Understanding The Jungian View
While many people have heard of Jung's work, they often only understand a very small sliver of the theory. Most commonly, the average person associated Jung with dream interpretation and symbolism, but they may not understand the importance of recognising the unconscious in Jungian Analysis.
The theory of the unconscious for Jung includes and involves several parts that make up the psyche. Jung recognised there were three large components of parts to the psyche including the ego, the personal unconscious, and a collective unconscious.
The ego, in Jungian Analysis, is the conscious mind. It has the accessible memories, emotions, and thoughts that occur for the individual. These memories, emotions, and thoughts combined to create an identity and a concept of continuity for the individual.
The Two Layers
Unlike Freud, Jung saw the unconscious as not just one system, but as two layers. Each of these layers works together but have separate features. The personal unconscious is the first layer, which is similar to how Freud saw the unconscious. In this area, there is forgotten information as well as memories that have been repressed. These form what is known as a complex. Each complex is a collection of different attributes of a concept. The concepts are made up of feelings, attitudes, and thoughts as well as memories.
The more important or influential the complex is to the individual; the more elements or components are in the collection that makes up the complex. This is often not far from the surface, and it can include both the present as well as the future.
The second layer is known as the collective unconscious, or sometimes the transpersonal unconscious. In Jung's theory, this is the unconscious that is shared by all other people, including the latent memories of our ancestors. In this way, this collective unconscious creates a virtual image of the world through evolution and ancestry, creating an imprint that is shared by all humans through the collective experience of the human species.
Jung saw this as the reason why people have universal fears of specific things in life, even without any personal trauma around these issues. Examples of these universal fears include spiders, snakes, the dark and specific environmental factors.
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