Actionable Carl Jung
(3 minute read)
Multiple Personalities
Our mind is a collection of evolutionary modules. Think mind = iphone; evolutionary modules = apps to solve specialized problems. For example, we have modules to see beauty in things that increase our ability to survive and reproduce. Flowers are beautiful because your ancestors were better off paying attention to them. They signal seasonal changes, fertile land, and a potential for future ripe fruit. These modules affect our perception of flowers. Can they affect our perception of what it means to be a hero?
As social animals, we “characterize” the world– easily recognizing personality patterns within people, objects, and even company brands. These personality modules, or archetypes, are the common patterns of behavioral recognition and action. For example, no matter what specific Hero you hold in mind, certain patterns of behavior and personality traits arise, like bravery, valor, persistence, and action. We perceive “heroic” actions in others and can become a hero in our own life. These archetypal personalities live in our mind and influence us unconsciously.
Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious is the underlying structure of the archetypes common to all humans. It’s inherited and edited by cultural experience, and helps to explain the similarities in the myths and religions of different cultures through time who never exchanged ideas. They are the personalities of religions, the greek gods within us. Man is not born a blank slate.
You experience these archetypes if you act differently around different friend groups, or are put in a situation where a different side of you comes out (intense anger = possession by the God of War). It’s automatic and unconscious. We’re made up of multiple personalities.
Becoming an Individual
In youth, we’re socialized from external structures like family and society. There’s what society permits (the kind of person you feel you need to be) and a whole world of whatever isn’t that, and both make up our totality. We can live behind that external social mask or we can attempt to balance the two worlds. Unconscious productions like dreams, art, and fantasies all attempt to restore a balance.
It isn’t arbitrary to follow a sense of what you should be doing. Mindfulness is paying attention instead of blocking them out with thought. What is it that tells me a path in front of me is wrong? It’s possible listening to your gut is evolutionarily adaptive, with our conditioned thought patterns often interrupting. If I’m only doing what is expected of me by the external world, there could be unconscious drives towards something else.
Dream Analysis
Dream images house the unconscious personalities of the dreamer. For example, in a dream I was with my surf team staying at a billionaire’s mansion. I felt uncomfortable showing my surfing grungy casual side to this orderly and judgmental businessman. But I found that all he wanted to talk about was surfing, and I noticed he looked like me in the future. The dream revealed to me that I’d been hiding my “surfer” side from the put-together career-focused aspects of my life. I’d been conditioned to feel uncomfortable as my whole self in situations where I was supposed to be groomed and polished and professional. There was no reason for it, so I started opening up in those situations to feel more whole.
When your consciousness is possessed by an imbalance, the unconscious will attempt to restore that balance. When I was going through a breakup, I had a dream of a long fishing trip with my Dad. It was nice, it was what I needed. The next day I called him and had an inspiring conversation. It’s personally fulfilling to turn a dream’s meaning into something in the real world.
Formally, dream analysis is:
1) Making associations from dream images. When I think, “Snowboarding means freedom” (an association), I mean that for me, snowboarding is an honest symbol of freedom in mind, body, spirit, and finances.
2) Connecting the images to our personalities and daily life. A recurring snowboarding dream may mean I should seek the freedom from work I’ve been neglecting myself (connection to my personality).
And 3) Doing rituals to enact what they represent. Going on an actual snowboarding trip might actually balance my life out (ritualizing the dream).
In the perspective of human experience, it’s perfectly reasonable to view the source of your instincts, interests, and creativity– the unconscious forces that guide where you find meaning, of which you do not control and which hold a tremendous influence over your experience, as God.
If you want to find God, you might as well study psychology.