinking is fully adequate to this sort of problem. On the
other hand, in most real conicts human factors intrude; values,
which cannot be entirely circumscribed by logic, must be taken into
account. Thinking determines what, in the application of logic, the
law would be in such cases, but feeling is the determining factor
when, for human reasons, a relaxing of the strict standard is appropriate. The two can come into conflict. On the one hand, ones
thinking can be clouded by feeling; on the other, strict logic must,
to an extent, be put aside in the exercise of feeling. In other words,
the pure application of one of the rational functions requires, in
some measure, the suppression of the other. In another context, the
scientist must at all costs be objective, but, when the feeling function is abolished because of its incompatible subjectivity, considerations of the ethical implications of the enterprise are also laid
aside.
A similar mutual incompatibility exists between the non-rational functions of sensation and intuition. However, no doubt
because the function of intuition cannot be reduced to its logical
components and is therefore difcult to analyse, it is a little harder
to demonstrate the incompatibility between the two modes of
receiving impressions. Objects and events are facts. The sensation
function accumulates facts, and the person in whom this function is
highly developed is therefore focused upon the facts: accumulating,
ordering, and manipulating them. Then, through the application of
the rational function to the facts, the sensing person draws conclusions. Where intuition prevails, the focus is not on the facts or
details, but on the big picture. As to it, the conclusion is simply
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there, and the rational function is brought to bear to rationalize it,

to square it with the other data of experience. In short, the reasoning of the intuitive person tends to be deductive, the facts being
brought to bear on an inwardly derived hypothesis; whereas, with
the sensing person, inductive reasoning is the norm, as the sensate
rst musters the facts and then attempts to see what conclusion can
be drawn from them.
When an object is perceived through the function of sensation,
information about it is derived from the senses. Intuition, on the
other hand, comes from within, from the unconscious, and takes the
form of direct awareness, independent of the senses. If the focus of
the intuitive person is directed too intensely towards the facts,
which are the stuff of sensation, intuition seems to dry up.
Therefore, the application of the senses intrudes upon intuition and
vice versa. Let us take the example of the common form of intuition
we call a hunch. The aptness of a hunch will not admit of factual
analysis. This is to say that a focus upon the senses, which amass
the facts, will stand in the way of the intuition. A bettor at the track
may like, without knowing why, the look of a horse. If, however, in
placing the bet, the bettor chooses to rely on the horses track
record, the personal sense of the horse is discounted. One must
either honour the hunch or go with the odds.
Taking again an example from the law, I have observed two
opposing tendencies in trial lawyers. Those who rely heavily on
intuition tend to give as little attention to the facts of a case as they
can get away with. They come, rather, to a general theory, which
they support with such facts as t. The more clever the lawyer, the
more facile the moulding of the facts to t the theory intuitively
arrived at. Under pressure, this type of lawyer reexively falls back
upon the theory, whereas the other type of lawyer looks to the facts.
In making an argument, the intuitive lawyer loves to respond on
the moment, as her inspiration comes spontaneously from within.
If, because of the dynamics of the trial, she nds that she has time
to regroup before being called on for a response, she is actually not
pleased. This is because of the fear that, in the thorough organization of her materials that she now has time for, she will lose her
spontaneity.
The lawyer of the reverse type, whose strong suit is sensation,
proceeds systematically. His recourse is to the data, and he must
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have a full opportunity to organize, to muster in the most

compelling way, the facts and arguments that support his side. This
lawyer, once prepared, makes a formidable adversary; but he may
sometimes be caught from the blind side, because, absorbed by the
data, he may have overlooked a new or eccentric way of viewing
the case, now brought to bear by his opponent, that, standing back,
he might have anticipated.
The idea of knitting incompatible functions together into one
personality is a paradoxical one, as is the integration of the
conscious and the unconscious. These paradoxes, under Jungs
scheme, can be surmounted in individuation. The wherewithal is
that of the symbol.
Perceiving and judging

Depending upon whether the dominant function is one of the nonrational ones or one of the rational ones, the personality takes on a
particular cast. Because the non-rational functions are engaged in
receiving information, the focus of those of us in whom one such
function is dominant is upon our perceptions rather than upon
judgements based on those perceptions. We are likely to be more
interested in the process than the result. The opposite is the case
where one of the rational functions is dominant: the primary
concern of the thinker or the feeler is with assessing data and
making judgements based upon them. These types tend to be
result-orientated. Introversion makes it appear as though things are
switched around, so that introverted perceivers may seem
outwardly as if they were judgers and vice versa.
Studying the personality types

The relative degree to which the four functions are naturally preferred in a particular individual, coupled with the all-important attitude, extraversion or introversion, determines the personality type
of the individual. A great deal can be told about an individual
simply by determining these relationships, and the relationships can
be tested for. Indeed, the use of psychological testing is extraordinarily prevalent in todays world, for personnel selection and
management in virtually every eld of endeavor. Jungian typology
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serves as a basis for some such tests, and one approach in particular
is derived specically from the relationship of the four functions in
extraverted and introverted personalities.8 A very simple test will
reveal ones Jungian personality type. Most people, encountering
the results, not only instantly recognize their own types, but nd
themselves pleased with them. Such exercises help people to learn
about themselves and can be a tool for achieving greater balance in
the personality. They also stand in aid of interpersonal relations.
Participants who have been led to see themselves through their
personality types are better able to understand why persons whose
types differ from their own tend to react differently to things.
Previously inexplicable reactions in others become, within the
context of a differing typology, both comprehensible and acceptable.
These applications of Jungs ndings are useful, but one is led
to wonder whether they have the effect of trivializing an intellectual breakthrough of enormous signicance. It would be a shame if
Jungs discovery of the psychic impulse towards individualization,
which is of the utmost importance to the understanding of human
nature, were to be obscured behind the practical utility in the workplace of certain aspects of it. There is a risk, moreover, that an inadequate grasp of what the psychic functions are really about will
lead to the perception that the human psyche is reducible to a few
nite elements. There are after all, taking into account a distribution
between judging and perceiving, only sixteen basic combinations of
the two attitudes and four functions. The reality is, however, that
variations in the development of different aspects of the personality allow for highly individualized shadings in combinations of
traits or tendencies, and this flex in the interplay between the
elements of the personality, conditioned separately by the life experience of each individual, affords the virtually infinite range of
personalities that in fact we nd to exist.
Freuds approach to the personality was a reductive one, and
Jung came to oppose it for that reason. It was Jungs view that the
unconscious was as inexhaustible in its vastness and variety as is
the exterior world. Although certain elements of the personality
and certain basic personality types can be identied in the quest for
greater understanding, there is range enough within this vastness
of the psyche for the individual personality to be, as Jung saw it to
be, truly unique.
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But would any physiologist assert that the body is simple? Or that
a living molecule of albumen is simple? If the human psyche is
anything, it must be of unimaginable complexity and diversity, so
that it cannot possibly be approached through a mere psychology
of instinct. I can only gaze with wonder at the depths and heights
of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold
abundance of images that have accumulated over millions of years
of living development and become xed in the organism . . . Beside
this picture I would like to place the spectacle of the starry heavens
at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the
universe without; and just as I reach this world through the
medium of the body, so I reach that world through the medium of
the psyche [Jung, 1961 [1930], par. 764).
It is worth recalling in this connection that who we are can be

reduced, in a way of thinking, to the arrangement in our cells of
only four nucleotides, Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine,
the core elements of the genetic code in DNA. We will encounter in
the following section the possible signicance of the curious recurrence of the number four in basic organizing structures.
The archetype of the self
The god within

Bearing in mind that the four functions of the personality are going
to t into it somehow, let us return more directly to the discussion
of individuation. I said before we got on to personality types that
individuation is the process whereby the ego is brought into a
conscious relationship with the Self. The Self, as Jung poses it, is an
archetype of wholeness (Jung, 1958 [1952], par. 757). Whereas the
ego lies at the centre of consciousness, the Self occupies the central
point of the whole of the psyche, of the totality of the conscious and
the unconscious. Moreover, the Self gives rise to the ego. As Jung
puts it, the Self is an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves
(Jung, 1958 [1954], par. 391).
Before the ego there was the Self, and out of the Self the ego was
formed. The Self caused the ego to be formed. Substitute cosmos
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for ego and God for the Self in these sentences and you have
the stuff of creation myth. But have we not said that the formation
of the ego amounts to the creation of consciousness, and creating
consciousness is tantamount to creating the world? Before the scientic age, Western philosophy accepted that there existed a sort of
super-consciousness in God himself, so it was never considered
that, but for the interposition of our consciousness, the universe
might stand in eternal oblivion. Absent a God of that sort, the
universe, if it is to be known to exist, seems to be left with recourse
only to a consciousness such as our own. If, then, we accept that
consciousness is the means through which the universe, practically
speaking, comes into being, and, if we accept the Self as the activating force of that consciousness, then the Self is a very God-like
figure. And, indeed, the imagery by which the Self Archetype is
expressedimagery pointing to wholeness and unityhappens to
be that by which deity is typically represented (Jung, 1958 [1952],
par. 757).
Jung said that the Self might be called God within us, (1953
[1928], par. 366). He believed, on the evidence of his practice in
depth psychology, his studies in mythology, alchemy, and religionsWest and Eastand his personal experience, that there is in
humans an inbuilt image of God. He saw it as a compensatory
ordering factor, which is independent of the ego (Jung, 1958
[1954a], par. 447). The Self, then, is an unconscious factor, which on
its own works to institute order in the psyche and which presents
itself to consciousness as if it were God. Jung put the state of things
as he saw it in the following succinct formulation:
I am therefore of the opinion that, in general, psychic energy or
libido creates the God-image by making use of archetypal patterns,
and that man in consequence worships the psychic force active
within him as something divine. [Jung, 1956 [1952], par. 129]
In his The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), William James

had come to a similar conclusion, in a quotation behind which one
can perhaps detect an archetype lurking:
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a
feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call some-
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thing there, more deep and more general than any of the special
and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes
existent realities to be originally revealed. . . . So far as religious
conceptions were able to touch this reality-feeling, they would be
believed in in spite of criticism, even though they might be so
vague and remote as to be almost unimaginable . . . [pp. 6667]
We must consider this God-image, as Jung did, without reference

to the metaphysical question of whether there is in fact a God. Jung,
as we have repeatedly said, was reluctant to get into metaphysics.
But emanations from the unconscious can get tangled up with metaphysical ideas. A few words are therefore warranted in the interest
of keeping them separate, especially in connection with the God-like
image of the Self. Granted that the only way we could have an
awareness of God, assuming God exists, is through the psyche, the
psyche could nevertheless be so constructed as to produce images of
God, even though there were in fact no such thing. The sun is not a
hero who marches across the sky in the course of the day; yet the
primitive psyche apparently perceived it as such, and that image
is still embedded in our unconscious minds (Jung, 1953 [1917],
par. 109). The psyche is likewise so constructed as to produce
universally images that can be identied with the Mother Archetype. But, while the Great Mother exists in the psyche, there is no
analogue for her in the material world. To the infant she appears as
the natural mother, but we come to realize with age that the natural
mother is in reality just another human being. The natural mother is
no more literally the Great Mother than is Leviathan or the World
Ash, in the form of which the Great Mother might also from time to
time appear.
If, to carry the argument forward, the psyche could produce a
God-image on its own in the absence of an actual God, then the fact
that it produces a God-image, however compelling the image may
be, does not stand in any way as a testament that there is a God.
Jung would pose the question: given that we have no basis on
which to believe that the physical world corresponds with our
perception of it, on what ground would we believe that transcendental reality corresponds with our metaphysical picture (Jung,
1963, par. 781)? In short, archetypal images of God do not prove
there is a God. At the same time, the fact that there is a God-like
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gure in the psyche obviously cannot be taken as demonstrating

that there is not a God.9 Whether there is a God outside of the
psyche is simply objectively unknowable.
In any case, the image of God that exists in the psychewhether
or not there is a God outside itis a profound thing. It is a great
deal more than the recognition of the idea of God and of the fact
that such an idea has been around for a long time. If that were all
that there were to it, the psychological fact of God would be of no
more consequence than the psychological fact of unicorns.
Archetypes are dynamic factors, moving on their own to produce
real effects in both the conscious and unconscious lives of people
and societies.
The reader may have come to feel that, for all the protestations
to the contrary, we have in fact edged into the realm of the metaphysical. We have an archetype that looks and acts just like God.
Moreover, we have said that the only way we could come to know
the real God, if she or he exists, is through the archetype-driven
psyche. Finally, we have implied that the effects this god archetype
produces stem from the collective unconscious and so are, to a large
extent, beyond the reach of conscious analysis. So, the reader might
say, we have postulated the only God it is possible to know, and we
say that that God is identical with a particular archetype of the
unconscious, which has a direct bearing on our lives. We might next
propose setting up temples to the Great God Self. Jung had, in fact,
to insist in the face of just this sort of criticism that he did not feel
the slightest need to put the self in the place of God (Jung, 1963,
par. 273). The recognition of the God-image native to man is, as he
saw it, the stuff of science; nding in it otherworldly signicance is
the business of religion.
The concept of the Self does require perhaps that it be taken
more on faithfaith, that is, in the validity of Jungs ndings from
depth psychology and from his esoteric studiesthan must the
Jungian ideas we have previously propounded. It is the Self,
according to Jung, that drives us towards consciousness. The scientic attitude can perhaps more readily embrace a natural impulse
towards consciousness than it can the further impetus towards individuation that Jung also attributes to the Self. This is because it is
easier to t the emergence of consciousness into an evolutionary
scheme than it is to accommodate in that scheme an additional
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factor that motivates the individual towards self-realization. So, let

us take a check on how well the proposition of the Self may be
grounded in the earlier discussed ideas that I have contended are
supported by facts and reasoning accessible to all. The collective
unconscious seems consistent with evolutionary development,
given that some element of psychei.e., an incorporeal aspect of
the organism that governs behaviourmust necessarily evolve in
tandem with the physiology of every advanced organism. Instincts
fall within the category of psyche, and instinctual behaviour can be
observed in animals of all sorts, as well as in humans. It seems clear
that instincts were present from the earliest beginnings of the
human species and almost as clear that consciousness, at least in
any form we would recognize, is a very late development. What
Jung does is ll in the space in between. He postulates a collective
unconscious in humans that supervenes the instincts. Consciousness arises out of this collective unconscious. Thus, the collective
unconscious supplies a continuum between instinct and consciousness of the sort that one would expect in an evolutionary process.
This is especially so of the evolutionary process contemplated by
the best present-day science: one that proceeds by small steps rather
than great leaps (Dawkins, 1986, pp. 223252).
The archetypes, moreover, fit well into such a picture when
archetype is taken simply as the term by which we designate the
functional aspects of the collective unconscious. As to the Self
Archetype, if we see it as acting autonomously to bring on consciousness, we might surmise further that it continues its work
beyond the basic differentiation of consciousness to guide the individual at a later stage in life towards self-realization. This premise,
that of individuation, requires something of a leap, but it nds support in the examples of certain individuals who, in imagination and
creativity, clearly transcend the stamp by which nature and culture
imprint the collective. We accept the ego as the centre of consciousness, with wide-ranging powers. It can, for instance, pull up a memory, which, until summoned, was not a part of consciousness. We can,
by analogy, visualize the Self as occupying a similar role within the
whole of the psyche. Thus, it seems to me that we have not, in fact,
had to stretch far beyond the relatively safe empirical boundaries
within which we have been working to embrace, notwithstanding
that there seems to be a certain mystical air about it, the Self.
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Now, suppose it were said that the propositions just laid out
amount to no more than empty words, that, given the logical
requirement that there be a continuum on the evolutionary path
towards consciousness, we have simply come up with termsthe
collective unconscious, archetypes, and the Selfto ll in the
blank spaces on the continuum. Evolution towards consciousness
would require something in the gulf between it and the instincts,
say, the collective unconscious; that something would perforce have
some structure, say, the archetypes; and it would require some
driving and regulating engine: the Self. In as much as the actual
existence of the things to which these words refer is not susceptible
of proof, what we have done is something akin to lling in missing
links on the palaeontological continuum with esoteric names that
have no fossil to stand behind them. But, even laying aside the
direct observations of Jung and many subsequent therapists, there
remains in support of the reality of these psychic entities the fact of
the overwhelming correspondence, in a way congruent with Jungs
hypothesis, of the mythologies of societies of all times and places.
We shall see, moreover, that Jung can put a persuasive face on the
Self in terms of its manifestations to consciousness.
If it remains to show the reader some evidences of the reality of
the Self, we nevertheless can for now claim to have abstained from
attaching metaphysical signicance to it. We have not, for example,
said anything one way or another about the God or gods around
whom religions are formed. We have placed the Self in an evolutionary context, whereas the gods of religious faith are generally
conceived as operating outside the laws of nature. We have said at
most that, if such a God or gods manifest themselves to humans,
they must perforce do so through the human psyche.
Let us now look more closely at what Jung means when he
relates the Self to an inner image of God. For him the God-concept
includes every idea of the ultimate, of the rst or last, of the highest or lowest (Jung, 1958 [1952], par. 739, n. 1). If the mind could
conceive of something prior to or outside of God, then that something would transcend God and would be entitled to the name,
God. Particular religions might identify a particular being, in the
existence and specic personality of which their votaries believe,
say Elohim or Allah. In reference, however, to a God-image brought
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forward from the Self Archetype, we are not speaking of a being.

We are employing a concept, a construct that serves to express
an unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, since by
denition it transcends our powers of comprehension (Jung, 1953
[1928], par. 399). At its core this concept is a spiritual principle that
stands in opposition to the instincts (Jung, 1960 [1928], par. 102).
But, although the spiritual principle has its conscious aspects, it,
like the instincts, is deeply rooted in the unconscious. Jung points
out that submission to the will of God or to any other metaphysical
concept amounts to submission to the unconscious, because it is
either from the unconscious or through the unconsciousdepending on whether ones bent is scientic or religiousthat the spiritual impulse reaches consciousness (Jung, 1958 [1948], par. 273,
n. 4). It is well known that a conscious conviction cannot alone
produce faith. The unconscious prepares the ground for, and
provides the impetus to, all conscious responses to the idea of God
(cf. James, 1902, pp. 8586). Whether it is God who produces the
response or the unconscious itself cannot be known. As Jung puts
it, there are no scientic criteria for distinguishing so-called metaphysical factors from psychic ones (1958 [1948], par. 273, n. 4).
The Archetype of the Self, be it the one or the other, is real
enough to me. I feel I have been led to it directly. The medium was
a dream.
In this dream I found myself descending a wide staircase. At a landing
the stairway turned to the left. Off the landing, to my right as I turned,
a high school play was in progress. I think I could only hear the players, but as I visualized them in the dream, they, the stage, the auditorium, all were of a diminished scale. I descended the nal set of stairs
to a darkish hall, which ran perpendicular to the staircase. Directly in
front of me across the hallway and elevated in the shadows stood a
huge, fat, pagan idol that seemed in some way alive. There was motion
to my left and I noticed gures carrying into the hallway and lining
them up along the near wall a series of stone busts, all much the same.
They were female busts on pedestals, standing about chest high. All
were worn and dusty, as if they were of great age. I knew right away
that these were the Mothers. My reading in Jung had acquainted me
with the signicance he had attached to the visit to the Mothers in Faust
II. I had the sense that the figures were being brought from places
of antiquity all around the world and gathered here. Experiencing a
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feeling of anticipation, I turned my attention to my right. I suddenly

knew that something important was in the room at that end of the hallway, something more important than the pagan statue or even the
Mothers. There was a sign: THE INCREATUM. That was the end of
the dream.
Increatum is a Latin word, no doubt an obscure one. With a

little research I found it used with reference to God by St Bonaventure in his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (Itinerary into the Mind of
God, 1259) in the phrase Verbum increatum et incarnatum, which
may be translated as Word incarnate and uncreated Word. I, of
course, to my waking knowledge had no inkling that such a word
existed. Indeed, I took it to be of the dreams own fabrication, which
no doubt it could just as well have been. Reecting on this dream,
I had the amusing experience of wondering whether the word
might not appropriately have been two words, the rst being In,
rather than the one word as presented in the dream. I then tuned in
to the reality that the word might have existed nowhere else in the
world except in my own subjective experience. That experience
alone was authentic, and there could be no quibbling over form. In
any case the increatum spoke to me of that which had not been
created, that which alone existed at the time of the rst creation, just
as, as I later came to nd out, St Bonaventure had used it.
As it happened, much later, in the work of the Jungian analyst
and writer, Edward Edinger (1986, p. 18), I found that Jung himself
had used the term. Why it had not occurred to me to look in the
Collected Works, I do not know, but, checking the index, I found that
the word appears there several times, for the most part in discussing the work of alchemists, and refers to a principle coeternal
with God (Jung, 1967 [1948]. par. 283). I had undoubtedly read the
Jungian passage, but had retained no conscious recollection of the
term. The dream was operating presumably then through a process
Jung called cryptomnesia, by which is meant the bringing forth of
materialsometimes, evidently, quite extensivestored in the
unconscious, of which the person who summons it can produce no
memory (Jung, 1957 [1902], pars. 138148).
To conclude the discussion of the dream, I surmise that the tiny
drama proceeding at the level above the sacred hall in the dream
signied ordinary life in progress.
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Images of the Self; the mandala

Let us now consider some of the ways the Self Archetype presents
itself to consciousness. Jung has devoted one book exclusively to
this subject, drawing illustrations from the imagery of Gnosticism,
alchemy, and Christianity (Jung, 1959 [1951]). In other places he has
analysed and explicated corresponding images from ancient religions, folklore, Eastern mysticism, and the dreams and visions of
ordinary people. I will by no means attempt to explicate the
imagery of the Self Archetype but will rather try merely to suggest
enough of the nature of this imagery to give the reader something
to hold on to.
Because of its unconscious component, the Self is always experienced as something apart from the ego, the contemplating subject
[Jung, 1959 [1941], par. 315). It is so remote to the conscious state
that it can be symbolically expressed only partly by human imagery
(ibid.), although father and son in combination, as exemplied in
the Christ who is one with the Father, signally embodies such a
symbol. Potent animalsthe dragon, the snake, and the lionalso
serve in this respect, as do certain plants, such as the lotus and the
rose. A sublime example of oral imagery of the Self is the culminating image of the rose in the Divine Comedy.
The most elementary images of the Self are abstract forms: the
circle and the square. These abstract images come together in the
mandala. Mandala is a Sanskrit term that Jung employed because
of what he saw as the remarkable agreement between the insights
of yoga and the results of psychological research (Jung, 1958
[1943], par. 945). Mandalas of the East are typically very elaborate
designs or pictures with a circular motif. Native American sand
paintings of the western United States are often of a corresponding
structure. Jung collected and analysed mandala gures from a wide
array of cultural settings (Jung, 1959 [1950], pars. 627718, 1953
[1944], pars. 122331), as well as from the spontaneously produced
or dream-based drawings of his patients (e.g., Jung, 1959 [1950],
pars. 525718).
Not infrequently in mandala gures the circle will encompass or
be encompassed by a square. The four sides of the square comprise
a quaternity, that being any configuration of the number four.
Crossed perpendicular lines within the circle may also divide the
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mandala into a quaternity. The circle is an obvious symbol for

wholeness, having no beginning or end. The quaternity carries the
notion of discriminated wholeness (Jung, 1963, par. 323). The reader
may also see, at last, in the quaternity aspect of the Self symbol, the
presence of the four functions of the personality.
One is struck by the simplicity of these abstract images, but only
in such a construction might their centrality and their universality
be assured. Furthermore, such images permit of limitless elaboration and embellishment. The uroboros, the snake biting its tail, to
which we have frequently adverted, takes the form of a circle, but
the image also invokes a circle symbolically, in the eternal round
signied by the snakes devouring and thus destroying itself while
at the same time it draws nourishment by which to live.10 Dantes
celestial rose is likewise circular in form and is yet ramied in its
symbolism by Dantes poetic text. The Moorish arch consists of a
square or rectangle at the bottom with a circle at the top, like a
keyhole. The parts of the two gures that are occluded by meshing
them would interlock if completed (Arnheim, 1954, pp. 430431).
The signicance of the distinctive shape of the arch is amplied by
the very fact that the arch serves as a portal.
Figuratively, the Christian cross is but a slight variation of a
most abstract quaternity form, but it represents not only the sacrice, but Christ himself: God become man. No observer of Christianity could doubt that the simple symbol of the cross carries with
it a fathomless complexity, as well as profound power. It has served
as a solace and an inspiration to millions of individuals, and under
its sign have marched martyrs and crusaders and inquisitors. The
swastika, in like fashion, constitutes a modication to the gure of
a square, with its sides bisected by a cross. It is often embraced
within a circle, and it, too, has served as a potent symbol, both in
modern and ancient times (Davidson, 1964, p. 83). In its modern
context it reminds us that the Self is all-inclusive, embracing both
good and evil, and that symbols can serve dark as well as lofty
motivations.
I have a rain jacket in my shing bag that I can never take out
without thinking of the uroboros. It is made of one of these marvellous modern materials that can be tightly compressed. When not in
use, the jacket, hood and all, can be pushed into its own pocket
from the inside out. The pocket then zips up to form a soft sphere,
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somewhat smaller than a soft ball. When it rains, unzip the pocket
and out comes the jacket. Thus, the jacket re-enters the womb of the
pocket; there follows a period of gestation; and, in the fullness of
time, the jacket is delivered forth again, renewed.
Jungs encounter with the Self

A mandala dream helped conrm for Jung his understanding of the
Self as a psychic phenomenon. The reader may recall that following
his break with Freud, Jung had gone through a psychologically
turbulent period. A path was marked out for him, however, by a
dream of the murder of Siegfried, later to be discussed, which gave
him to understand that he had to undergo a reorientation of the
personality. In the succeeding years he concentrated on the images
that were welling up from the unconscious, even to the extent of
abandoning his cherished academic career (Jung, 1965, p. 194).
Towards the end of the First World War, he, as he put it, began to
emerge from the darkness (ibid., p. 195). Jung, obviously, understood the importance of the inner developments he was experiencing, but he could not understand their goal. Over time he began to
grasp that, contrary to the directional development of the ego,
marked by the imagery of the hero, what he now encountered was
a movement to the centre. He came to understand that the goal of
psychological development in mid-life is the Self and that the Self
both embraces, and stands at the centre of, the personality. In part
he did this by drawing and painting mandalas that seemed to urge
themselves upon him (ibid., p. 196). He came to see that there is not
a linear evolution in the approach to the Self, but that the movement is rather one of circumambulation (ibid.). In 1927, he had a
dispositive dream. He found himself on a rainy winters night
walking with some fellow Swiss in a dirty, sooty city. The city was
Liverpool.11 Coming up from a harbour the group arrived at a
broad, dimly lit square, into which many streets converged. Around
the square, the various districts of the city were arranged in radial
fashion. In the centre of the square was a circular pool, and in the
centre of the pool was a little island. Everything was partially
obscured by rain and smog, except that the little island blazed with
sunlight. On the island stood a solitary magnolia tree, covered with
reddish blossoms. It was as though the tree stood in the sunlight
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and were at the same time the source of the light (Jung, 1965,
p. 198). The Swiss companions obviously did not see the tree. They
commented on the foul weather and wondered that another compatriot had chosen to live in Liverpool. Jung was carried away with
the beauty of the tree and the island and thought to himself that it
was very clear why the other had settled there (ibid.).
At this time Jung had been for some years interested in ancient
Chinese philosophy. In the year following this dream, in circumstances he considered synchronistic, he received from his friend, the
Sinologist Richard Wilhelm, the manuscript of a thousand-year-old,
Taoist-alchemical treatise, The Secret of the Golden Flower. In it Jung
encountered material that squared with what he had been experiencing. Jung sensed his isolation was at an end. He had been able
to establish a tie with something outside his own inner images
(Jung, 1965, p. 197).
The quaternity
Because of the implication of the square in the figure of the
mandala, and therefore in the imagery of the Self, it may be seen
that it is not an accident that concepts by which humans have
always ordered experience fall into groupings of four. Take the
examples of the four cardinal points on the compass, the four
winds, the four seasons, the four elements of antiquityearth, air,
re, and waterand the four humours of medieval medicine. Jung
considered all mythological gures marked by a quaternity to have
to do with the structure of consciousness (Jung, 1963, par. 557).12 Let
us look at a particular image that Jung described as the archetypal
sine qua non for any apprehension of the physical world (Jung,
1959 [1951], par. 398). The image is that of time and space. Einsteins
theory of relativity demonstrates that time and space are not separate realities but, in order to explain the physical world, must be
taken together as an integrated whole. From the psychological
point of view, only through the concepts of time and space is it
possible for the human mind to grasp the physical world. We shall
now see that the timespace complex is itself a quaternity, and
indeed the special kind of quaternity through which the Self
Archetype typically presents itself. The timespace complex has
four parts that stand to each other in the relation of 3:1. Jung has
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observed that the 3:1 proportion frequently occurs in dreams and

in spontaneous mandala-drawings (ibid.). Space consists of length,
width, and depth, to which we now know is joined time, as a fourth
dimension. Interestingly this arrangement can be inverted. Time
can be seen as the tripartite element joined to space as a fourth:
But if we look at it in terms of the three qualities of timepast,
present, futurethen static space, in which changes of state occur,
must be added as a fourth term. In both cases, the fourth represents
an incommensurable Other that is needed for their mutual determination. [Jung, 1959 [1951], par. 397]
Now, the coincidence between the arrangement of time and

space and a purely psychic invention such as the mandala might
strike one as a somewhat fanciful. Remember, however, that time
and space are themselves psychic constructs; they are the means by
which our psyches apprehend the organization of the universe. It is
a given that we cannot know whether the universe is actually set
up in this way.
One has in time and space a unitary whole that is central to
creation and that has as its function the organization of experience.
This is an apt description of the image of the Self. The psyches
mechanism for organizing the experience of the external world,
then, reveals itself to be a reection of the internal ordering principle of the psyche itself. On the other hand, taking the standpoint of
the material world rather than that of the psychic or spiritual world,
one could just as readily say that the psyche is ordered upon the
principle of the natural universe.
Now let us consider the disposition of the four functions of the
personality. Jung found that they are the organizing structures of
consciousness. It is they that are reected in the quaternity symbol.
Three of the functions, you will recall, can be rather fully differentiated so as to be amenable to the dictates of consciousness. Which
three, of course, varies with the individual. The fourth always has
something special about it, because it remains within the ambit of
the unconscious. But, if the role of the Self is to bring order to the
disparate elements of the psyche and shape them into a whole, this
fourth, too, must be embraced. The relationship, then, of the four
psychic functions must be seen as 3:1.
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In medieval Christian iconography, a depiction of Christ as a

central gure is often attended at the four corners by representations of the four evangelists (Jung, 1967 [1929]. par. 31).13 By
convention, three of the evangelists are represented by their attributive animals, with the fourth (Matthew) bearing his human image.
The whole is a mandala gure, with the quaternity in a 3:1 relationship drawn about Christ as the central symbol of wholeness.
Jung nds the Christian Trinity, itself, to be made complete by a
fourth element, consisting, itself, of two, incompatible, gures: the
Virgin Mary and the devil (Jung, 1959 [1951], par. 397).14 The Trinity
obviously lacks the element of the feminine, and this was supplied
by the irrepressible ascendancy of Mary, who became the most
moving gure of the Middle Ages, a time when the Catholic Church
stood at its zenith. As the intercessor between the sinner and Christ,
she was the subject of overwhelming devotion, lending her name,
for example, to many of the great cathedrals that sprang up across
Europe (Adams, 1905, pp. 89105).15 The church likewise excluded
evil from the make-up of the Trinity, holding that God could
contain no element of evil, for its presence in him would stand in
contradiction of his holiness. Yet the immitigable presence of moral
evil in the world found expression nevertheless through the imposing gure of Satan.
The sacred marriage

In terms of the four functions of the personality, the incommensurable fourth brings into the equation the element of the unconscious. If the personality is to be made whole, all four functions
must be brought into play. Yet Jung tells us that the fourth function
always remains enmeshed in the unconscious. As it is not possible
that the whole vast realm of the unconscious be assimilated into
consciousness, the integrated whole must embrace the element of
the unconscious through the fourth function. For this to occur, the
ego, which holds the central position in consciousness, must surrender its position of centrality. It must acknowledge the primacy of
the Self, which encompasses both the conscious and the unconscious. Jung says that the experience of the Self always amounts to
a defeat for the ego (1963, par. 778). In yielding precedence to the
Self, the ego is surrendering to a higher power.
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The ego never lacks for moral and rational counter-arguments

which cannot and should not be set aside so long as it is possible to
hold on to them. For you only feel yourself on the right road when
the conicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you
have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in
deance of the heart. From this we can see the numinous power of
the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way. [ibid.]
The act or process of achieving wholeness is a paradoxical one,

for it contemplates the union of mutually exclusive opposites, the
conscious and the unconscious. According to Jung, the concept of
the union of opposites is the Western equivalent of the fundamental principle of classical Chinese philosophy: the union of the yang
and the yin in the tao (Jung, 1963, par. 662). Jung found a European
counterpart in the symbolism of alchemy. His inquiry into the
union of opposites in alchemy is brought together into a not insubstantial volume of the Collected Works, titled Mysterium Coniunctionis
(Vol. 14). Alchemists attempted to combine incompatible elements
in order to attain to the philosophers stone, which may be taken as
a symbol of the Self. Jung made himself an expert in the study of
the alchemists because he saw that in their arcane practices they
exposed their own unconscious workings, by projecting them upon
the physical materials and processes they worked with. Alchemy
had currency well into the seventeenth century. Sir Isaac Newton
was keenly interested in it. As Jung points out, this was the latest
time in European culture in which it was still possible for one to
impose a psychological overlay on material processes, so as to visualize symbols as actual occurrences (Jung, 1967 [1954], par. 353).
Thereafter, the increase of scientic knowledge would cut away the
ground for alchemical beliefs. By scrutinizing alchemical texts Jung
was able to make out unconscious symbol formation in the elaborate descriptions alchemists made of what they saw to be transpiring in their retorts.16
For similar reasons Jung became a serious student of the religious thinking of the Gnostics of the early Christian era.17 The
Gnostics saw God as residing within, rather than outside of, the
human soul. They also believed that God encompassed both good
and evil and both masculine and feminine. In their symbolism, also,
Jung saw the working of the Self to accomplish the union of opposites within the personality of the individual.
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The alchemists symbol for the union of opposites, the hierosgamos, or sacred marriage, is sexual in nature. Jung saw Freuds
focus on sexuality as the natural outlet for the sexual symbolism
that lay just beneath the threshold of the collective consciousness.
It could nd expression only after science had released itself sufficiently from Victorian constraints to allow the subject within
its purview (Jung, 1954 [1946], par. 533). Although the alchemists,
given the state of knowledge of the time, almost certainly could not
have been aware of a psychological interpretation of their symbols,
or even that what they were dealing with was, in the main, symbolic and not actual, they strove to achieve a union of opposites (Jung,
1963, par. 335).18 In psychological terms, as understood by Jung,
consciousness is renewed through its descent into the unconscious,
in the course of which the two are joined. The sexual act naturally
symbolizes this conjunction. The renewed consciousness does not
contain the unconscious but forms with it a totality symbolized by
the son (Jung, 1963, par. 520).
The relationship of consciousness to the Self

The term the Self is an inclusive term that embraces our whole
living organism (Jung, 1953 [1928], par. 303). It not only contains
the deposit and totality of all past life, but is also a point of departure, the fertile soil from which all future life will spring (ibid.).
How, you may reasonably ask, would the representation of a thing
so all encompassing take symbolic form in something so relatively
insignificant as the relationship between the conscious and the
unconscious in an individual, or, more specically, in the integration in the individual of the four functions of the personality? The
reason is not a trivial one. Consciousness, represented by the ego,
is indeed insignicant in the presence of the Self. Metaphorically, it
is the sinner, standing before God. But, at the same time, consciousness can recognize in itself the crowning achievement of life on
earth. Moreover, without consciousness, the unconscious, indeed
the Self, might as well not exist. Absent consciousness, the living
world must be taken as an endless round of mindless life forms
wandering through their instinct-driven routines in utter oblivion.
Consciousness opens up the possibility of an awareness of the
glories of creation. Perhaps more important still, an advanced
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consciousness renders possible the placing of creation in a moral

perspective.
The question, then, of why the Self relates itself to consciousness
is the same question as why, in Christianity, God nds it necessary
to become a man. Moral understanding renders the brutish gods
and spirits of primitive consciousness inferior. As consciousness
expands, it attains to the ability to generate a higher conception of
the God-image. Thus it is that the wrathful Yahweh of the Old
Testament seems unspeakably petty to the modern sensibility. How
does one justify, in a being supposed to be omnipotent, a childish
insistence on the recognition of his obvious supremacy? The answer
is that, with the enlargement of consciousness, moral sensibilities
deepen. As greatly as we admire ancient and classical Greece, one
could not abide today, as reective of a morally acceptable outlook,
the bloodthirsty marauders of The Iliad or the slave-based society of
the Periclean age. As a culture advances, it changes its picture of
God. What I have called an enlargement of consciousness, William
James termed an expansion of the imagination:
What with science, idealism, and democracy, our own imagination
has grown to need a God of an entirely different temperament from
that Being interested exclusively in dealing out personal favors,
with whom our ancestors were so contented. Smitten as we are
with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual
favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness . . . [James, 1902,
pp. 378379]
It may be that the concept of God will, in the end, prove inadequate to accommodate further expansions of consciousness. One
might question, in the face of the sense of alienation and ennui that
seems to pervade the spirit of the West todayby no means to be
solved by reactionary religious movements that would put us
under the dominion of an outworn God, and so remove from us the
burden of accepting responsibility to ourselveswhether a new
image of God will emerge that is large enough. That such will be
the case, however, we have reason to believe, not only on the basis
of Jungs revolutionary conception of the God-image in the unconscious, but also on the basis of new conceptions of God that have in
the past emerged out of periods of disbelief and moral desuetude.
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The currently reigning Christian God in the West, for example, one
might argue, not only derived from the collapse of the classical
Hellenic gods, but was foreshadowed by the prophets of Israel,
who decried what they perceived in their days as moral laxity and
a crisis in belief.
God, then, evolves through the evolution of human consciousness. Once gods in their evolution reached the point of secondary
personalization, they were called upon to expand morally, so that
their personae reached to a largeness of spirit corresponding to the
scope of human imagination in their day. If one scans the myths,
this process appears as a maturing of God, but it is, of course, the
maturing of the human mind. In his penultimate work (I exclude
the autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reections, 1965, written with
Aniela Jaff), the elegant Answer to Job, 1958 [1952], pars. 553758),
Jung traces the moral maturation of the God of the Old Testament.
His thesis is that Job, while acknowledging his insignicance in the
face of, and his submission to the will of, God, demonstrated
himself to be his Gods moral superior. Job saw that it was morally
wrong for God to inict upon him unspeakable miseries solely to
gratify Gods petty vanity. This awareness left God no choice but to
become man in Christ in order to partake of the moral superiority
of his own creation. When God saw himself through the eyes of a
mans consciousness, he knew that he had to become man. The
theme that God was growing up morally in the course of the Bible
likewise runs as a major thread through Thomas Manns monumental work, Joseph and His Brothers (1944).
The death of the hero

Bringing this discussion for the moment down to earth, what is at
issue is the relation of each individuals ego to the collective unconscious from which it took form. As the individual develops, the ego
assumes the central position in the psyche. Indeed, it is the general
reex to equate the whole of the psyche with the ego. The climax of
the process of individuation occurs when the ego is forced to accept
that it is not the centre of the personality as a whole. There must be
a conscious, and invariably painful, recognition that there is something greater within the psyche than the ego. The ego must yield its
position of primacy in the presence of this greater existent. We said
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earlier that Jung, entering upon his period of psychological turmoil

in 1913, on willing himself to plunge, as it were, down into the
psyche, had a vision that was followed in a few days by a dream.
The vision was furnished with images of death and renewal and
then ooded in blood. We described it earlier in this chapter in the
section titled A night sea journey. The follow-up dream helped
Jung to recognize the individuation process fermenting within him.
Ultimately it led, not only to his own individuation, but to our
having the means through him of recognizing for ourselves what
individuation is. The blood of the vision signified the pain and
death the ego must experience before it can be born again in the
presence of the Self. I will recount the follow-up dream in Jungs
words.
I was with an unknown, brown-skinned man, a savage, in a lonely,
rocky mountain landscape. It was before dawn; the eastern sky was
already bright, and the stars fading. Then I heard Siegfrieds horn
sounding over the mountains and I knew that we had to kill him.
We were armed with ries and lay in wait for him on a narrow path
over the rocks.
Then Siegfried appeared high up on the crest of the mountain in the
rst ray of the rising sun. On a chariot made of the bones of the dead
he drove at furious speed down the precipitous slope. When he
turned a corner, we shot at him, and he plunged down, struck dead.
Filled with disgust and remorse for having destroyed something so
great and beautiful, I turned to ee, impelled by the fear that the
murder might be discovered. But a tremendous downfall of rain
began, and I knew that it would wipe out all traces of the dead. I
had escaped the danger of discovery; life could go on, but an
unbearable feeling of guilt remained. [Jung, 1965, p. 180]
Jung awakened, confused, but an inner voice commanded that

he understand the dream. Finally, it came to him. The attitude
embodied by Siegfried, the hero, was no longer suitable to Jung. The
posture of the dominating will had to give way to something else.
And this is what happens when the heroic ego, which has striven
valiantly to make itself the centre of the personality, is forced to
recognize that it cannot occupy that position. It must now bow
down before a higher authority. Jungs recognition of this reality
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was a breakthrough of signal importance. The world religions had

been teaching for centuries that we stand in relation to a higher existent, and now a man had made it conscious why that is truethe
answer lies in the relationship between the ego and the totality of
the psyche. Jung concluded his account thus:
After the deed I felt an overpowering compassion, as though I
myself had been shot: a sign of my secret identity with Siegfried, as
well as of the grief a man feels when he is forced to sacrice his
ideal and his conscious attitudes. This identity and my heroic idealism had to be abandoned, for there are higher things than the egos
will, and to these one must bow. [ibid., pp. 180181]
Jung opined that the brown-skinned savage who initiated the action
stood for the primitive Shadow and that the cleansing downpour
indicated that the tension between consciousness and the unconscious was being resolved (ibid., p. 81).
What takes the place of the ego at the centre of ones being
where, of course, it has always been, notwithstanding the claims of
the egois the Self. Thus, the unconscious aspect of the personality has its full due. This is not, however, to the total exclusion or
domination of the ego, for it, too, has its rightful place, even in the
face of the awesome majesty of the Self. The proper image of this
relationship within the personality is that of the individual to God.
Jung points out that the imagery of the rst century Gnostics aptly
depicted these developments in the psyche.
The self was of course always at the centre, and always acted as the
hidden director. Gnosticism long ago projected this state of affairs
into the heavens, in the form of a metaphysical drama: egoconsciousness appearing as the vain demiurge, who fancies himself
the sole creator of the world, and the self as highest, unknowable
God, whose emanation the demiurge is. [Jung, 1976 [1969], par.
1419]
Once the ego accepts its place, it realizes that it belongs, as a part
of the whole. Jung held that God is not absolute, but is in a paradoxical way dependent on humanity for completeness (Jung, 1971
[1921], par. 412). The image of God is not innately conscious. As the
Self, it resides in the unconscious until it finds its way into a
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persons consciousness. This is why God needs humanity. God

cannot become conscious except through an individuals consciousness. This is the message Jung extracts from the story of Job in
Answer to Job. It lies at core of the mythological motif of the incarnation of God, including Gods incarnation in Christ in the New
Testament (Jung, 1958 [1952], par. 631).
The process of individuation is the process of Selfs becoming a
living presence in the consciousness of the individual.
Notes
1. William James embraced both levels of the unconscious in his description of the subliminal or B-region of the personality, as distinct from
the A-region of full sunlit consciousness:
The B-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for
it is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of
everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. It contains,
for example, such things as all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the springs of all our obscurely motived
passions, impulses, likes, dislikes, and prejudices. Our intuitions, hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in general all our non-rational operations come from
it. It is the source of our dreams, and apparently they may
return to it. In it arise whatever mystical experiences we may
have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor; our life in
hypnotic and hypnoid conditions, if we are subjects to such
conditions; our delusions, xed ideas, and hysterical accidents,
if we are hysteric subjects; our supra-normal cognitions, if such
there be, and if we are telepathic subjects. It is also the fountainhead of much that feeds our religion. [James, 1902, pp. 526
527]
2. To the man of the twentieth century this is a matter of the highest
importance and the very foundation of his reality, because he has
recognized once and for all that without an observer there is no world
and consequently no truth, for there would be nobody to register it.
The one and only immediate guarantor of reality is the observer.
3. At a higher level in the struggle, even Heracles succumbs. Led by
Omphale to dress himself in womens clothes, he symbolically yields
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4.
5.
6.
7.
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his manhood and is doomed on this earth (Neumann, 1989, pp. 286
289).
The Book of Common Prayer, according to the use of The Protestant
Episcopal Church.
C.W., 6.
Cf. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900, p. 465: consciousness as a
sense organ for the apprehension of psychic qualities).
Jungs term translates as irrational. He wanted to convey the sense
of something beyond reason, rather than something contrary to
reason (C.W., 6, par. 774). I think non-rational might have a truer
ring for the present reader, because of the sense to us of irrational as
implying an abandonment or failure of reason.
Myers Briggs Type Indicator (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists
Press).
The notion of a subconscious self certainly ought not at this
point of our inquiry to be held to exclude all notion of a higher
penetration. If there be higher powers able to impress us, they
may get access to us only through the subliminal door [James,
1902, p. 267].
10. In like manner, Christ, being one with God, caused his own birth, and
at the Last Supper he eats his own esh and drinks his own blood
(Jung, 1963, par., 423).
11. The liver, according to an old view, says Jung, was considered the seat
of life; thus the Liverpool of the dream stood as the pool of life (Jung,
1965, p. 198).
12. It must be taken in this context as provocative that modern science
identies four elemental forces of the universe: the strong atomic force,
the weak atomic force, electro-magnetism, and gravity. And remember A, T, C, and G, the four building blocks of DNA mentioned earlier.
13. According to Jung, there is an established correspondence between
this mandala and similar depictions of the Egyptian god Horus and his
four sons (1967 [1929], par. 31).
14. These two gures, Jung said, are united in the Mercurius duplex of
alchemy (1959 [1951], par. 397).
15. Jung attached great signicance to the fact that the Pope in 1950 nally
accorded Mary a place in the Christian pantheon by the formal acceptance of the doctrine of her assumption into heaven (1959 [1954b], par.
195).
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16. In like fashion, Edward Edinger has traced the projection of psychic
contents on to the philosophy of the early Greek philosophers, from
Thales to Plotinus (Edinger, 1999).
17. A Gnostic codex, a papyrus in Coptic found in 1945 near the village of
Nag Hamadi in Upper Egypt, is named after Jung (Jung, 1976 [1975],
par. 1514, and n. 1 (Eds)).
18. Jung speculated that at a future time our present attempts at psychological explanation will appear just as metaphorical and symbolical
as we nd those of the alchemists to be (1963, par. 213).
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CHAPTER FIVE
Synchronicity
Individuation and materialism
ost of us consider ourselves children of the modern age,

and therefore we live under the sign of science. Reverence
for science produces a materialist world view, by which
the universe is conceived in terms of sequence of causes and effects
that have succeeded each other without interruption from the
moment of the Big Bang forward. If only scientists knew enough,
everything would be seen to t logically into a material world that
adheres scrupulously to set laws. Astro-physicists dream of nding
a grand unifying theory by which to achieve this understanding.
Under the materialist world view, consciousness is explained as
the product of chemically generated micro-electrical impulses
within the neuronal structure of the brain. Never mind that
consciousness seems special, unique, it can be reduced to just these
impulses. We have explored the idea that we can fashion an
approach to Jungs concept of the Selfwith its drive towards
consciousnessthat is compatible with such a view, and we can.
Just as it has been discovered that there is no point in evolution in
which the spark of life is somehow magically introduced (Dawkins,
177
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1986, Chapter Six), it can also plausibly be argued that there is no

further point in evolution at which consciousnessthe sense of
ones own subjective existence and experienceis ignited in life.
Life is our term for systems that have evolved through natural
selection so as to have the capacity to nourish, repair, and reproduce themselves. The marvellous complexity in the dynamic elaboration of these systems makes them appear set apart from the rest
of the material world, but science knows that they are just natural
extensions of it. Consciousness, by the same token, can be argued
as being nothing but the product of the functioning of the neurons
in the brain, and in no way anything separate or apart from them.
It just seems magic.
Now it is time to consider whether materialism can digest the
Jungian scheme, not just for the evolution of consciousness, but for
the tendency towards individuation as well. In so doing, we are
cognizant that, from one perspective, individuation can be seen as
in its essence simply an extension of consciousness. Even so, it is
worth considering further whether the egos coming into a conscious relation to the Self at the instance of the Self is the sort of thing
we would expect to be brought about through genetic evolution.
We will also proceed in recognition of the fact that, for reasons that
will appear later, Jung never made such an argument. Here we go.
First posit that through natural selection life forms evolved. Posit
further that one of these life forms, humans, developed an elaborated instinctual make-up, the collective unconscious, out of which
consciousness evolved.
Now it should be amply clear that consciousness is a powerful
adaptive tooljust the sort of thing that might be brought about by
genetic selection at its best. But does it follow that the collective
unconscious might have evolved so as to contain a tendency
towards not just conscious beings, but individuated beings? We have
considered that societies seem to have no need for individuated
individuals; that is, individuals who express themselves as such, as
distinct from individuals who fit neatly into the cultural mould.
Indeed, it seems to be the case that, in the main, societies would
rather do without such individuals. What selective impetus might
conceivably lead to an overshot by the collective unconscious of the
sort that might produce individuation, carrying the individual wide
of or beyond the cultural pattern?
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It might, at this point, be appropriate to confess that I have been

perhaps a little broad in the suggestion that the cultural collective
has no investment in individuation among its members. Let us take
another look at it. It is indeed hard to visualize how the evolutionary process could have reached beyond the collective order. But this
is just the sort of difculty that one expects to encounter in trying
to conceive how natural selection might, by small progressions,
have got from one place to an improbable other place. How might
it, for example, have produced a device like a birds wingnot only
highly nished in its composition, but suited only to a singular and
quite specialized function? Tiny proto-wings would not produce
even clumsy flight. The history of nineteenth century science is
littered with discredited examples of how natural selection could
not possibly account for such and such a wonder of nature.
Putting aside the difculty of how, then, which owes more to a
deciency in our imaginations than in natures resources, it is possible to summon up plausible reasons why evolution might have
favoured a psyche that reaches even beyond the capacity to function consciously as a member of the group. What one must do is
recognize that, while under Jungs theory the tendency towards
individuation is present in everyone, not everyone achieves even a
modest measure of individuation. And it is only the rare individual
who may be said to be truly individuated. Yet in this rare individual there might form a new constellation of the archetypes.
Through such an individual society might advance to a higher
level. The bearer of a radical insight will no doubt be ignored,
opposed, excoriated, or even put to death by the representatives of
the collective. Such a fate has not been foreign to artists, mystics,
and visionaries in any age. But the fruits of a revolutionary idea
may nevertheless carry a culture forward and perhaps serve as its
salvation. And, indeed, it must be conceded that society has shown
a certain respect and even awe for such extraordinary individuals,
although often only in retrospect. This not to say that all such extraordinary individuals would perforce be fully individuated. Yet we
can be comfortable in accepting that there is in them, in terms of the
relationship with the unconscious, something that stands closer to
it than in the case of the rest of us, and that that something has
the capacity to push a society forward. We are warranted, therefore,
in concluding, further, that an autonomous psychic force which
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propels individuals towards a union with the unconscious might

well be the product of natural selection, and that, in consequence,
when we speak of individuation, we are by no means outside the
compass of the materialist conception of reality.
One reason Jung did not subscribe to an approach of the sort I
just outlined is that he believed that it is, at least for the present,
beyond our powers to know whether or not the archetypes are
products of the material world. Do they originate in the unconscious in the process of natural selection, or do they have a sort of
life of their own outside the evolutionary process? From the standpoint of a materialist world view, the second proposition would
seem total folly. In fact, however, not only does something like this
proposition have a venerable history, but it lies at the heart of a
vigorous present debate being conducted at the leading edge of
scientic inquiry. The eld of debate is called cognitive science, and
the issue is known as the mindbrain problem, or as we shall
shortly confront it, the hard problem. In as much as Jungs name
seldom comes up in contemporary scientic debate, the question is
not framed in terms of archetypes, but the reader will see how they
might readily t in.
Jungs archetypes, as we have said, stand at not a far remove
from Platos forms, which Plato saw as present at the creation of the
universe. Likewise, the archetypes are more than the ground of
consciousness, they are themselves subjects, actively participating
in the formation and development of consciousness. Even so, if we
accept that it is possible that this autonomous aspect of the archetypes is the product of evolution, why should we look for other
explanations? The reason is that consciousness, or subjective experience, as we have been loosely characterizing it, is so different from
the stuff of the material world that it is difcult to conceive how it
might somehow have been fashioned out of matter. As Jung put it:
In the rst case it is hard to see how chemical processes can ever
produce psychic processes, and in the second case one wonders
how an immaterial psyche could ever set matter in motion (1960
[1952], par. 948).
Consciousness is clearly not a substance, as it was thought to be
of old (Jung, 1963, par. 695). It does not, like matter, occupy space
(McGinn, 1995), and the constraints exercised upon it by time are at
best uneven (Jung, 1976 [1954], par. 684). Still, you might say, life, too,
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is a very special thing, and it is also intuitively very different from

inert matter. Indeed, we are quite uncomfortable in concluding, but
are urged by evolutionary theory to do so, that life is generated out
of matter, without more. In other words, with life, it seems that the
materialist horse is out of the barn (Dawkins, 1986, Chapter Six).
Psyche, is, however, a horse of another colour. When God
reaches to touch Adams outstretched nger in that great fresco on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I imagine that he was bestowing
not life, but consciousness. What is life, after all, without consciousness? Blind existence. Descartes laid the groundwork for scientic
thinking in saying, I think, therefore I am. He thus took the fact
of consciousness, of experience, as the one known from which to
begin scientific inquiry. Jung subsequently pointed out that, as
between the existence of experience and the existence of the material world, the one we know to exist is experience (Jung, 1960
[1931b], par. 680). And yet the science developed by building upon
Descartes has somehow led to the curious prejudice of the modern
age that matter is more real than experience.1
The problem of the Archimedean point

There is one difficulty, in confronting the issue of consciousness,
which sets it apart in theory from all other realms of scientific
inquiry: that of the Archimedean point. In coming to grips with
consciousness, science must wrestle with the absence of an objective
vantage from which the conscious mind might assess its own state
of being conscious. As philosopher John Searle puts it: I cannot
observe my own subjectivity, for any observation that I might care to
make is itself that which was supposed to be observed (1992, p. 99).
Not even in the study of life is there the compromise of objectivity inherent in the study of consciousness. This is because, properly considered, in the study of life, it is not life that is studying life,
but rather consciousness that is doing so. We can condently use
our reason as applied to observation to draw conclusions about life
as well as about the universe at large. If our conclusions turn out
not to square with other pertinent observations they can be modied or rejected. The situation is different when the object of study
is the mind. The subjective experiences of the mind, qualia, as they
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are called, are neither valid nor invalid. Subjective experience just
is. We are suffused with that which we would have under observation. We have, therefore, in contemplating consciousness, no check
against the possibility that the impression we form is warped by the
shape of that which forms itthe shape of that same consciousness.
During the middle ages the human mind proved so ingenious
as to invent the machine known as the astrolabe. By means of it, the
motions of the planets and the sun and moon could be tracked in a
way that corresponded with physical observation, and the astrolabe
could be used with an appreciable degree of accuracy to predict
what the relative positions of the heavenly bodies would be in the
future. Yet, at the centre of the astrolabe, around which revolved
small spheres representing the heavenly bodies, there stood not the
sun, but the earth! Consciousness, in other words, was sufciently
ingenious to enable our forbears, not only to impose their own
geocentric view on the heavens, but also to devise a complex
machine that conrmed that view. In studying consciousness, can
we ever be sure that we shall not be imposing equally arbitrary, and
nevertheless quite convincing, archetypal projections upon it?
One may say that this difculty applies only to introspection,
and argue that an observer might competently observe consciousness in another person. Yet each persons subjective impressions
belong peculiarly to that person. They cannot be shared, in and of
themselves, by any other person. It is therefore hard to see how an
observer outside someone elses head can develop an accurate
picture of what, at the most subjective level, is going on inside it.
And in any case, the subjective processes of the observer are still
implicated in the observation. It is this difficulty, Jung felt, that
places psychology on an inherently unequal footing with the other
sciences (1960 [1947], par. 429). However, in developments in quantum mechanics, Jung saw a strange encounter between atomic
physics and psychology that offered the possibility that an
Archimedean point might be found, that an objective approach to
psyche might one day become a possibility (1954 [1946], par. 164).
The hard problem

In any case, philosophy and science cannot refrain from trying to
understand all that can be understood about the constitution of the
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universe, and an essential object of that endeavour must be the

understanding of consciousness itself. Such an understanding, to the
extent it is possible, may conrm the materialist model or it may not.
Kant held that it cannot be proven through reason either that everything came into existence according to mechanistic laws or that some
things did not (Jung, 1961 [1916], par. 688). Stephen Hawking has
noted, however, that Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, resorted to
reason alone, rather than to observation of the universe, which, of
course, today affords a great deal upon which otherwise to rely
(Hawking, 1993, p. 87). Hawking is of the view that the universe has
unfolded, from the Big Bang forward, strictly according to natural
laws. He thinks everything is determined, although the world is so
complex that the course of events could never be predicted (ibid., pp.
9499). Roger Penrose, who collaborated with Hawking in breakthrough discoveries about black holes, envisions, by contrast, a universe bound by natural laws, but in which the events governed by
those laws are nevertheless not causally determined. Although
Penrose believes that we may one day know how consciousness
arose and what in essence its nature is, he considers that such knowledge will emerge out of a profoundly new science, as yet only
vaguely glimpsed. That science will disclose, ingrained in the universe, a reality in which mind and matter are reconciled (Penrose,
1994). In this, Penrose is no doubt outside the scientic mainstream.
Most scientists of today would probably hold to the view that the
psychic or spiritual is causally derived from the material: that the
psyche, in other words, is a creature absolutely of the organic
processes of the brain. Jung, while maintaining his scepticism as to
whether this could be knowable one way or the other, put the point
from a different perspective, observing that, far . . . from being a
material world, this is a psychic world, which allows us to make only
indirect and hypothetical inferences about the real nature of matter
(Jung, 1960 [1933], par. 747).
Often the focus of the mindbrain dispute has been in terms of
the possibility of artificial intelligence, or AI, as it is commonly
known. If the universe really is a strictly deterministic one,
governed in all respects by laws in which effect invariably follows
cause, then there is no obstacle in principle to replicating everything the brain can do by a computer of sufcient power. Neurons
re across synapses to produce mental effects. Complexity aside,
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what impediment could there be in theory to reproducing such

firings across silicon chips? Indeed, in a moment that had the
power to spook the rest of us as well, a thoroughly unsettled world
chess champion, Gary Kasparov, thought he sensed real intelligence
lurking behind some of the moves of Deep Blue, the computer
developed by IBM to take him on.
David Chalmers has put the mindbrain issue in terms of the
hard problem, as distinct from the easy problem (1996, pp. xi
xiii). The easy problem is to explain the biochemical processes of the
brain. Now this is by no means in fact an easy problem. It is easy
only in comparison with the hard problem, which is to understand
how the phenomenon of subjective experience arises from those
processes. Remarkable strides in neuroscience, in charting, for
instance, electronic pathways in the brain, give reason to hope that
one day the easy problem will be solved. Some think, however, and
Chalmers is one of them, that an explanation of functions will never
suffice for an explanation of experience. This conclusion leads
Chalmers to contemplate the possibility that consciousness or
subjective experience is a fundamental, irreducible quality of the
universe, not taken into account by the laws of nature as we
presently understand them (ibid., pp. 213215). Interestingly,
Chalmers does not see, in principle, any insurmountable barriers to
the claims of articial intelligence (ibid., p. 331).
Now, the scientic and philosophical writers who have joined
this debate have with very few exceptions2 disregarded Jungs
deliberations in the same vein. Yet, years ago, Jung advanced
exactly the line of inquiry presently raised by Chalmers:
Some include instincts in the psychic realm, others exclude them.
The vast majority consider the psyche to be a result of biochemical
processes in the brain cells. . . . But only an insignicant minority
regards the psychic phenomenon as a category of existence per se
and draws the necessary conclusions. [Jung, 1958 [1954b], par. 769]
Meaningful coincidences
Jung saw in the world about him correspondences between physical
events and psychic events that could only be taken as meaningful. He
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developed the view that there is a psychic factor that bears on events
in the material world. The relationship between this psychic factor
and the ow of events, he termed synchronicity. Synchronicity
reveals itself in temporal reality in a variety of ways. Paranormal
phenomena and extra-sensory perception seemed to Jung to have a
claim on reality that could not be discounted. And, beyond these
relatively rare occurrences, he tended to put currency in the sort of
non-causal factors that, in the common mind, play a role in daily
existence: things like good and bad luck or the validity of the experience of dj vu. He suspected, in the vernacular, that there are
things that go bump in the night that are not Santa Claus.
While a young medical student, Jung had been deeply impressed
by the experience of a kinswoman who, as a medium, became possessed by spirits seemingly from another realm. When in a trance the
young woman expressed herself in a voice and a vocabulary completely foreign to her habitual mode of expression, which, from all
Jung knew or could nd out, she could not have picked up from
someone else. Jung wrote his doctoral dissertation on his observation
of these trances (On the psychology and pathology of so-called
occult phenomena, 1957 [1902], pars. 1150). He concluded that
psychological and not supernatural factors were behind the eerie
sances, but the experience left him open for the rest of his life to the
possibility of forces whose existence stand in contravention of the
laws of classical physics. Taking the sances as being authentic only
in so far as they demonstrated the workings of autonomous elements
within the psychic make-up of his young relation by no means rendered them comprehensible, even to psychology as it then stood.
Even Jungs acceptance of the authenticity of the sances in the psychological sense lay at the very verge of credibility. Indeed, at its core,
the problem that developed between Jung and Freud, leading to their
famous break, had to do with Jungs refusal to accept that psychology could be cabined within the reductionist, materialist framework
that Freud insisted upon. Freud, of course, realized that the least hint
of the mystical could be fatal to the budding science of psychoanalysis he was trying so hard to get established. Yet Jung came to
question the underpinnings of the very scientic dogma on which
Freud was trying to ground his new discipline.
As Jung formulated his theory of the archetypes, he came to the
conclusion that the archetypes have been present in the world from
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its beginning. He concluded, in other words, that they are not the
product of natural selection in living organisms, but, rather, transcend living organisms. Further, they condition the development
not only of life and consciousness, but of the whole of the natural
world. That is to say, the archetypes exist outside of the psyche as
well as within it (Jung, 1964 [1958], par. 852). There it is. The archetypes as Jung conceived them do not t within the traditional materialist framework. Yet, as we shall see, Jung viewed his concept as
potentially compatible with scientic understanding. It was merely
that the scientic understanding of his dayand it remains so of
our owndid not reach far enough.
Jung saw the archetypes as psychoid in nature (ibid.). Thus,
there is a psychic element in all of creation. It is through this inltration of a psychic, non-material, factor into the material world
that the phenomenon of synchronicity comes into play. Synchronicity, you will recall, as conceived by Jung, is an acausal ordering
principle that conditions both the psychic and material aspects of
nature. A synchronistic occurrence can be identied when events,
between which a causal connection is out of the question, are found
to correspond to each other through a common meaning. There
is both a psychic and a real-world element to the events. Their
meaningful concurrence is usually expressed symbolically
(Atmanspacher & Primas, 1996, p. 120). Jung cites this example of
synchronicity:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in
which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this
dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a
noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a
flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I
opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it ew in.
It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one nds in our
latitudes, a scarabeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia
aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge
to get into a dark room at this particular moment. [Jung, 1960 [1952],
par. 843]
One evening I was deliberating over whether this would be a

good example of synchronicity to include at this point in this book.
It is easy to miss in Jungs straightforward account of the incident
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the importance to the patient of the psychological treasure signied

by the golden scarab of the dream, the scarab being an ancient
symbol of rebirth (Jung, 1965, p. 179). I was pondering another
example from my own experience, drawn from the events attending the death of a friends child. I could not in conscience include it
without my friends permission, yet I feared that even to raise the
matter with him might cause additional pain. While I was musing
in this vein, there appeared on a television programme I had been
idly watching an account of the strange activities of the African
dung beetle. The programme showed a pair of these beetles, which
are a species of scarab, fashioning a ball of fresh rhinoceros dung
it was yellow-gold in the sunlightand rolling it away to bury it in
the ground. This buried hoard became then, said the narrator, a
very precious store for the beetle couple, supplying it with food for
an extended period and serving as the repository for eggs on which
to base the next generation. I have subsequently in Africa actually
witnessed this fascinating behaviour.
This curious materialization of my own scarab instance determined me to include Jungs example. It is characteristic of such
events that they can appear as incidental and commonplace to
anyone not attuned to their psychological signicance. Indeed, in
the instance just reported, it was not until the next day that I
grasped the linkage between the gold of the original scarab, both
literally and figuratively, and the buried treasure of the dung
beetle.3 It is also typical of the unconscious workings of the psyche
that homely or even disgusting material can harbour a precious
symbol. Thus, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is
become the head of the corner (Matthew 21:42).
I raise this example not so much to dignify the rather ordinary
little experience I have recounted, but in order to emphasize that we
may dismiss much that is symbolic or meaningful because of the
ordinary garb in which it is clothed. I offer as further illustration
one other small, but to me intriguing, instance; an instance that likewise supplied some reinforcement for a choice made in the preparation of this book. A kindly reader of the manuscript of Chapter
Three had suggested that an example might be helpful, on the rst
page of that chapter, to illustrate the difference between behavioural and psychical responses to unconscious stimuli. I put in the
line, The one is to jump out of the way of a train; the other is to
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pick up a train of thought. I was thinking the line might be a bit

cute. The very next day, however, I encountered the following
words, reading for the rst time in a particular work of the unimpeachably serious William James,
Now, from Hobbess time downward English writers have been
fond of speaking of the train of our representations. This word
happened to stand out in the midst of my complex thought with
peculiarly sharp accentuation, and to surround itself with numerous details of railroad imagery [1890, p. 581]
Coincidence, pure and simple! the reader may snort, but it is a

very odd congruence, occurring close in time, of the identical play
upon divergent uses of the word train. To this hard-nosed reader,
therefore, I can only remark what a shame it is to have no appreciation for the little magic of such occurrences in ones own life, just
because they do not comport with ones world view.
Finding something other than raw chanceor perhaps merely a
fanciful imaginationin such correspondences is admittedly going
quite far in deance of the canons of scientic thought, as well as
of those of the conventional wisdom. Jung noted that the inner
aspect of such experiences often held a great deal of importance for
patients who recounted them to him. Nevertheless, the tendency of
the patients was to treat such experiences with a good measure of
secrecy, for fear of appearing ridiculous (Jung, 1960 [1952], par. 816).
Because people tend to disregard instances in their experience for
which their world views hold no place, one is led to wonder
whether such instances, rather than being quite rare, are not much
more common than is normally supposed. The natural tendency to
doubt the authenticity of the encounter with non-causal relationships as being contrary to reasonor on that ground to explain
them away or to keep them secretargues that they may occur
more frequently than is generally believed. Indeed, one is tempted
by the thought that, were such instances openly discussed, they
would appear to be sufciently common as to require that they be
taken more seriously into account.
Even as things stand, I am inclined to think that there are many
in our society who must question at some level whether certain
coincidences they encounter are indeed purely the products of
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chance. It happens that I am writing this on July third. Looking

forward to the holiday tomorrow, I am moved to wonder how
many Americans there are who do not feel that there is something
more than chance in the fact that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
both died on 4 July, 1826, exactly fty years after the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. Be that as it may, while I might be
brought to yield on many, there is one meaningful coincidence in
my own life that, no matter how forcefully the arguments for
causality may be brought to bear, I will respectfully decline to
accept as being purely an accident. I was aboard ship in the Aegean
Sea when word came that my father had been mortally injured in
an industrial accident. My father had come to be a great admirer of
General Eisenhower during the Second World War, and had been
prominent in our area in Eisenhowers campaign for president. He
had also managed the campaign of Richard Poff, who swept into
Congress in the same election. Congressman Poff saw to it that the
navy spared no effort in getting me back home at this critical time
for my family. Trouble was, we were in extremely rough weather in
the Aegean and it was too dangerous to bring a helicopter in to pick
me up. Finally the weather abated enough to permit me to be
passed in a bosuns chair to a destroyer headed for Athens.
The destroyer deposited me there promptly, but, probably
owing to the continuing ill weather, there were no aeroplanes, military or civilian, that could get me started on my way home. The
routes of promise were through Paris or Frankfurt. I got myself
qualied as a courier to ensure top priority going out of the airbase
at Athens, and hung around there waiting for something to break.
I was sitting across the counter from working air force personnel
whom I had got to know rather well when there appeared behind
them two officers in orange flight suits, headed out the door. I
looked up and said to one of them, P. T., can you get me to Paris?
He said, Yes I can, Tom, follow us. P. T. Williams had been a
fraternity brother of mine at Chapel Hill; I had lost track of him
since school. I did not even know he was in the air force. Yet he was
co-pilot of a cargo plane embarking at that moment for Paris, and
he took me there in the cargo bay. In consequence of the time differential, I arrived in the USA at an hour earlier than that at which we
left. Here was a coincidence bearing a great deal of significance
in my psychic, as well as my practical, life, as I was powerfully
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disturbed, as a son might be, over my fathers death and my

mothers attending distress.
Jung, it is interesting to note, went to the length of conducting
statistical studies to see whether there might be a possibility of
proving synchronistic relationships (Jung, 1960 [1952], pars.
872915). He concluded, however, that it is virtually impossible to
rule out statistically the possibility of pure chance in even a high
rate of seemingly acausal connections. Chance can account for any
single coincidence, no matter how improbable. Moreover, it is difcult to establish a manageable statistical universe for synchronistic
experiences in general. Jung found compelling, nevertheless, the
ndings of J. B. Rhine at Duke University, published in 1934, on
extrasensory perception, showing substantial variances from the
statistical norm in controlled studies of psychic inuence on material events, such as the appearance of a certain card or number
(Jung, 1960 [1952], pars. 833842).
The acausal nature of quantum mechanics

The most persuasive support for Jungs intuition relating to the
existence of an acausal psychic factor has come from the unlikeliest
of quarters: from science itself (Jung, 1960 [1952], par. 819). Jung
sensed that the worlds of physics and psychology were converging.
The science of quantum mechanics, developed in the rst half of the
twentieth century, has come to be the accepted basis of modern
physics. As a means of observing nature at its most basic, quantum
mechanics has supplanted classical physics. It has, indeed, shown
classical physics to be only a coarse approximation of the way the
world works, and has bared the need for a radical restructuring of
our fundamental ideas about the nature of physical reality (Stapp,
1993, p. 4). The power of the quantum formalism is so great that, in
the enormous number of diverse experiments conducted since the
basic equation was rst worked out by Erwin Schrdinger in 1925,
no unambiguous prediction of quantum theory has been shown to
be false (ibid., p. 239).
Quantum mechanics introduced into observations at the
subatomic level a subjective element (Bohm, 1980, p. 133). This
element appears in the person of the observer. The observer is not
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merely an ancillary to the process of observation, but is, as a principle of nature, an essential part of any atomic or subatomic observation. This discovery vouched, for Jung, the presence that he had
long suspected of a psychic factor woven into the material world.
Whether that will be borne out or not, there are reasons to suppose
that there are things operating in the material world that just will
not t the current scientic model, as witness a situation involving
Albert Einstein. Einstein was very resistant to the orthodox,
Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. In reaction to
it he, with two other physicists, proposed a thought experiment.
The mathematics in question is, of course, beyond my capacity, and
it is questionable to me whether anyone can fully grasp quantum
mechanics except through the maths. Even so, as it is reported,
Einstein and his collaborators, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen,
demonstrated that, if the quantum formalism were correct, then a
consequence would be instantaneous action at a distance. In
quantum mechanics, particles that have interacted with each other
will thereafter react to each other simultaneously, regardless of how
far apart they have become. Now, according to the theory of relativity, any communication between such particles could occur at no
faster a rate than the speed of light. There is established, therefore,
a clear paradox in terms of causality: action upon one particle could
logically produce an effect on another only if the two were in some
way in communication, but the reaction between separated particles would occur simultaneously, allowing no time for communication, even at light speed (Bohm, 1980, p. 129). As it fell out, a
physicist named John Bell devised an actual experiment that
proved that such particles respond to each other simultaneously,
notwithstanding the objection about the speed of light (Stapp, 1993,
pp. 9496). This is to say that, whereas within the contemplation of
classical physics there is no way the action of the one particle could
produce an effect on the other, the effect nevertheless occurs.
Given this state of affairs, one may ask whether a thinking person must not reject the premise that has held sway in scientific
thought for some three hundred years: the premise that mechanical
laws of time, space, and cause and effect govern, without deviation,
the events of the material world. As these laws allow no room for free
will, this premise reduces consciousness to a passive spectator to all
that transpires, for it follows from them that the material operations
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within the brain would go forward from one function to the next in
exactly the same way, with or without consciousness. We think we
direct our thoughts, but the thoughts are consequences of a chain of
material events in the brain that derives strictly from material causes.
Consciousness is, under this view, as it is said, a mere epiphenomenon
(Chalmers, 1996, p. 150). Somehow it is tolerable to accept that the
clash between determinism and free will is simply a paradox that
may some day be resolved, but must for now be simply lived with.
However, if we allow ourselves to confront the conclusion to which
the determinist/materialist viewpoint ineluctably leadsthat consciousness, perhaps the most extraordinary thing in the universe, can
have come to exist in, and yet have no role to play in, that universe
this consequence is altogether unpalatable. The disruption of the
classical picture by the teachings of quantum mechanics may one day
offer a way out.
Jung and Wolfgang Pauli

Jung had mentioned in his writings over many years his surmises
about the functioning of a psychic factor as a part of the fabric of
the material world, but he hung back from publishing them in
extenso. He was naturally concerned about coming forward with
ideas so foreign to the science of the day (Jung, 1960 [1952], par.
816). Finally, in 1952, he published Synchronicity: an Acausal
Connecting Principle (Jung, 1960 [1952], pars. 816968). This work
was issued as a part of a joint volume by Jung and Wolfgang Pauli,
entitled The Interpretation of Nature and Psyche (Jung & Pauli, 1955).
Wolfgang Pauli, called by Einstein his spiritual heir (Stapp, 1993,
p. 175), was a Nobel laureate and one of the most brilliant physicists of his day. Together with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg,
Pauli had been a principal architect of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory (ibid.).
Jung had traced the course of individuation in Pauli through an
extensive series of Paulis dreams, and the two had entered into a
relationship that spanned a number of years (Atmanspacher &
Primas, 1996, pp. 113114). Together, they developed a schema in
which synchronicity, with its element of psyche, was added as a
fourth constituent to the elemental triad of momentumenergy,
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spacetime, and causality. The idea was in a large sense speculative.

Jung recognized that he was in no position to lay out denitively
the operations of synchronicity: there can be no question of a
complete description and explanation of these complicated phenomena (1960 [1952], par. 816). But, with Pauli he designed a model
which, through the intervention of psyche, accommodates the presence of events in the material world that stand in disregard of the
laws of causality. For Pauli, as well as for Jung, the collaboration
represented a departure from a characteristic unwillingness to deviate from the objectively provable. Pauli habitually and ruthlessly
exposed fuzzy thinkingto the extent that he came to be called
the conscience of physics (Stapp, 1993, p. 175). This habit of mind,
however, did not prevent him from coming in his collaboration
with Jung to the conviction that causal anomalies observable by
humans could suggest the possibility of penetrating to an order in
nature in which the difference between the physical and the psychical are reconciled. Mind, represented by meaningfulness in acausal
occurrences, could be seen as implicated along with physical laws
in the ordering of the universe (ibid., p. 181).
The currency of synchronicity today

If Jungs ideas on the collective unconscious had seemed to stretch
credulity, then his theory of synchronicity no doubt put him beyond
the pale. Yet those who are sceptical of archetypes and the collective unconscious are nevertheless hard put to nd an explanation
for how humans skipped from a purely instinctual beast to a creature empowered with the subtle creativity of consciousness. The
collective unconscious as an extension of the instincts would supply
a necessary link. But the student tempted by the logic of Jungs
formulation in this regard is then brought up against Jungs view of
the archetypes as prior to, and transcendent of, life, and indeed of
the material universe itself. This conception seems more in the way
of New Age mysticism than of a scientic address to the problems
of consciousness. Nevertheless, quantum theory leaves an opening
for just such a possibility. Consequently, we nd leading thinkers of
post-Newtonian science, men such as Pauli, Werner Heisenberg
(e.g., 1952), and Roger Penrose (1994),4 entertaining models of the
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universe that are quite congenial with that proposed by Jung. If

thinkers like these have currency today, the fact that Jung was led
early on by his theories about archetypes to proceed along similar
lines can be taken as, in some measure, validation of his line of
thought.
The importance of such thinking, it seems to me, lies not in
whether science might one day validate the one model or the other.
Rather, it lies in our being led by rational arguments to a model of
the universe that is more consonant with the world in which we are
immersed than that afforded by conventional science. It is easy to
speculate that Jungs failure to find acceptance in mainstream
thought is in part attributable to his insistence on pursuing his ndings outside the settled waters of conventional belief. Such is likely
to be the reception of any intellectual explorer. No nal judgement
can be passed, of course, on the principles underlying synchronicity. They implicate, as we have indicated, the hard problem. But it
is important to recognize that Jung, coming at the fundamental
problem of the mindbrain dichotomy from the standpoint of psychology, entertained a possible reconciliation of spirit and matter,
mind and brain, that anticipated much of what is transpiring in the
developing eld of cognitive science today. The reality is that science cannot, as of the present, reconcile classical physics with quantum mechanics. Classical physics can represent faithfully only
things that are in essence simple aggregates of simple local properties (Stapp, 1993, p. 241). The quantum world, by contrast, seems
to be global and indivisible; it cannot be reduced to such terms.
How do informed adherents of the scientic world view deal
with this contradiction? I suspect that most of them are compelled
to compartmentalize their views with respect to science, just as
many of them have traditionally had to do with respect to religion.
In the latter case, they pursue religious observance without
attempting to resolve the conict between their materialist conception of the everyday world and religious dogmas that can in no way
be squared with that conception. The resurrection of Christ, for
example, cannot physically have occurred in a materialist universe,
and yet its acceptance as fact is an essential element of belief in
orthodox Christian teaching. Adherents of a world view based on
classical physics are now forced to a similar recourse. They must
choose, consciously or not, to disregard the inconsistency between
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the world of classical physics and the quantum world. It may be

that science in the future will bridge this gap, but it is highly
unlikely that any future science will be compatible with a world
view based on classical physics. The searcher after truth may therefore more appropriately conclude that the old world view is beginning to unravel in the face of present scientic understanding, and
begin to cast about for a conception of the cosmos that does not
contradict that understanding.
Consciousness shares with the quantum world its irreducibility.
A conscious thought or experience seems to exist as a unity. It
cannot be broken down into its constituent parts without losing its
essence (James, 1890, Chapter Six). Consciousness, therefore, seems
to t naturally into the quantum world. In any case, on the present
state of the evidence, it would seem unwise to disregard the possibility that there is in the psychic realm something that bears directly
upon the material world. Jungs ideas on synchronicity have not
been unstrung by modern science. On the contrary, the most
advanced science of today should be taken as breathing new life
into these ideas.
Unus mundus
There is only one universe. At least, giving their due to current
many worlds theories designed to accommodate observations in
quantum mechanics, there is only one universe in which we will
actually conduct our lives. Despite all the diversity we see about us,
whatever may be called the universe contains it all. This, of course,
includes mind or spirit just as it does the material world. Dualities
nevertheless persistently urge themselves upon us. We are
inevitably faced with the conundrum of how to embrace spirit and
matter in a world ordered by a single set of natural laws. One could
posit that there is one set of laws for the operation of spirit and one
for the operation of matter. That seems to be the premise of most
metaphysical systems. Gods, representing the principle of spirit,
stand apart from the physical world, intervening in its normal operations only from time to time. Yet, throughout all the ages, there has
been an abiding mystical sense that the universe is truly all of one
piece. Before Jung spoke of archetypes, William James spoke to the
overwhelming universality of this mystical sense:
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This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly

altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in
Neoplatonism, in Susm, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism,
we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical
utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop
and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have,
as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually
telling of the unity of man with God, their speech antedates
languages, and they do not grow old. [1902, p. 457]
That the universe is all one seems too obvious to state, yet, up
to this point, the compartmentalization I spoke of earlier has been
necessary; we have not been able to make the world of spirit
conform to the laws of science or vice versa. Jung observed that a
single world combining these incompatible things could clearly
notsimply because of their incompatibilitybe merely an extension of the one thing or the other. Rather, it must be a third thing,
of which both things are a natural part (Jung, 1963, par. 765). To say
this is to say that a unied conception of the universe would not
present a world ordered exclusively by the laws of cause and effect.
This is because it seems clear that those laws are not congenial to
the world of spirit. New ways of thinking therefore may be necessary for us even to envision a unied world, or as Jung termed it, a
unus mundus (Jung, 1964 [1958], par. 852).
The reader may have the sense that we have leapt a chasm in skipping so lightly from the idea of psyche to the concept of the universe,
with its incomprehensibly vast cosmic array. Psyche represents itself
to us primarily in terms of consciousness, and consciousness, for all
its magical nature, is something intimate to us. It registers, therefore,
as something perhaps not so grand. But consciousness is only the
most immediate expression of psyche. Neither it nor psyche in general has so far been made to t into any category other than that of
themselves. Jung would not have had our problemthe impression
that psyche cannot but be small as measured against the whole of the
external universebecause of the awe in which he held the collective unconscious. He saw it, not simply as the ground of consciousness, but as the interior analogue for the whole of the physical world:
a world itself equally limitless in dimension. In contemplating the
majesty of the unconscious, Jung could only invoke the comparison
earlier quoted, that of gazing into the starry sky (Jung, 1961 [1930],
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par. 764). Remember, for Jung, the Self, the organizing principle of
the psyche, is nothing less than the image of God. In any event, there
seem to be only two alternatives to considering psyche to be a creation and function of the material worldsome of the difculties
with which approach I have tried to sketch out in this chapter. We
can consider psyche something apart from the material world, and
therefore live with an unresolved dualism, or we can consider it as
built into the very fabric of the universe itself.
Psychic filters
If we should ultimately come to understand the universe in this
latter way, we should expect to nd not only that it is not ordered by
causality, but further, that it lacks the conditions of time and space.
Psyche lies palpably outside the governance of time and space. We
cannot x the locus of a thought; a memory brings to us an experience from another time; the logic of a dream operates in serene independence of the causal relationships that prevail in time and space.
Jung compares consciousness to the sense organs. We perceive
the world through the senses. Consciousness, he says, is the perceptual system par excellence (Jung, 1960 [1947], par. 367). We
know that the five senses pick up but a fraction of the stimuli
coming to them from the portions of the environment to which they
are attuned. Sight registers only a specic segment of the spectrum
of light waves, only certain frequencies generate auditory response,
and so on. These limitations upon the possible seem to have developed in the evolutionary process so as to provide humans with
what they need, while protecting them from an overload of stimuli.
We get just about what we can manage. The same can be said of
consciousness. We certainly cannot process all of the data that are
available to us. Thus, much is consigned to the unconscious, some
of which can be called to consciousness as needed, through
memory. Jung suggests that we conceive the concepts of time and
space as thresholds of consciousness, akin, in respect of the sense of
sight, to the thresholds between visible light and the invisible
infrared and ultraviolet bands of the light spectrum. Our minds
organize the world in terms of time and space, but that does not
mean that the world is in fact so organized.
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In keeping with this line of thought, we can only see the world
through the eye of our ego. Without the ego as the centre or focus
of consciousness, we would not, for the most part at least, be
conscious. But the ego, the I to which all the rest of the world is
brought into relation, is itself a part of the world. We nevertheless
reexively, indeed necessarily, strike a duality between the ego and
everything else (Neumann, 1989, pp. 89). Jung suggests another
duality that is all but built into us: that between the personal
psycheconsciousness and the personal unconsciousand the
collective unconscious. In Jungs observation, every time the collective unconscious is approached through archetypal imagery, it is
apprehended as something other. Able more than most of us to
break out conceptually from such limitations, Jung proposed a
rather startling analogy opposing the personal psyche to the totality of the psychic world.
I think one should . . . not attribute to our personal psyche everything
that appears as a psychic content. After all, we would not do this with
a bird that happened to y through our eld of vision. It may well
be a prejudice to restrict the psyche to being inside the body. In so
far as the psyche has a non-spatial aspect, there may be a psychic
outside-the-body, a region so utterly different from my psychic
space that one has to get outside oneself or make use of some auxiliary technique in order to get there [Jung, 1963, par. 410]5
In making this observation Jung calls into question boundaries that

we apply spontaneously and uncritically. Consider: does locating
the whole of ones psyche within ones individual person make any
more sense than locating all of ones thoughts as within ones head?
With matters psychic the concept of spacetime does not apply.
When we attempt to make it do so, we are imposing upon reality
limitations that might well have a bearing only upon our way of
thinking. We may visualize things spatially and temporally, indeed
we may have to do so, but that fact makes no impression upon the
world. We must presume that the world remains the same, no
matter how we think about it. Our manufactured dualities, in other
words, would in no way work to cancel realitys unity.
Just as it is entirely probable that the external world we see
through the lter of consciousness differs from what is actually out
there, so also is it probable that our perception of psyche, which
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appears to us as internal, bears only a specialized relationship to

what psyche actually is. Primitive humans saw psyche as inhabiting every aspect of the external world. It may be that we have
developed the tactic of bringing it inside ourselves only as a way of
coming to terms with the awesome nature of its reality. Let us try
by another analogy to envision how our way of looking at the
world may condition how we see it, regardless of how the world
may really be. No one has ever got behind the reality of gravity.
Science can, with great precision, measure its effects, but as to how
gravity came about, or why it exists, no one can say. It is simply a
force of nature. Jung had the idea that psyche, too, is such a force
(1958 [1954], par. 769). Gravitational effects are generated by objects
all around us, yet we are totally oblivious to them. We are aware, of
course, of the gravitational pull of the earth and, through observing
the parabolic revolution of the planets, of the attraction between
them and the sun. If we drop a pea we observe the earths gravity.
But we think of nothing of the peas gravity. We cannot observe the
gravitational attraction between two peas on a table, although we
know in principle that it is there. Suppose it were the same with
psyche. Suppose psyche were present in some measure in all things,
but that its effects are generally so minuscule as to be in the main
beyond observation. Synchronistic events would in such a case be
analogous to the astro-physical effects of gravity, which, until
Newton, were observed, but not understood.
Now, under this idea, the psychic force would be accumulated,
not in objects of large mass, but in complex structures such as a
brain. A paramecium would demonstrate but little of it, a stone,
less. But when it comes to ants the effects might be observable. The
same might be so in alligators. Further up the evolutionary scale,
where central nervous systems become increasingly ramified,
psyche might be reected in greater measure. Certainly this would
be so in the case of English Setters, such as my dog Beau. Thus,
it may be conceived that the wonderful organ, the human brain,
may contain the property of psyche in such measure as to reveal
itself in human consciousness, just as the gravity of a star may
demonstrate its presence in bending the path of light. The broad
idea that some element of psyche is present in everything, called
panpsychism, has in one form or another found its way into the
formulations of many of the worlds great philosophers, ancient,
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modern, and contemporary (Grifn, 1997, p. 263). It is one way of

visualizing psyche as an irreducible element of a unied universe.
There are clearly causal connections between psyche and matter.
After all, the mind is dependent upon the brain. But, not only is the
psyche dependent upon the body, as represented by the brain, it
likewise brings about changes in the body. Mental states bring
about physical changes: fright triggers the release of adrenaline, a
mental attitude can affect the progress of a physical disease, and so
on. Jung saw the archetypes as reaching beyond the psychic, as
structuring not just the collective unconscious, but the entire material world as well. This is an understanding of the universe that
blends the psychic and the material. We have dealt in this chapter
with synchronicity. Synchronistic events may be phenomena that
reveal to the ordinary eye this interpenetration between two seemingly incompatible realities (Jung, 1960 [1947], par. 418).
Notes
1.
William James commented rather emphatically on this phenomenon:

Meanwhile, in view of the strange arrogance with which the
wildest materialistic speculations persist in calling themselves
science, it is well to recall just what the reasoning is, by which
the effect-theory of attention is conrmed. It is argument from
analogy, drawn from rivers, reflex actions and other material
phenomena where no consciousness appears to exist at all, and
extended to cases where consciousness seems the phenomenons
essential feature. The consciousness doesnt count, these reasoners
say; it doesnt exist for science, it is nil; you mustnt think about
it at all. The intensely reckless character of all this needs no
comment. . . . For the sake of that theory we make inductions
from phenomena to others that are startlingly unlike them; and
we assume that a complication which Nature has introduced
(the presence of feeling and of effort, namely) is not worthy of
scientic recognition at all. Such conduct may conceivably be
wise, though I doubt it; but scientic, as contrasted with metaphysical, it cannot seriously be called. [James, 1890, p. 454]
2.
Quantum physicist Henry Stapp, as an example, gives Jung a nod in

connection with Jungs joint work with physicist Wolfgang Pauli
(Stapp, 1993, pp. 180183).
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3.
4.
5.
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In the Egyptian motif the scarab creates, in his egg, the new sun-god
. . . Marie-Louise von Franz (1972, p. 107). Jung (We might also
mention the intimate connection between excrement and gold: the
lowest value allies itself to the highest (1957 [1952], par. 276)) notes
the link between gold and dung as having also been documented in
folklore and by Freud, on the basis of the latters psychological experience (Jung, 1956 [1952], n. 23).
Physicists, David Bohm and Henry Stapp have also proposed interesting models of this sort (Bohm, 1980; Stapp, 1993).
How startling is Jungs idea? In developing upon the concept of the
selsh gene, Richard Dawkins makes the point that perhaps we are
incorrect in thinking that our genes, the engines of the perpetuation of
our species, belong to our bodies. In one way of looking at it, all the
genes in ones body are parasites upon the aggregate whole (Dawkins,
1976, pp. 250251). If our genes may be interpreted as not our own, it
should not be all that far-fetched to consider that images that pass
through our minds are not necessarily our own.
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CHAPTER SIX
Conclusion
Summation
et us reflect on where we have come--I and those readers

who have accepted the arguments thus far, and those as well
who have graciously suspended judgement until we shall
have arrived at a spot where all of the arguments are in. By the
Jungian view, there is an undivided universe that contains an irreducible element of mind. Mind and matter are, as it were, complementary aspects of a unied reality. Mind registers itself to us in
consciousness, which rides upon the vast sea of the collective
unconscious. The collective unconscious, which is common to all
humanity, is the product of natural selection, but it is linked
through the archetypes that give it its form with the universal
element of mind.
Now, in humans, there seems to be an unconscious drive pushing ever towards an enlarged measure of consciousness. Jung
believed this drive to be a property of the universal element of
mind. The extraordinary individual, reacting to this innate prompting, may attain to a new level of consciousness. In so doing, that
individual may bring about a change in the attitude of the culture
203
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upon which her or his new vision is brought to bear. Such a change
may then, through education and tradition, become a permanent
part of the affected culture, and the culture will have in effect
evolved. This evolution will have occurred, however, without
change in the genes and at a much faster pace than would have
been possible through genetic change.
Have we really progressed in consciousness?

Through a curiosity, I am composing these lines in Greece. How
does one speak of an advance in consciousness in the face of an
antique culture that produced Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle? I
would argue that the giants of the classical period were extraordinary individuals, whose breakthroughs were sufciently powerful
as to inform Western culture more than two thousand years later.
The Christian church from Augustine to Aquinas to Luther brought
about a fusion of Greek rationalism and Hebrew spiritualism that
serves as the backbone of our culture to this day. Leonardo, Shakespeare, Newton, and Einstein were products of this cultural vein,
and they, with many other inspired individuals, were able to break
clear of the collective mind-set and give Western culture its particular shape and direction.
But has there been progress? Does our culture with all its howling excesses reect a higher level of consciousness than obtained in
the heyday of the ancient Greek philosophers? One can only
conclude that it does. We are not smarter, but we are more fully conscious. In Western culture, the imprint of Christianity has softened
our attitudes and made more accessible to us the understanding
that all men are brothers. If there is a collective unconscious, then
all humans have in common the greater part of their psychological
make-up. The brotherhood of man is not therefore a mystical
insight, but rather a clearer fix on reality. Reflect that Plato and
Aristotle lived with and by the institution of slavery. That institution, by the time of the disastrous experiment in North America in
1619, was the exception on European soil and is unthinkable among
civilized peoples now.
To attain a higher degree of consciousness is to see reality more
clearly. By contrast, to be unconscious is to project contents of the
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unconscious upon the exterior world. An example of unconsciousness would be the perception in the Middle Ages of the earth as the
centre of the universe. Just as the ego of the child sees itself as the
centre of everything, the human ego in an undeveloped state makes
the same mistake, and, in the case of geocentrism, projects its
centrality upon the cosmos. The success of modern science in
explaining the world about us, while by no means complete, must
be taken as evidencing impressive strides in the development of
consciousness.
The implications of individuation

If we accept the concept of an archetypal urge, rst towards a differentiation of consciousness and then towards individuation, the
consequences of doing so are portentous. Such an understanding of
the nature of the world and consciousness opens to us a new sense
of the meaningfulness of our existence. The prevailing scientific
world view has undermined the religious faith that afforded meaning to lives in earlier timeslives in practical terms more eeting
and desperate than our own. The religious viewpoint has failed to
adjust to the heightened understanding of the material world that
reects the general increase in consciousness. That understanding
perforce rejects the presentation of religious symbols as literal fact.
So committed is institutional religion, however, to wedding its
spiritual message to historical, as opposed to psychological, fact that
it cannot accommodate the teachings of science. On the contrary, the
most potent religious forces of the day seem to be those of reaction,
as in Christian, Islamic, and Judaic fundamentalism. What is needed
is a psychological understanding of religious symbols. Knowledge
of psychology is an essential part of an effective scientic appreciation of the world. We cannot aspire to a comprehension of the objective world without some working knowledge of the internal world
by which that comprehension is to be had. As religious symbols
spring naturally from the soil of the unconscious, one who would
capture their meaning must work to understand their source. Jung
saw the Self Archetype as the image of God in the psyche. It is a
symbol of wholeness, of unity. It has the power to galvanize the
spirit and infuse ones life with meaning. Spiritual enrichment and
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the bestowal of a sense of wholeness and inner peace is likewise the

object of the world religions. By whatever road one arrives, in
experiencing the image of God in the psyche one shall have experienced all that can be experienced. And it will be enough. Lifes
meaning derives from coming into contact with that which is prior
to, greater than, and encompassing of, the ego.
We learn from an acquaintance with Jung and William James
that the ultimate in the quest for meaning is an experience that in
its numinosity can only be called mystical. It is characterized by a
sense of unity, of oneness with the universe. Freud called it an
oceanic feeling (Bohm, 1980, p. 218, n. 20). Although, as I surmise,
the intensity of the immediate experience cannot be sustained, the
very fact of its having occurred presumably informs the whole of
ones future life. Each persons quest is that persons alone. Those
who have had the experience can neither fully describe it to the rest
of us nor tell how to achieve it. The path is pointed to symbolically
by the great religions, but they cannot prescribe a formula for gaining entry into the Promised Land. Many a faithful seeker will no
doubt, like Moses, fall short. The task for the modern searcher after
the truth is, moreover, the more difcult, for the spiritually hungry
of our day are less readily able to accept that faith will make them
whole. That is why the mark of our age is angst and alienation. We
must nd our own ways to read the symbols, but we do know that
one cannot enter the divine presence through good works or desire
or act of will. As it is written, the wind bloweth where it listeth
(John 3: 8, King James Version).
But meaning in life is not synonymous with mystical experience.
Few will enter into what, in psychological terms, may be called the
divine presence, but one may live a life lled with meaning simply
by living in pursuit of a spiritual goal. Such a goal, pointing beyond
our worldly lives, is, says Jung, an absolute necessity for the health
of the soul (Jung, 1954 [1946], par. 159). That goal is implicit in the
unfolding process of individuation. In achieving, in the course of
individuation, greater consciousness, one sheds delusions and
gains awareness of the motives behind ones actions. The quest
changes the individual, and she or he becomes more susceptible of
a new understanding of reality. The quester becomes guided not by
social dictates but by conscious judgement, informed by a sound
relation to the unconscious. One who responds attentively to the
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archetypal promptings within has the prospect of achieving a fullness of powers and, more essentially, the sense of being whole that
derives from an integration of the personality.
If we are to be guided by our inner dictates and not those of
society, we put ourselves at risk. Cultural norms can be seen as
embodying the collective experience. They accrue over time and are
not lightly to be disregarded. The personal unconscious reflects
those norms and, in the form of conscience, urges their observance
powerfully upon us. Individuation, on the other hand, may require
a departure from social standards and expectations. The very term
individual suggests a person who stands apart from the collective, who stands on her or his own. Only, perhaps, when one has
progressed far enough to have displaced the ego from the perceived
centre of the personality might there be justied the condence to
establish individual values in the place of those of society. It is easy,
however, to be erroneously led into the belief that one has arrived
at such a point. The gods often play tricks upon mortals, and countless examples of the downfall of the prideful, in fable and in real
life, serve as a solemn warning. The person who honestly and
sincerely pursues individuation has nevertheless a measure of
prophylaxis against these dangers. It lies in humility, the same
humility that one nds in the truly religious person.
It is not the place here to develop upon the Jungian psychological concepts of the assimilation of the Shadow, the encounter with
the Anima/Animus, or soul, or the dangers of ination. I do not think
that either a protracted stint of analysis or a ash of revelation is
essential to the individuation process. Rather, it seems to me that
ordinary people might well, with a full experience of life, arrive at
the point where the teachings of childhood and the opinions of the
world matter to them but little, and are properly put aside in favour
of the independent judgements they have come to make in the fullness of their spiritual powers. Such people might feel that they have
found, in whatever way, a sense of who they are and what they want
of life. They have developed that wholeness of the personality that
marks a proper balance between the conscious and the unconscious.
Most people do not come to the point I am describing. Some
progress far, and others hardly at all. A man I happened to observe
years ago stands for me as an avatar of the person whose psychic
development stopped somewhere in post-adolescence. I was in a
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funky little airport in the Caribbean. The ambience of the place was
exotic and full of charm, redolent of island life, and a very far
remove from all that characterizes mainland America. There, in a
bar with friends, waiting for a plane home, was a middle-aged man
dressed entirely in the colours of his alma mater: shoes, socks,
pants, belt, tee-shirt, and cap, all were red or white, and the belt
buckle and cap bore identifying insignia. He could hardly have
been more out of place; yet he was not even aware of it. On his
vacation he must have missed entirely the essence of the island.
Indeed, I surmise that he was missing the entire second half of his
life, so xed had he remained by the spell of his college days.
People tend to subscribe to the teachings of their childhood,
regardless of whether those teachings t the circumstances of their
livesand regardless of whether, in practice, they are lived up to.
Coming from a middle class background in the South, I embraced
what may be called the gentlemans code: duty, honour, honesty, a
respectful and protective attitude towards women, that sort of
thing. When I was well into mid-life, my wife, who is an anthropologist, made the observation that such a code is no more than a
device to keep subordinate groupsAfrican Americans, women,
the poorin their places. I was then compelled to measure in a new
way the ideal I had accepted and admired as a schoolboy, to test it
consciously against the values and attitudes I had developed in my
own experience. What, as an example, is honour, anyway, in a
present-day context? Does it mean that one must retaliate against
affronts to ones dignity? What about, instead, negotiation, or just
accepting an affront in certain circumstances?
I have a friend who likes to chide me about my moral relativism.
As she is not deeply religious, I inquired as to the basis of what she
takes to be moral absolutes. It turns out these social imperatives are
grounded, in the main, in attitudes held by her father when she was
a girl and, currently, by her brother-in-law, himself a sort of patriarch. Now, as it happens, she is at present older than her father was
when she absorbed his views and older, as well, than her brotherin-law. Not only that, she is just as bright as, and has a wider experience of life than, either. She has simply accepted out of their
mouths the prevailing cultural mores and is prepared, in deference
to those mores, to lay aside her own judgement. To the extent,
moreover, that the foundation for these attitudes remains uncon-
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scious in her, shrouded, as it would seem, in the father archetype,

they are removed from scrutiny or criticism, and their effect in her
life, therefore, for better or worse, can be calculated to be the more
pronounced.
Consciousness as the sine qua non of morality

Does individuation reflect morality? To behave according to the
dictates of the church no longer seems to serve our needs. At least,
there appears to me often to be very little of godliness in those who
protest most loudly today in favour of religious orthodoxy. Consider the prevailing mean-spiritedness of the anti-abortion movement, which marches under the banner of Judeo-Christian morality.
To witness, furthermore, the folly and atrocity in the conduct of
nations all over the globe, including our own, makes it apparent
that the anchor of a sound morality will not lie in any political
source. Patriotism in the name of nationalism or ethnic determinism, for example, has caused no end of grief. If, then, the dictates of
some institution or group outside ourselves will not pass muster as
an appropriate vehicle for morality, we are called upon somehow to
make judgements on our own. In that case, it should seem pretty
clear that those judgements would be better found in a more
conscious rather than a less conscious outlook. Who would advocate a clouded mind over a clear one as the way to arrive at important conclusions? As Jung frames the point, ethical decision is
possible only when one is conscious of the conict in all its aspects
(1956 [1952], par. 106).
Jung would posit that individuated people gain the perspective
to discern the motives lying behind their actions. In so doing, they
come to terms with the weaknesses and vices within themselves
those things about themselves the conscious attitude most despises.
These personal shortcomings, when they are repressed or remain
unconscious, are typically projected on to others; that is, they
become the ugly or unseemly qualities of someone not ourselves.
When, however, they have to be confronted as a part of our own
personalities, we see rst-hand the virtue of tolerance and forgiveness. Further, the individuated person has learned to stand fast
against the implacable pressures of the collective. Finally, the
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individuated person has come to recognize in the Self something

greater than the ego, and has thus, perforce, acquired in some
measure humility and a sense of the spiritual.
Looked at from this perspective, consciousness becomes the sine
qua non of morality. One can best make ethical judgements from the
standpoint of fullest consciousness. As to shaping a proper moral
stance, one nds the institutions on which one relied in coming of
age to falter, in ones maturity, as a reliable resource. Indeed these
same institutions, as the expression of the collective attitude, have
in a sense become the enemy. We must move beyond them if we are
to become our own persons. Of course, it will not do to reject out of
hand the collective values. In more cases than not they will be apt.
But we must come to see them as they are. We must not react to
them blindly or out of habit. We must weigh them and see if they
truly reect our values. When we have reached a sufcient ripeness
of judgement, we can safely supplant them where appropriate.
Only in so doing can we develop a morality suited to who we are.
At this point we will no longer think of the dictates of the conventional morality as a set of absolutes. We will recognize in them
simply a code developed within society to serve societys ends in
the majority of cases. They are by no means adequate to a discriminating address to particular cases. One cannot have lived very
long, nor thought very deeply, who finds nothing amiss in the
prevailing social attitude.
A modern cosmology
We have seen that Jungs formulation suggests a path to individual
salvation; that is, to a relationship with a power higher than ones
own ego. It is a path to fullment, to the apprehension of meaning
in life, and it can be travelled within the context of religion or
outside of it. This path, further, affords an inkling of an answer to
the question, Why? in the broader sense. There is a comfort in
coming to see oneself as enfolded in a boundless, undivided
universe, but it is nevertheless inevitable that the question arise as
to what that universe, on the cosmic level, is all about.
We have posed the question of whether time and space are
merely threshold limits within which our consciousness registers a
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broader reality. Whether that is so or not, it is all but impossible to

speak of the infinite without indulging the imagery of time and
space. I will, therefore, proceed in the face of this obvious contradiction. In a universe innite in duration all things happen that can
happen. Because consciousness in fact arose, at least on this small
planet, it must be that its arrival on the scene would have been
predictable to an all-knowing source from the beginning. Unless
we are prepared to indulge the notion of an anthropomorphic God,
standing apart from creation, and having, presumably, consciousness, we must recognize that, without consciousness in humans
or suchlike creatures, there was not at the beginning, nor would
there be now, a being that would perceive anything or know anything. When we gave up the simplistic conception of a conscious
God, we omitted to notice that at the same time we gave up the
means we had employed of bringing the seemingly incompatible
elements of mind and matter into a single, cohesive world. For Descartes, God, in his omnipotence, supplied this means. The modern
scientic viewpoint, being without that luxury, nds itself at a loss.
We threw the bath water out with the Baby Jesus.
Yet we are left with the mighty fact that, in a universe so constituted as ours, a consciousness was one day bound to arise to
behold it. If there were no greybeard standing above it all and taking
it all into account, then the whole thing must have unfolded in utter
oblivion, until the emergence of a conscious being, of each of us.
Although Jung tried to avoid metaphysics in his writings, he did
indulge a personal speculation. He found it simply inconceivable
that the wonders of this world might forever exist in utter darkness.
But why on earth, you may ask, should it be necessary for man
to achieve, by hook or by crook, a higher level of consciousness?
This is truly the crucial question, and I do not nd the answer easy.
Instead of a real answer I can make only a confession of faith: I
believe that, after thousands and millions of years, someone had to
realize that this wonderful world of mountains and oceans, suns
and moons, galaxies and nebulae, plants and animals, exists. [Jung,
1959 [1954], par. 177]1
This haunting idea, that we are the organ of natures self-awareness, comes with a mission. It would seem that we have the duty of
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using our magical consciousness to comprehend, as fully as lies

within our power, this glorious creation otherwise not to be known.
It, furthermore, seems reasonable from the evidence to conclude that
we have at present arrived at only a very primitive level of consciousness, and that a much wider and richer consciousness may yet
be attained in the future. That eventuality is perhaps most likely to
occur if every one of us heeds the inborn urging to become as fully
conscious as possible. Jung showed that a fuller consciousness implicates, in a profound way, the limitless realm of the unconscious.
Striving to achieve a wholeness of the personality, then, to become
individuated, might stand for each of us as, in effect, a divine calling.
If we were constrained to evolve only through genetic selection,
it is almost inconceivable that we would not bring about the total
destruction of conscious life on this planet within a relatively short
time. Indeed, it may well be considered little more than a matter of
chance that that extinction did not come about by nuclear holocaust
during the Cold War. It should not, moreover, be hard to imagine
from what is going on today, with the human population spread
across the globe in ever increasing numbers and its ability to affect
every element of the environment growing apace, that the same
unhappy result might be accomplished by our tipping the environmental balance in some irreversible way. We are, for example,
presently profoundly affecting the temperature of the planet, and
we are also streaking towards the widespread manipulation of the
genetic material of plants and animals, two developments whose
consequences are virtually impossible to foresee. And yet we have
evinced a collective disposition to react responsibly to such developments that can charitably be set at a level no higher than that of a
child. Like a child, we seem, collectively, both wilful and oblivious
to the consequences of our acts. We have, in modern times, demonstrated a capacity to affect our life-supporting planet that has radically outstripped our understanding of how either to control the
effects of what we do or to regulate our actions so as to be able to
limit or avoid those effects. There would seem no hope that genetic
changes in our psychic structure could occur in time to prevent our
doing ourselves in. But, in the evolution of consciousness through
culture there does lie hope. Unlike shifts in the genes, shifts in
consciousness, in human attitudes and understanding, can come
about very quickly on the biological scale of time.
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We seldom think of how long a span may be left for us as a

species on the earth, or indeed, perhaps, elsewhere in the cosmos.
If dinosaurs could command the earth for more than one hundred
and fty million years, and it is now our turn, we shall have just
begun our span. In the age of nuclear confrontation, many had so
little faith in the future of the species as to make contemplation of
its duration in the natural state of things hardly worth the trouble.
Yet, if, in our present world, we survey a future for humans reaching millions and millions of years into the future, we may be
dazzled by the prospects yet available to humanity. We will see
instantly that our present consciousness toddles in earliest infancy.
The scope of what may some day be available to our minds remains
unimaginable, but the prospect of what may be yet to come can
infuse us with a new hope for the future of humankind. That hope
rests in the wondrous capacity of consciousness to evolve, and
depends on our ability to bring about that evolution at a pace sufcient to keep abreast of our capacity for destruction.
Note
1.
MacNeile Dixon also stated this idea trenchantly in his 19351937

Gifford Lectures:
Could you tell me that consciousness, the eye with which the
universe beholds itself, and knows itself divine, is simply a thing
among other things to be placed alongside the river or the stone? I
shall not be easily persuadedyou strain my credulity, gentlemen.
You are of the opinion that the arrival of the audience in natures
theatre was an irrelevant accident . . . It would be for me too a
propos and brilliant an accident. [Neki, 1983, p. 54]
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Jung, C. G. (1964) [1931]. Mind and earth. C.W., 10: 2949, R. F. C. Hull
Jung, C. G. (1964) [1931]. The spiritual problem of modern man.
Paul.
Jung, C. G. (1964) [1934]. The meaning of psychology for modern man.
Paul.
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Jung, C. G. (1964) [1958]. A psychological view of conscience. C.W., 10:

Jung, C. G. (1965). Memories, Dreams, Reections, recorded and edited by
Aniela Jaff. New York: Random House.
Jung, C. G. (1967) [1929]. Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Paul.
Jung, C. G. (1967) [1948]. The spirit mercurius. C.W., 13: 191250,
Jung, C. G. (1967) [1954]. The philosophical tree. C.W., 13: 251349,
Jung, C. G. (1971) [1921]. Psychological Types, C.W., 6, a revision by
R. F. C. Hull of the translation by H. G. Baynes. London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G. (1976) [1951]. Depth psycholgy. C.W., 18: 477 486, R. F. C.
Hull (Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G. (1976) [1954]. The symbolic life. C.W., 18: 265290, R. F. C.
Hull (Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G. (1976) [1964]. Symbols and the interpretation of dreams.
C.W., 18: 183264, R. F. C. Hull (Trans.). London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G. (1976) [1969]. Forward to Neumann: depth psychology and
a new ethic. C.W., 18: 616622, R. F. C. Hull (Trans.). London:
Jung, C. G. (1976) [1975]. Address at the presentation of the Jung Codex.
C.W., 18: 671672, R. F. C. Hull (Trans.). London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G., & Pauli, W. (1955). The Interpretation of Nature and Psyche.
New York: Pantheon.
Lee, M. O. (1990). Wagners Ring. New York: Limelight.
Mann, T. (1944). Joseph and His Brothers. New York: Knopf.
McDowell, M. J. (2001). Principle of organization: a dynamic-systems
view of the archetype-as-such. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 46:
637654.
McGinn, C. (1995). Consciousness and space. Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 2(3): 220230.
Neki, J. S. (1983). The phenomenology of mind and consciousness. In:
K. Gandhi (Ed.), The Evolution of Consciousness (pp. 4982). New
Delhi: National Publishing House.
Neumann, E. (1954). The Origins and History of Consciousness. New York:
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221
Neumann, E. (1955). The Great Mother. New York: Princeton University

Press.
Neumann, E. (1956). Amor and Psyche. New York: Princeton University
Press.
Neumann, E. (1959). Art and the Creative Unconscious. Princeton:
Neumann, E. (1989). The Place of Creation: Six Essays. Princeton, NJ:
Neumann, E. (1994). The Fear of the Feminine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Nietzsche, F. (1989). Beyond Good and Evil. New York: Random House.
Ornstein, R. (1991). The Evolution of Consciousness. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Paz, O. (1978). Marcel Duchamp, Appearance Stripped Bare. New York:
Viking.
Penrose, R. (1994). Shadows of the Mind. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Samuels, A. (1985). Jung and the Post-Jungians. New York: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Searle, J. R. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Seshachar, B. R. (1983). Biological foundations of human evolution and
consciousness. In: K. Gandhi (Ed.), The Evolution of Consciousness
(pp. 2636). New Delhi: National Publishing House.
Stapp, H. P. (1993). Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics. New York:
Springer-Verlag.
Stevens, A. (1990). On Jung. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stevens, A. (1993). The Two Million-Year-Old Self. College Station, TX:
Texas A & M University Press.
Stevens, A. (2003). Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the
Self. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Toynbee, A. J. (1946). A Study of History, abridged, vols. IVI. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Ulanov, A. B. (1971). The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian
Theology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Van Eenwyck, J. R. (1997). Archetypes and Strange Attractors. Toronto:
Inner City Books.
von Franz, M.-L. (1972). C. G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time. Toronto:
Inner City Books.
von Goethe, J. W. (1959). Faust, Part Two. New York: Penguin.
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REFERENCES
Wilbur, K. (1977). The Spectrum of Consciousness. Wheaton, IL: Quest

Books.
Wordsworth, W. (1961) [1807]. Ode. Intimations of immortality from
recollections of early childhood. In: M. Crane (Ed.) Fifty Great Poets
(pp. 297301). New York: Bantam.
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1
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INDEX
anima/animus, 55, 62, 7273, 115,

133, 207
Adams, H., 166, 215
agriculture, 36, 47, 5154, 101102
alchemy, 11, 21, 43, 45, 109,
154, 160161, 164, 167168,
174175
archetype(s)/archetypal, 4, 79,
1113, 1519, 2122, 29, 3132,
36, 38, 4146, 53, 5556, 58,
6263, 6571, 75, 7785, 9091,
9399, 105118, 120124,
126127, 129136, 139,
153159, 161162, 164,
179180, 182, 185186,
193195, 198, 200, 203, 205206,
209
Father, 13, 6668, 113, 116117,
136, 161, 209
hero, 51, 5556, 58, 6062, 6667,
81, 96, 133, 135, 139140, 155,
163, 170172 see also: heros
journey
Mother/Great Mother, 15, 43,

4651, 5355, 5862, 66, 68, 72,
83, 92, 9596, 112113, 116, 133,
135137, 143, 155, 159160
Persona, 113115
Son-Lover, 4651, 5354, 62, 66,
135
Shadow, 2, 2930, 112, 114115,
172, 207
Syzygy, 112
see also: Self, the
Arnheim, R., 73, 162, 215
astrology, 11
Atmanspacher, H., 186, 192, 215
Bair, D., 125, 215
Barrow, J. D., 111, 215
Bohm, D., 190191, 201, 206, 215
Bullnch, T., 95, 215
Campbell, J., 22, 42, 47, 215
Cauvin, J., 5154, 102, 215
Chalmers, D. J., 129, 184, 192, 215
223
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INDEX
Christ, 22, 44, 48, 51, 117, 137,

161162, 166, 170, 173174, 194
civilization(s), 4, 36, 51, 73, 92, 98,
101, 103105, 124, 136
conscience, 123124, 187, 193, 207
conscious(ness), 12, 4, 716,
1821, 2426, 2830, 32, 3551,
5354, 56, 5863, 6572, 7680,
83139, 141143, 145148, 151,
153154, 156161, 164170,
172174, 177184, 186, 191200,
203213 see also:
ego-conscious(ness),
preconscious(ness),
unconscious(ness)
creation myth/story, 44, 60, 73, 154,
160, 165, 170, 180
Darwin, C., 35, 11, 17, 78, 99
Davidson, H. R. E., 162, 216
Dawkins, R., 78, 81, 120, 133, 157,
177, 181, 201, 216
Dennett, D. C., 24, 107, 216
Diamond, J., 52, 216
dragon, 15, 51, 55, 5861, 66, 80, 95,
113, 135, 139, 161
dream(s), 6, 9, 11, 1415, 21, 23, 26,
31, 3335, 3940, 5758, 61,
8586, 9496, 109, 113, 115, 122,
138141, 144, 159161, 163165,
171, 173174, 177, 186187, 192,
197
Edinger, E. F., 81, 160, 175, 216
ego, 1216, 2021, 3638, 40, 4446,
51, 60, 6263, 66, 73, 85, 91, 98,
107, 113, 116, 118, 128133, 135,
137139, 141142, 147, 153154,
157, 161, 163, 166168, 170172,
178, 198, 205207, 210
conscious(ness), 6667, 133134,
172 see also: conscious(ness),
preconscious(ness),
unconscious(ness)
development, 46, 60, 107
super, 123
Electra complex, 133

Evans, R. I., 41, 216
extraversion, 144145, 151 see also:
introversion
fairy tales, 11, 20, 117
fantasy, 13, 28, 31, 67, 90, 122
Frazer, J. J., 42, 47, 49, 216
Freud, S., 9, 11, 19, 3536, 38, 73,
9596, 120, 123, 127, 131133,
143144, 152, 163, 168, 174, 185,
201, 206, 216
Freudian, 3, 18, 127
functions,
non-rational, 145151
rational, 145151
Geertz, C., 41, 100, 103, 216
genetic evolution/change, 8, 68, 70,
98, 100, 104105, 178, 204, 212
Gilligan, C., 5556, 216
Gnosticism, 11, 45, 60, 161, 167, 172,
175
God/god(s), 17, 21, 34, 4445,
4749, 5556, 5961, 6367, 71,
109, 113, 120, 136, 143, 153156,
158160, 162, 166170, 172174,
181, 195197, 201, 205207, 209,
211 see also: archetypal Father,
Christ
-image, 154156, 158, 169
goddess, 47, 53, 59, 72, 92, 95, 106,
113 see also: archetypal Great
Mother
Grifn, D. R., 200, 216
Guzeldere, G., 36, 216
Harding, M. E., 92, 216
Hawking, S., 183, 216
Heisenberg, W., 192193, 216
heros journey, 1516, 55, 58, 80, 137
see also: archetype, hero
incest, 41, 62, 66, 131134, 137
individuation, 21, 56, 62, 67, 112,
121175, 177180, 192, 205207,
209
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1
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1
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30
1
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instinct(s), 4, 12, 18, 3033, 3637,

4041, 67, 7577, 8081, 85, 87,
89, 9699, 104105, 111, 113,
118119, 122, 128, 131, 134, 153,
157159, 168, 178, 184, 193
introversion, 144145, 151 see also:
extraversion
Jacobi, J., 73, 120, 122, 216
Jaff, A., 33, 73, 170, 216
James, W., 36, 71, 75, 83, 144, 154,
159, 169, 173174, 188, 195, 200,
206, 216217
Jaynes, J., 71, 217
225
107108, 128, 131, 178180, 186,

203
Neki, J. S., 213, 220
Neumann, E., 89, 4345, 4748, 51,
5356, 5960, 6264, 6869, 72,
113, 130, 133, 135, 138, 174, 198,
220221
Nietzsche, F., 3, 65, 221
night sea journey, 143144, 171
objective experience, 65 see also:
subjective experience
Oedipus/oedipal complex, 19,
6162, 120, 123, 131133, 135
Ornstein, R., 30, 86, 221
Lee, M. O., 45, 220

mandala, 21, 141, 161166, 174
Mann, T., 170, 220
McDowell, M. J., 71, 220
McGinn, C., 59, 180, 220
metaphor, 3132, 47, 54, 94, 112,
122, 168, 175
metaphysics/metaphysical, 7, 18,
46, 48, 117118, 128, 155156,
158159, 172, 195, 200, 211
mindbrain, 19, 180, 183184, 194
mother, 15, 30, 46, 4951, 60, 64, 68,
98, 106, 113, 116, 130133,
135136, 155 see also: archetypal
Great Mother
-child relationship, 130
mysticism, 25
Christian, 196
Eastern, 11, 21, 161
New Age, 193
mythology/myths, 78, 11, 13,
1520, 22, 32, 4144, 4647,
4950, 5456, 5859, 6162, 64,
6667, 6970, 72, 80, 9496, 105,
108109, 112113, 115, 117118,
120, 130, 137139, 142, 154, 158,
164, 170, 173
natural selection, 4, 8, 19, 32, 37,
6970, 76, 78, 87, 99, 101, 104,
participation mystique, 12, 69, 107

Pauli, W., 192193, 200, 215, 220
Paz, O., 120, 221
Penrose, R., 82, 183, 193, 221
philosophy, 1, 3, 5, 16, 19, 25, 3334,
81, 111, 126, 128, 154, 164, 167,
175, 182, 184
Chinese, 164, 167
Greek, 19, 81, 175, 204
Western, 81, 154
preconscious(ness), 15, 44, 87, 91,
98, 130131, 147 see also:
conscious(ness), egoconscious(ness),
unconscious(ness)
prejudice(s), 2930, 71, 173, 181, 198
Primas, H., 186, 192, 215
projection, 2, 1213, 30, 43, 47, 59,
6163, 6567, 7172, 80, 9093,
105, 107, 114115, 126, 133, 136,
167, 172, 175, 182, 204205, 209
psyche/psychic, 2, 45, 811, 1317,
19, 2123, 2527, 3038, 4044,
46, 52, 5455, 5960, 63, 6668,
70, 7682, 8587, 9092, 95105,
107108, 110114, 119, 122131,
136139, 142, 146147, 152159,
163, 165, 170172, 174175,
179187, 189193, 195200,
205206
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INDEX
behaviour, 75, 77, 80

collective, 2, 48, 100, 103, 110, 126,
142
development, 19, 43, 50, 55, 65,
108, 116, 207
experience, 19, 62
evolution, 3, 17, 4344
structure(s), 8, 78, 80, 104, 120,
212
psychiatrist(s), 9, 18
psychoanalysis, 11, 185
psychologist(s), 9, 7172
psychology/psychological, 1, 3, 5,
10, 25, 43, 48, 5455, 59, 72,
7677, 90, 108110, 113, 118,
120, 125128, 131132, 134, 138,
142145, 151, 153, 155156, 161,
163164, 167168, 171, 175, 182,
185, 187,190, 194, 201, 204207
analytical, 3, 5, 7, 10, 34, 7273
depth, 4, 67, 131, 143, 154, 156
types, 10, 21, 143144 see also:
extraversion, introversion
quaternity, 56, 161162, 164166
rite(s)/ritual(s), 8, 13, 20, 4243,
4748, 51, 54, 61, 66, 6970,
105106, 108109, 117, 126, 141
Samuels, A., 3, 148, 221
Searle, J. R., 181, 221
secondary personalization, 6265,
67, 170
Self, the, 2122, 56, 62, 71, 112, 129,
141142, 153159, 161169,
172173, 177178, 197, 205, 210
Seshachar, B. R., 41, 221
Stapp, H. P., 190194, 200201,
221
Stevens, A., 37, 71, 221
subjective experience, 3, 79, 129,
160, 180182, 184 see also:

objective experience
symbol(s)/symbolism, 2122, 33,
41, 4549, 51, 5354, 56, 5859,
62, 64, 71, 80, 86, 9394, 96, 109,
112113, 117122, 124, 132,
135138, 141, 144, 151, 161162,
165168, 173, 175, 186187,
205206
synchronicity, 2223, 32, 164,
177201
teleology, 17, 128
Tipler, F. J., 111, 215
Toynbee, A. J., 7374, 101, 221
Ulanov, A. B., 73, 221
unconscious(ness), 12, 4, 69,
1116, 1822, 2534, 3644,
4651, 5455, 5763, 6667,
6972, 7581, 83, 8587, 90101,
104139, 141145, 147161, 163,
165170, 172173, 178180, 187,
193, 196198, 200, 203207, 209,
212 see also: conscious(ness),
ego-conscious(ness),
preconscious(ness)
collective, 4, 79, 1112, 16, 18, 22,
30, 32, 34, 3637, 41, 4344, 46,
54, 6970, 75, 77, 7980, 85, 87,
98101, 106111, 120123,
125130, 133, 136, 138, 149,
156158, 170, 178, 193, 196, 198,
200, 203204
uroboros, 45, 110, 162
Van Eenwyck, J. R., 221
von Franz, M.-L., 73, 201, 221
von Goethe, J. W., 115, 143, 221
Wilbur, K., 116, 222
Wordsworth, W., 45, 222

Carl Jung Darwin of The Mind

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CARL JUNG, DARWIN

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First published in 2008 by

Copyright 2008 by Thomas T. Lawson

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

LAWSONPRELIMS final 12-2-08.qxd

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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LAWSONPRELIMS final 12-2-08.qxd

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas Lawson lives in the Virginia mountains near Roanoke,

LAWSONPRELIMS final 12-2-08.qxd

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Psychology and philosophy

his book advances some ideas about the evolution of

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

nd light of day, and so they appear to us as traits of someone else.

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

way has been pointed out to us by Carl Jung. I am convinced that

An argument for Jung

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

that Jung, as might be expected in one who evolved in his thinking

Jungs arguments can be assessed without

extrapolated from his interactions with patients, because of the

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

bet, and that, of itself, will serve us in carrying the argument

(here, the passing of the groups culture down the generations),

The resistance to Jungs findings

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

taken by the sceptical observer as gibberishbits of nonsense

eld.1 Yet, during the long period of its dominance, behaviourism

The emergence of consciousness

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

can be envisioned. I shall at this point touch on some of the ideas

surroundings, consciousness began to emerge. Gradually, bits and

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

to be sure, a trivial example, but I think it illustrates how we move

The heros journey

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

unconscious. If resistance to the threat of extinction is successfully

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

Whence the archetypes?

The relationship between the conscious and the unconscious

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

The self and individuation

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

At an earlier time the Christian church was the source of living

in a game of chance produced by concentration, an impression

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

Something very like behaviourism ourishes today in the approach of

The evolution of consciousness

The unconscious as stepchild

aintaining that he was an empiricist, a votary of medical

CARL JUNG, DARWIN OF THE MIND

We have all had the experiences Jung describes. Try as we may

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

plaque in the arteries. The problem is that, even if we accept the