Consciousness from the Jungian Archetypal Perspective
“For the archetype, as Jung perceived it, is a precondition and coexistent of life itself; its manifestations not only reach upward to the spiritual heights of religion, art and metaphysics, but also down into the dark realms of organic and inorganic matter.”
For Jung, the collective unconscious is what defines us as human beings. It is our phylogenetic history expressed as universal images. Jung believed that our own individual consciousness has its roots in this history. It emerged through our evolution and formed into various archetypal patterns which unfold for each of us as and when the archetype is activated. Eminent psychologist and Jungian, Erich Neuman, explores this comprehensively in his iconic work: The Origins and History of Consciousness, first published in 1954.
The evolution of consciousness, from the Jungian archetypal perspective, begins with the ego residing in the unconscious. As archetypes activate, the ego begins to emerge, becomes aware of itself and is able to impact upon itself through its own activity. This unfolding is said to take place in three symbolic stages:
The Creation Myth
The Hero Myth
The Transformation Myth
The Emergence of Consciousness – The Creation Myth
At the earliest stages in the development of human history, the world and the psyche are one. There is no self-reflecting ego, only the primordial. Consciousness emerges over eons and is the beginning of the light. Light emerges from the darkness: Consciousness emerges from the unconscious. The original unconscious state is said to be self-contained and is symbolically represented by the sphere or circle: The “Uroborus”.
Like the infant, consciousness for human beings emerges gradually from the primordial. The ultimate question emerges for the newly conscious ego: Where did I come from? Like the Uroborus the interplay of consciousness and the unconscious is without end.
As the ego emerges from the primordial circle the umbilical connection is severed and a new stance is taken. Pleasure and pain are experienced by the newly emergent self and the duality of consciousness and the unconscious becomes established more firmly within the psyche.
As the archetype activates in the child it begins to identify itself as a separate being from its mother, upon whom it is totally dependent. In the right conditions a bond will form and the child will begin to identify significant others within its family and tribe. This domain becomes the safe haven. Everything outside is threatening and potentially dangerous. Gradually the child will encounter others outside of its immediate environment, but will not stray far from its mother to whom it must return.
In Jungian analytical psychology consciousness equals deliverance from the primordial and unconscious Uroborus. Once the ego takes centre stage in the psyche the “I” emerges as a separate and conscious individual self. The separation of the conjoined mother and father allows the birth of the individual ego. Only through this separation is the conscious portion of the personality, which centres on the ego, from the much larger unconscious able to take place. These opposites, which were originally very close together, are now quite separate. Negative elements and primordial fears become repressed into the unconscious and can only be brought back into consciousness by deep analysis.
The Hero Myth
“He is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the ‘treasure hard to attain.’ – Carl Jung, CW 14, par. 756
By now ego consciousness has achieved independence and the personality has separated from the unconscious. In order to achieve this independence the individual must metaphorically “fight the dragon” to achieve a sense of separateness. Slay both the personal and archetypal mother and father.
The hero’s birth is attributed to a virgin. The hero must slay the virgin and the leviathan to attain independence. The fight with the dragon is symbolic and signifies the great struggle each of us must go through to fully separate from the Great Mother. At this point the fully developed ego consciousness emerges.
The Transformation Myth
The transformation myth appears in many cultures. It is represented in initiation ceremonies where the youth is symbolically killed and the adult emerges. In many tribal societies the young men are taken away from their mothers and undergo often painful processes to emerge whole as a man.
The significance of the ritual is that it provides a profound experience and clear delineation between the stage of life before initiation and after. Boy becomes man and girl becomes woman as in the Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvuh.
Some argue that the West, in particular, has lost many of the rituals which once fulfilled this transformation function. May young people remain living with their parents well into their 30s. Narcissism is everywhere in the West and the rise of “peur aeternus” (child forever) syndrome is troubling as ego separation from the world parents is substantially delayed.
Concluding Comments of the Jungian Perspective
As always, the skill and insight of Jung provides a unique way of understanding the mind and evolution of consciousness. Of all the schools of psychology, the Jungian perspective is one of the few that takes us right back to the beginning when that first glimpse of awareness began to emerge from the primordial.
In some ways he challenges the notion that our own consciousness is more advanced than other species by pointing out that human patterns of behaviour are underpinned by instincts. Perhaps not all that different from other creatures.
