The types of unconscious according to Carl Jung

The idea that there is something unconscious in our mind that totally influences how we think, feel and act has seduced hundreds of thousands of people since Sigmund Freud published his first books on psychoanalysis. However, as the current of Freud's heir psychology is largely based on metaphysics, it is has hypothesized a lot about what is the structure of that unconscious structure of the psyche human.

One of the best known explanations in this regard is that of Carl Jung, one of the first followers of the father of psychoanalysis who, however, ended up radically departing from the theories of his master of him. Next we will see what they consisted of the different types of unconscious according to Carl Jung.

• Related article: "Carl Gustav Jung: biography and work of a spiritual psychologist"

Repression, pathologies, symbolisms... Psychodynamics

The stream of psychology that started Sigmund Freud, based on its beginnings in psychoanalysis, is famous for putting a lot of emphasis on a concept called "the unconscious." This unconscious refers to that aspect of the human mind that

stays away from the light bulbs of consciousness and that, consequently, it is difficult for us to take into account or even try to modify or anticipate.

However, that unconscious mind referred to by Freud's disciples is not just any type of unconscious (for example, it has nothing to do with the way in which current and the neurosciences understand non-consciousness), but starts from a very determined way of understanding the psyche, deeply grounded in metaphysics and symbol analysis in search of a hidden meaning.

Thus, the descendants of psychoanalysis understand this concept as a set of entities that fight against the forces of the conscious psyche in order to make themselves manifest and come to light. And the symbols and symbolic representations of thoughts, sensations and memories have a great role: hence, for example, the emphasis that Freud came to place on the analysis of dreams and the result of free association.

• You may be interested: "Sigmund Freud's Theory of the Unconscious (and the new theories)"

Beyond an individual phenomenon

Carl Jung rejected many of Freud's ideas, but at heart he used a conception of the mind that, in the most basic sense, resembled that of the creator of psychoanalysis. He also believed in the need to search for symbols and signs of hidden meanings, albeit with a difference; If psychoanalysts understood that the unconscious was fundamentally confined to individuals, Jung proposed the opposite: that the unconscious it is basically a collective phenomenon, like the history of mankind.

How did you get to that conclusion? Through the study of symbols and religions. As you learn about the different myths and ways of understanding the world of different cultures of the planet, Jung realized that many of these mythical elements had many characteristics in common: Symbols, themes, and developmental structures of mythical stories.

However, the conclusions he reached did not remain in the simple recognition of very similar aspects in different cultural elements of practically all societies, regardless of their degree of isolation from rest. In addition, Carl Jung defended the idea that these essential elements that can be found in all the mythical stories of the world manifested in dreams of patients with schizophrenia.

From there, this Swiss researcher proposed an idea that, according to him, allowed to answer the question of how it can be that these common symbolic elements appear in all types of people, regardless of where they live and whether they have known other cultures or not. There were two types of unconscious: one individual, and another collective.

Carl Jung and the types of unconscious that he proposed

The most characteristic idea of ​​Carl Jung's work compared to other references of the current of psychodynamics is that for him the psyche of a person is not only a product of their individual personal experiences added to their individual biological propensities, but fundamentally works from elements that go beyond the individual.

This emphasis on the collective does not refer to the way in which others influence the behavior of the person when interacting with him; it goes much further. In fact, this "transpersonal" psychological factor has more to do with the history of humanity, that is, what has happened before that particular individual is born. It is a part of the psyche that existed before the individual psyche had a chance to come into existence: hence for Jung symbols, myths and religion were so important when it comes to understanding people's minds: they are products of the evolution of humanity as a whole.

Thus, the types of unconscious according to Jung are the following.

1. Personal unconscious

It has to do with all the repressed and hidden aspects that have arisen from the interaction between the person and her environment (including the people with whom he comes into contact). For example, if someone's mother punished him very harshly during his childhood, that leaves a mark on her unconscious.

2. Collective unconscious

The collective unconscious is the kind of unconscious that Carl Jung places the most emphasis on. It contains historical and collective elements that modulate the way in which human beings think, feel and act. Specifically, it includes heritable and socially constructed psychological structures, called archetypes.

• Related article: "The archetypes according to Carl Gustav Jung"

critics

All the work of Carl Jung has been widely criticized both by members of the psychodynamic current and by psychologists and philosophers of science who do not consider themselves heirs of Freud. The latter, in particular, point out how unreliable it is to trust one's own interpretation to analyze people's behavior; after all, there is no objectively valid way of interpreting symbols.

In any case, the types of unconscious proposed by Carl Jung have had a great influence on the humanities and have been embodied in numerous forms of art, so it is interesting know them