From Matter and Psyche from the Point of View of the Psychology of C. G. Jung

The Archetype as a Category of Experience

As is generally known, there were two discoverers of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. They rediscovered a fact that had long been under discussion but had not been empirically investigated, namely, that there is a psychic reality beyond ego consciousness. Freud primarily saw the unconscious as a realm where repressed sexual drives exist. For Jung, however, the unconscious is, in addition, a realm in which subliminal perceptions, incipient processes of psychic development—that is, anticipations of future conscious processes—and in general all creative contents are constellated. Actually, there was also a third independent discoverer of the unconscious, the French mathematician Henri Poincaré, who found the unconscious in himself through a personal experience. He was looking for an explanation for the so-called automorphic functions but was unable to find the formula. Then he intuitively glimpsed the solution to this problem in a kind of half-awake, half-asleep vision. On the basis of this, he came to the conclusion that there must exist in man a second unconscious personality which, to his great astonishment, was even capable of valid mathematical judgments.

In directing his primary attention to the drive aspect of the unconscious, Freud sought to link up with the medical knowledge of his day, with brain physiology, endocrinology, and research on general biological processes altogether. In contrast, Jung from the beginning had consciously avoided creating any such premature equivalences between the unconscious and physical and material processes. Indeed this was not because he did not believe in such relationships, but rather because he was convinced that the phenomena should first be investigated much more in the psychic realm per se before connections to somatic processes were established. In this way, he was also seeking to counter the materialistic prejudice of his time, which was inclined to draw the hasty conclusion that the psyche was an epiphenomenon of physiological processes. Jung was convinced that a link with physiology would manifest itself naturally when both fields had gone far enough in their research. This link now seems little by little to be peeking through in a very unexpected place, where no one had anticipated it—in microphysics. In my view, this shows how wise Jung's restraint was.

As is well known, Jung developed and changed the so-called association experiment of Wilhelm Wundt. In this test, a list of a hundred words is put together, one part of which is composed of words to which the test persons are expected to be relatively indifferent (like table, chair, water, glass, and so on); the rest of the list are words that might well hit some kind of emotionalized content. The test person must associate something to each word as rapidly as possible, as for example: table—chair, glass—water, light—dark. As soon as a complex is touched, the response time slows down extraordinarily. When an important complex is touched, even the answers to the following words slow down, which is called a "perseverance phenomenon." Later this test was combined with the psychogalvanic experiment. The breathing curve or the electrical permeability of the skin can then be measured, and here a similar phenomenon is encountered: at the moment when a perseverance—a delayed answer— shows up, curve deviations also occur. These are measures not of the psychic phenomenon, but rather of the physiological phenomena resulting from emotional excitement. Dr. F. Riklin, Sr., who brought the association experiment of Dr. Aschaffenburg in Germany to Burghöizli, where Jung was employed as a junior assistant, at first, under the influence of Aschaffenburg, tried primarily to derive data on brain physiology from the test. He hoped in this way that brain lesions could be detected. Jung took over the same experiment and gave it an entirely different application by entirely disregarding its possible application to the physiology of the brain. He concentrated instead on illuminating the purely psychic context of delayed responses. In this way, he discovered that in the psyche there exist "complexes"—a word well known by now—that is, emotionally intensified content clusters that form associations around a nuclear element and tend to draw ever more associative material to themselves. They behave like unconscious fragmentary personalities. Whenever these complexes are touched off, as I have indicated, physical changes also take place. Here it was shown that Jung had done well not to rush into establishing connections with processes in the brain, for it later became clear that these complexes affect the whole bodily sphere rather than just the brain. Today this is taken for granted. We might speak of the psychosomatic aspect of heart neuroses, and so on. There are neuroses that typically affect the functioning of the heart, neurotic complexes that typically affect the digestive function, the liver function, the gallbladder function. If the unconscious psyche appears to be connected with the body, then it is natural to think that it is connected with the whole body and not just especially with processes in the brain. In more recent views, the brain appears to be just one of a number of sophisticated apparatuses, which is specialized in ordering our perceptions of the external world.

Intuitive medicine, especially that of the Far East, has always associated certain complexes with specific focal points in the body. In China, there are 365 deities of the body. Every body part, every bodily function, every inner organ, every nerve center has its "deity." It could be said that these body deities symbolize intuitive inner perception of certain endosomatic sensations. That there is a relationship between complexes and bodily processes is beyond doubt. But we ought not draw any hasty conclusions from this.

Jung went on to concentrate his attention on closer investigation of the effect of unconscious complexes on the personality as a whole and on their role as strongly determinative components of the individual human personality.

In this connection, a definition of what Jung understood by "psyche" is necessary. It is first of all everything that is conscious, that is, everything in us that is associated with the so-called ego complex. If I know something, then I say, "I know it." The moment a content has become associated with the ego complex, we say, "I am conscious of it." In addition, the psyche consists of the so-called unconscious, that is, that which in the psyche is unknown but which, when it crosses the threshold of consciousness, immediately assimilates itself to the conscious contents. This includes, for example, many phenomena that we can observe during sleep. There psychic imaginative processes called dreams take place, which (when they are properly interpreted) can enter into consciousness in accordance with their meaning. I can dream about something and then afterward I can understand the dream. At that point, that which was previously a content of an unconscious dream process crosses the threshold and becomes a content of my consciousness. The third element in the makeup of the psyche is what Jung called the psychoid system. By this he meant that which in the psyche is completely unknown or, we might also say, unconscious material that never comes in contact with the threshold of consciousness, the really absolutely unconscious, that which is by its nature unknown. But Jung uses the expression in a specific sense. In his view, the psychoid system is the part of the psychic realm where the psychic element appears to mix with inorganic matter.

Although the complexes, as contents of the unconscious, are unconscious, they can nevertheless behave in us like additional "consciousnesses" or "personalities." This fact was first discovered by Pierre Janet, through whose efforts a very fragmented female hysteria patient of his was able to recount her conscious processes orally to her doctor, while simultaneously writing down with her left hand what her unconscious was saying. She could also to some extent enable a second unconscious person, a complex, to express itself. And here it became clear that the manifestations of this second person (in this case it was simply a complex that was very strongly repressed) also possessed a certain consciousness, a certain ability to reason and to calculate, and had affects, etc., as well. In order to distinguish this phenomenon from ego consciousness, Jung referred to the "consciousness" of the unconscious complex as a "luminosity." Complexes possess something resembling a rather diffuse, unclear consciousness. This is clearest in cases in which an unconscious complex makes an "arrangement," which is something that can be observed in strongly fragmented personalities. Jung published a case in which a lady had fallen in love with her best friend's husband. On understandable moral grounds, she absolutely refused even to consider the possibility of a liaison with her friend's husband—nevertheless she persuaded her friend to take a vacation by herself. Then the next day it happened that she was struck by a horsedrawn wagon right in front of the grass widower's house and as a result of the accident was carried into the house. Analysis then of course brought to light that a complex had quite deliberately "arranged" this situation; at the same time, one had to believe that the woman had no conscious idea of it. The whole thing was not associated with the ego complex in any way. Nonetheless, the complex was able to behave itself relatively consciously (if we define consciousness as something that, among other things, is capable of availing itself of appropriate ways and means).