What is the Unconscious?

The unconscious is the a priori field from which consciousness emerges that serves a regulating function to the psyche (Jung, 1928/1966, p. 177-178). The unconscious has its own purpose and aims that is in relationship to consciousness. Jung viewed the unconscious as a stream of psychic possibilities that underlies awareness and interacts with human consciousness; and it is this vast, dynamic stream of figures that can only partly be brought to consciousness through inference rather than direct knowing (G. Slater, personal communication, 5 November, 2016). Additionally, Jung (1954/1969) described the unconscious as all material that is not conscious, could become conscious, and also can never be conscious (p. 185). This includes Jung’s (1934/1969) conceptualization of the unconscious as living ancestral memory that exists as instincts and as spirit (p. 349).

Jung distinguished between a personal unconscious and collective unconscious, which are not static, but fluid fields with archetypes populating and shaping the collective unconscious and complexes configuring the personal unconscious (Jung, 1954/1968, p. 4). In this way, the unconscious is an alive and active realm that influences and engages with consciousness through the ego complex, in particular.

Marion Woodman extended Jung’s work with the unconscious into somatics and developed an understanding of how the physical body relates to, and lives within, the unconscious. Woodman’s work with the body began to bridge the complicated territory of soma and spirit. She viewed the body and its somatic impressions as images from the unconscious that can be worked with symbolically, similar to dream images or figures from active imagination. To Woodman, the body and its unconscious contents speak through physical sensation and metaphorical symptom. The body can become conscious, just as the unconscious can move into consciousness only in part—this is what she called “shaping of a conscious body” or the “subtle body” (Woodman, 2008, p. 120). In this sense, the physical body is in the realm of the unconscious, sending images through tissues as sensation and impulses that can be engaged with and understood as symbols.  These symbols contain psychic meaning and energy that is released when worked with and brought to consciousness (Woodman, 2008).

Experiential Aspects of the Unconscious

Experiential aspects of the unconscious include dream images, figures from active imagination, projections, and somatic symptoms. To Jungians, dreams images are alive and vibrant with symbolic depth. Jung (1948/1974) viewed dream material as compensatory to consciousness and as a necessity to psychic regulation (p. 36) The boundary between the personal and collective unconscious is fluid and this is seen particularly with dream images that contain personal significance and also carry symbolism that is beyond the personal. For example, Jung (1948/1974) understood how “big” dreams contain archetypal images that point to universal patterns and issues rather than only personal contents (p. 77-78). Figures from active imagination serve a similar role as dream images in that they are engaged with imaginally and in dialogue. Both dream and active imagination figures offer a voice from unconscious aspects of the personality. Projection is the process of unconscious contents being placed on external objects, people, and situations (Jung, 1948/1974, p. 50). Withdrawing projections in order to assimilate shadow aspects of the personality is a step in the individuation journey. Working with dream images, dialoguing with inner figures, and encountering projections are all ways of opening lines of communication between consciousness and the unconscious.

Other experiential aspects of the unconscious include somatic symptom and sensation. Woodman viewed bodily sensation—for example, tightness in the stomach or tingling in the feet—as an experience of the unconscious. She worked with somatic experiences as pathways into the unconscious, just as a dream image can be, by sensing directly into the body in order to open to the “subtle body” where the psychic and physical are held in dynamic tension (Woodman, 1985). In working with addiction, Woodman (1985) also viewed impulses and hungers as imbued with symbolism from the unconscious. Woodman’s work with the body and symbol continued to link Jung’s theory of instinct and psychic image as emerging from the same archetypal realm and occurring on a spectrum from instinct to spirit.

Structural and Psychodynamic Aspects of the Unconscious

In terms of the structure of the unconscious, Jungians view the personal and collective unconscious to be in a dynamic, reciprocal relationship. The personal unconscious consists of memories, beliefs, and repressed material that could hypothetically be brought to consciousness (Jung, 1954/1969, p. 185). The collective unconscious is a configuration of archetypes that can only be known partially and indirectly through images and concepts, rather than through immediate experience of the archetype, itself (Jung, 1954/1969, p. 213).

The personal unconscious is shaped by complexes, which are spotted through their feeling-toned contents constellating around an archetypal core, yet are created throughout life in engagement with people and the environment (Jung, 1928/1969, p. 11). Primary complexes include the ego, persona, shadow, and anima/animus. The ego complex is the central conscious complex that creates a sense of personal identity—there is a fluid boundary between the ego complex and the personal unconscious with some contents moving into and out of consciousness at all times (G. Slater, personal communication, November 5, 2016). Prior to the process of differentiating unconscious aspects, the ego complex can be identified with the persona, which is the outward mask of identity that facilities social adaptation. The personal shadow stands in compensation to the persona, and the shadow can be imagined as “blind spots” or aspects of one’s personality (including positive attributes), values, and desires that are repressed or unknown, perhaps because of their immoral qualities (G. Slater, personal communication, November 5, 2016).

Finally, the anima and animus are contrasexual complexes that also stand in compensation to the persona and connect inwardly to the personal and collective unconscious. The anima is a soulful, feeling feminine complex and the anima is a logos-oriented masculine complex; or as Jung (1928/1966) stated, “…as the anima produces moods, so the animus produces opinions” (p. 206-207). The anima and animus are bridges to a deeper interior experience. Complexes offer a portal to the collective unconscious through working with their constellated contents (emotional reactions, somatic images, and dreams figures) since they revolve around an archetypal core that has its own energy system located in the collective unconscious (S. Fontelieu, personal communication, 5 May, 2018).

The collective unconscious is the sea of archetypes including “patterns of instinctual behavior” (Jung, 1936/1968, p. 44). While Jung provided many descriptions for archetypes, they are generally thought of as inherited possibilities and energetic templates that shape experience and find expression in myths, religious imagery, and personal complexes. Individuation is the journey of the ego complex recognizing its place within the Self archetype (G. Slater, personal communication, November 5, 2016). The ego-Self axis is what allows the center of personal identity to recognize its connection to the unconscious and its center not as the persona or the ego complex, but as the Self (G. Slater, personal communication, November 5, 2016).

Instinct and Spirit Spectrum

Instincts and spirit reside within the unconscious along a spectrum which Jung (1954/1969) amplified with the idea of the light spectrum of red to ultraviolet—instincts residing at the red pole and the “instinctual image” or spiritual facets at the violet end (p. 211). The realm of physiological instinct, while separate in theory, is connected along this spectrum to the realm of spirit; and neither extreme end of the spectrum can be brought to consciousness. Instincts are biological and somatic drives that are outside of conscious awareness and spirit is the domain of ideas and mind that also has its own patterning. The “psychoid” archetype acts as a bridge along this spectrum holding matter and psyche yet is also a transpersonal principle outside the human experience (Jung, 1954/1969, p. 216).

Symbols are containers for the poles of opposites, expressing the numinosity of the unknowable archetype as image and metaphor while directing instinctual energy in new ways. The poles of the dense bodily realm of matter and that of spirit meet, and are mutually transformed, in soul through symbols. Both instinct and spirit possess immense energy and it is through working with symbols that instincts can be transformed and spirit can be made manifest, as Woodman (1985) articulated, “The psychic energy frees the physical; the physical illuminates the psychic” (p. 63). Symbols are the emergence of archetypes per se into consciousness, which yoke the unconscious and consciousness in a third realm. This third space is where the physical body and spiritual contents interface, “The subtle body denies neither psyche nor soma, but brings them together in a tertium non datur, a third which holds the physical and psychic tensions and acts as a catalyst releasing energy to both sides” (Woodman, 1985, p. 63). In other words, the subtle body is where physical symptoms are opened as meaningful symbols and where psychic images can be brought into the body for healing and transformation. It is the subtle body where symbols arise, mutually influencing the dynamic poles of instinct and spirit.

REFERENCES

Jung, C. G. (1966). The relations between the ego and the unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 7, 2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com (Original work published 1928)

Jung, C. G. (1968). Archetypes of the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9 pt. 1, 2nd ed., pp. 3-41). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1954)

Jung, C. G. (1968). The concept of the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9 pt. 1, 2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com (Original work published 1936/37)

Jung, C. G. (1969). Basic postulates of analytical psychology (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, 2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com (Original work published 1934)

Jung, C. G. (1969). On psychic energy (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, 2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com (Original work published 1928)

Jung, C. G. (1969). On the nature of the psyche (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, 2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com (Original work published 1954)

Jung, C.G. (1974). Dreams (R.F.C. Hull Trans.). New York, NY: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1948)

Woodman, M. (1985). The pregnant virgin: A process of psychological transformation. Toronto, Cananda: Inner City Books.

Woodman, M. (1990). The ravaged bridegroom: Masculinity in women. Toronto, Cananda: Inner City Books.

Woodman, M. (2008). Honouring the body. Counseling Psychology Quarterly, 21(2), 119-121. doi:10.1080/09515070802066821