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NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 1
New Perspectives on The Unconscious Mind and Their Comparison with Carl Jung’s Theory
of The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious: A Literature Review
Alp Bal
Istanbul Commerce University
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 2
“A man may be convinced in all good faith that he has no religious ideas, but no one can fall
so far away from humanity that he no longer has any dominating representation collective.”
—Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 3
Abstract
The purpose of this literature review is to demonstrate how today’s scientific perspective on
the topic of unconscious can help us better understand Carl Jung’s theory of The Archetypes
and The Collective Unconscious and therefore some aspects of human behavior. In this
review I examined the studies about Jung’s theory based on two main points: collective
memory and evolutionary psychology. Jung argued that the collective unconscious manifested
itself by means of universal symbols or “archetypes”. He observed many people around the
world, including a schizophrenic from Zurich to indigenous tribal people from Africa. He saw
the same symbols and archetypes in dreams, fantasies and traditional rituals of different
groups of people, isolated from one another around the world. Today’s psychology offers
some significant support to some aspects of Jung’s theory, either in terms of replicable
experiments or evolutionary studies.
Keywords: Human Behavior, Collective Unconscious, Archetypes, Morphic Resonance.
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William James in his book, The Principles of Psychology (1913), called studying the
unconscious “a tumbling ground for whimsies” and added that it must be approached with
caution (p.163). However, his cynicism about the unconscious could not stop this topic
becoming widely popular.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, based his approach on the idea of
conflict involving unconscious forces (Kihlstrom, 2015, p.1). Freud was not the first one to
come up with the idea of an unconscious mind. In fact many of his theories and concepts
about it, even his typographic theory, can be traced back to philosophers like Immanuel Kant,
Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann (Ellenberger, 1972) (as cited in Rabstejnek,
2011, p.4). Regardless of the origins of his idea, Freud started a new era in the science of
psychology and influenced many others. Whilst some of his students followed his path, some
decided to forge their own.
After his works with schizophrenics Carl G. Jung started to believe in a different
vision for the future of the unconscious, one which Freud was reluctant to be a part of. In
contrary to Freud who believed that the unconscious was a personal phenomenon, Jung
speculated a dual formula for the unconscious. This dual formula consisted of the personal
unconscious and collective unconscious. His two related ideas, The Archetypes and The
Collective Unconscious, will be discussed more in depth in the review section of this article.
In accordance with the technological advancements the methods of psychological
research have changed as well. In today’s psychology studying the brain and its neural
connections with our explicit or even implicit behavior is a common method. In the following
section I reviewed the new studies and investigate how they can support some aspects of
Jung’s theories to help us better understand our actions.
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 5
Review of the Literature
Carl Jung argued that the human psyche consisted of three components: the conscious
(i.e. ego consciousness) and the unconscious as divided into two categories (i.e. the personal
and collective unconscious). He also identified four mental functions: perception, thinking,
feeling and intuition; he further argued that the consciousness was formed by what we receive
from these functions (Adamski, 2011, p.564). The personal unconscious, on the other hand
was formed by subliminal and repressed thoughts. Jung explained the subliminal content by
proposing a threshold for the intensity of psychic contents or stimulus. For the collective
unconscious, however he had a different idea. Jung believed that the collective unconscious
acted like instincts and manifested themselves in forms of universal symbols or “archetypes”.
Many motives in myths, fairy tales and religion can be a manifestation of a given archetype.
Before explaining the archetypes I must mention the psychopathological aspect of the
collective unconscious. Jung believed that studying the interpretation of psychotic thinking was
as important as dream interpretation. According to Jung letting the unconscious contents take
over the ego consciousness made people vulnerable to schizophrenia (Abramovitch, 2014). The
process of individuation is very important to Jungian therapy. In its broadest sense this process
requires embracing our archetypal traits, meaning accepting our weaknesses and strengths thus
making these unconscious contents conscious. Therefore, failing at this process might have
serious consequences effecting our psychological well-being. A Jungian psychiatrist John Weir
Perry followed Jung’s path and studied patients with schizophrenia. In his studies, Perry came
across with certain delusional images. Death and rebirth and motives related to “sacral kings”
(the king archetype) were most common ones.
Mahlberg (1987, p.24) explains the archetypes as “basic forms or patterns of behavior
that are related to universal human behavior.” Jung (1951) said that three archetypes: the
shadow, the anima and the animus have the most frequent and most disturbing effects on the
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 6
ego (p.26). He explains the shadow as the “dark side” of one’s personality. The shadow with
many of its aspects reminds of Freud’s Id. He argued that people could make their unconscious
archetypes conscious (individuation process) by overcoming their projection mechanisms. Jung
believed that many dual, opposite forces (like yin and yang) came from the anima and animus
archetype. The anima represents the unconscious feminine side of a man and in contrary to that
the animus represents the unconscious masculine side of a woman. The anima and animus are
associated with the shadow because they can represent the features unaccepted by the ego
(Adamski, 2011, p.566). The projection making factor is the anima, says Jung (1951, p.31) and
when this archetype is projected or repressed it can lead to complexes.
How do these archetypes affect our behavior exactly? In order to understand the effects
of archetypes we must look at their relationship with the ego. As in the case of complexes,
trying to act against our archetypes would create a threat against our ego consciousness.
According to Jung we all have certain archetypes coded in our collective unconscious. Different
types of archetypes require different types of actions. For example, in a competitive situation
(whether it is business related or something else) our “Warrior” archetype becomes active which
enables us to be energized so we can survive in that situation. Failure to embrace one’s own
archetypes would lead to projection. That is to say if a man rejects his anima, this could lead
him to project “her” on to other women he interacts with.
As I mentioned earlier Jung based his theory on his empirical observations that he had
with different groups of people around the world. He did not rely on scientific experiments to
prove his theory. He believed that the fact that these people, who did not have any prior
knowledge about any mythological figures and was isolated from each other, possessing the
same archetypes was enough to prove his idea. Therefore many scientists after him tried to
support his ideas in an experimental research setting.
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 7
One way to support the collective unconscious is to study its relationship with the
process of acquiring new knowledge in terms of collective memory. In 1981 Rupert Sheldrake
in his book “A New Science” postulated a process he called “Morphic Resonance”. According
to Sheldrake, there is a dimension called “morphogenetic field” that is beyond space and time
and it contains “resonance patterns” (Mahlberg, 1987, p.23). Basically these resonance
patterns helps old generations to pass on their knowledge to new generations. Therefore it
creates an accumulated knowledge, a collective memory. In a way we can see Sheldrake’s
theory as a more generalized version of the collective unconscious. Sheldrake (1983) in his
study created a puzzle, two pictures with hidden images. One picture was randomly selected
to be broadcasted on TV to a wide audience in the UK. Sheldrake proposed that this kind of
exposure would make the puzzle easier to learn for others who did not watch the broadcast
(Roe & Hitchman, 2011, p.212). As a result, there was a significant increase in success with
the image that was shown on TV. Malhberg who studied Sheldrake’s theory proposed that
Flynn Effect can be explained by this theory. Consequently he hypothesized that as our
knowledge gets bigger by accumulation it becomes easier for us to learn new things.
Mahlberg’s study tested Sheldrake’s hypothesis that it is easier to learn something that has
been learned by a large group of people compared to something new. His second hypothesis
was that it would be easier to learn the new material once it has been learned by a large group
of people (1987, p.3). He used the international Morse code (something that has been learned
by many people) to create a new, unknown code (the Novel code). Letters in this new code
was assigned to signs randomly. Both codes were randomly assigned to the groups. All other
conditions were kept equal. Participants who had a prior experience with the Morse code
before the experiments were disqualified. During the experiment participants were given a
booklet. On the first page, 12 letters and 12 symbols were presented. Participants were asked
to pair the letters with the related signs. On the second page same letters and signs were
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 8
represented but this time paired as in the code. Participants were given 90 seconds to
memorize the code. A quiz was presented on the next page with the same amount of time.
Participants were asked to pair the correct letter with the correct sign. As a result, the Morse
code means were found higher than the Novel code means. Participants who were tested by
using the Morse code performed better. In summary Mahlberg study proved that the Morse
code was easier to learn compared to a new, unknown code. Results consistently showed that
the Novel code became easier to learn as it was learned by more people. Another study testing
Sheldrake’s theory was done by Rosen and his colleagues in 1991. They tested the strength of
the relationship between some archetypal symbols and their meanings by using symbol
association tests (Rosen et al., 1991, p.214). A prior study was done to make sure the selected
archetypal symbols were culturally unknown. In the main study they hypothesized that the
archetypal memory would make it easier to learn and match the archetypal symbols with their
meanings (p.9). Each group was given 20 correctly and 20 incorrectly matched symbols. Each
pair was shown for 5 seconds and afterwards the participants were represented with only the
symbols and asked to write their meanings. Results of this study demonstrated that correctly
matched archetypal symbols were recalled significantly more. A future study done by
Robinson and Roe (2010) testing the language learning according to Sheldrake’s theory also
found supporting evidence. In summary, so far the studies I have mentioned support Jung’s
theory that there is a collective unconscious that exists in every human being and it manifests
itself in forms of universal symbols (i.e. archetypes). However, it should be kept in mind that
there are also studies that failed to replicate these ones.
Does the collective unconscious really have an evolutionary or phylogenetic basis? Is
it actually possible to accumulate archaic, ancestral experiences over millions of years?
Recent laboratory researches can provide some answers to these questions. A study done by
Dinan and colleagues (2011) found that gut microbes can have an effect on the unconscious
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 9
system regulating behavior, cognitive functions, social interactions and related disorders (such
as autism) (p.1). They found that these microbes play an important role in the development of
the serotonergic system which can affect mood, social behavior and emotional activity. They
demonstrated how the gut microbes interact with the brain via brain-gut axis, vagus nerve and
immune system. It is also know that visceral messages from the gut can influence brain
functions (Graham et al., 2011 ; Montiel-Castro et al., 2013) (as cited in Dinan et al., 2011,
p.1). In their research they compared colonized germ free mice and regular mice in terms of
their cognitive and behavioral functions. As a result researchers found that the germ free mice
showed significant cognitive deficits such as problems with sociability, anxiety and
recognition memory. Desbonnet et al. (2004) (as cited in Dinan et al., 2011, p.6) in their three
chamber sociability test found that the germ free mice compared to regular mice showed less
interest in other animals. As a result of their study they proposed that the gut microbes have
important effects on our implicit behavior (such as sociability) and could be related to many
psychiatric disorders (p.7). Today many other biological evolution studies focus their attention
to the unconscious mind and possibly even more studies will in the future also.
Discussion
The purpose of this literature review was to present some of the supporting ideas about
Jung’s theory. Experimental studies provide consistent results supporting the idea that archaic
experiences and knowledge (archetypes) can be transferred from generation to generation.
Biological and evolutionary studies support the idea that the unconscious process is affected
by biological factors and is common in every human being, if not every living being. Other
studies and theories about the unconscious that I excluded from this review also can support
some of Jung’s findings. Many reserachers focused their attention on “the experience of will”
and they claimed that even the process of consciously thinking about doing something can be
an unconscious act (Wegner, 1999). Therefore these findings on the topic of “the experience
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 10
of will” can help us make better sense of Jung’s encounter with African jungle tribes. In
conclusion the effects of the unconscious on our behavior may be a lot bigger than we think.
And it is possible that it can be affected by accumulation of years of experience through the
process of evolution. In light of these findings Jung’s understanding of the unconscious does
not seem very mystical anymore.
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 11
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