072 - Pillars of the Collective Unconscious: How Jung's Feminine & Masculine Archetypes Manifest in the Psyche and Brain

This episode explores psychologist Carl Jung's conception of the psyche, from the ego and the persona it shows to the world, down through the personal  and collective shadow, finally reaching the two core archetypes of the collective unconscious - the anima and the animus.  

This fundamental polarity is seen in myths and narratives throughout the ages, including the yin/yang symbol, heaven and earth of the Bible, Hegel's being and nothing, and even the left and right brain hemispheres, with it two distinct approaches to thinking.

While this polarity is often expressed as masculine/feminine, it is not dependent on the body, but on a host of psychological attributes that differ in their application.  The anima is more receptive, social, and connecting, whereas the animus is more divisive and abstract.   The aspects we identify with and put forward mean their opposites are kept below in the unconscious.  But both sides exist in all of us, whether implicit or explicit.  

This episode explores the collective unconscious from several standpoints, including the mystical tree of life from the Kabbalah.  

Transcript

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Hello, this is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist episode 72. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to explore philosophy psychology and modern science with an emphasis on the great 19th century philosopher. George Wilhem Friedrich Hagle. Those of you who have regularly listened to this podcast, know that the work of psychologist, Carl Young has been discussed here often. And particularly his notion of the four personality types, which I covered in detail in episode 68. Now, however, in this episode, I'm going to be taking a deep dive on Carl Young's notion of the psyche and how it works and what it contains. And one of the most popular episodes of this. Podcast series was number 49, which dealt with Young's notion of the unconscious mind. And this will be the major discussion point for this episode. Now, the reason I'm focusing on this topic is because during my research, Uh, in preparing for this current episode, I was. Reviewing Young's work. And I. I discovered a striking finding to me anyway. And that is, I believe that. The two pillars of his collective unconscious that he describes the feminine anima and the masculine animus archetypes. Relates specifically to the right brain left brain dichotomy that we have discussed here so often. And with this connection, I believe Young's conception of the site can provide a psychological philosophical and scientific roadmap and model that links together. Everything we have discussed here over the last few years, including Hagle. And one of the point. Regarding the two major archetypes of Young's collective unconscious, the anima and the animus. I'm very much aware that in today's world of more fluid gender identifications. Uh, we need to move past, uh, sexual stereotypes. And I believe that a better analysis of what young is proposing here. Um, allows us to do that, That we can look at this in gender neutral language that goes beyond bodily biology, right? To the psychological attitudes and expressions that, that they represent. So let's get into it. What I'm going to be first describing this sort of a pyramid of consciousness. At the top of the pyramid, the capstone is the ego one's own personal subjectivity and identity all over there. As much below this capstone, the ego, It is sort of like the tip of the iceberg that sticks out of the water. However in this connection, there's no bottom to this pyramid. There's no bottom to this iceberg. It goes down deep and it connects to all living things. Even beyond human beings. Now there are several steps downward from this. Capstone as we venture into the unconscious, we'll be discussing. and, but they impact us nonetheless, but let's start at the top at the capstone. Now. In referring to this capstone, I'm not calling this, the self here. Um, I'm using. Young's term terminology and he does not equate the ego with the true self, the individuated itself. The true self includes psychic components, far down the pyramid, many of the unconscious elements as well. Not just our conscious ego awareness. Now. This capstone is composed of three parts. First, there is the ego. And next there's the ego's own consciousness. What is it? It is aware of both internally and externally. And thirdly, there's the Eagles persona, and we'll be describing this in a minute. But first the ego, that's our sense of who we are as an individual, our identity as a single person, it's the presence that we feel the me, as opposed to you. And the second part is the Eagle's consciousness of both itself and the world about it. Uh, other people as well. This is my internal consciousness of myself and my consciousness of my surroundings and other people. Then it comes to the third element and this is interesting. The persona. Which is a term that you coined and essentially it is the face, the personality that we show to other people think of it as a mask that each of us invisibly wears to present ourselves to others. And we all, we all use personas. We all have, and we all need one and we can have different personas depending on who we are with, whether it's a job or family or friends. But there's another side to this persona. The fact that we choose to show the world, some part of us hides the part that we do not want to show the world. And there may be conscious aspects of ourselves that we, feel. Are not worthy to be shown in a social or business setting. For example. Just as an aside. Let me tell you a quick story. And my college days, I planted a musical band. It's a rock and roll band. And when I graduated school, I was looking to get a job. And I would talk a lot about my band and my job interviews, because it was so important when I was in my college experience. And while the business people I interviewed with were very interested in the music in the band. I tell stories. It was of no interest to them as a job skill. So after a very lively discussion, they would say something like, oh, it's so great meeting you, but I wouldn't end up not getting a job offer. And this happened again. And again. I finally figured out what was going in and dropped any mention of my musical background. And I. Then I quickly landed a job after I did that. So I dropped the musician part from my work persona now. I was still conscious of it. so it's not a true. Shadow in that sense. But it was not part of my persona. my music was a pleasant experience. and it was just something I had to eliminate from my job persona. However, there can be unpleasant parts of her being the, we do not want to have part of our persona. there may be certain innate desires that are not publicly acceptable or even habits, neuroses, phobias fears. That one does not want to show others. Their persona would exclude this from other scene. And some of these elements may end up being so repressed that we have no conscious awareness of them. They're buried so deeply to w we don't remember them anymore, but they're still there. They're buried in the unconscious. And this was Freud's big breakthrough and understanding the human site. And as we've discussed before, and this was where you, and went farther than a Freud. He acknowledged what Freud was talking about, about the buried, the repressed aspects of our consciousness. Or th that are buried in the end conscious. But for a young, took it down further into the collective unconscious, which you're going to be discussing. There are parts of that. that are buried, that they are within all of us in all of our unconscious minds. But let me back up these, these dark parts of our personality that we barrier. Remain hidden. Young term, this the shadow, and this is the next step down in the pyramid from the capstone. But before we get into the shadow, just a few more words on the persona. It's important that one has a healthy persona. And so what is an unhealthy persona? Well, if we become so identified with our persona, What we show to others, we can exclude other big parts of our life, and this can be unhealthy psychologically. For example, if identify solely with our profession, we may be limiting our true fulfillment as a human being. You probably heard the expression. I need to get a life. And this is what this expression is referring to a life beyond one's job. The objective, those to not eliminate the persona we need to, we need the persona to operate socially in the world. And we certainly have different personas for different aspects of our lives. As I mentioned, one for work one for family, one for social media, et cetera. And we could even have hybrid personas mixtures, if you will. So w we have to try to keep our personas as flexible as possible while still having one too. To be open to our full personhood, all our beliefs likes and desires. And. I did not forget. Repressor bury the fact that I was a musician in college. It was just not part of my job persona. Later in life. When I was secure in my profession, I began playing in bands again on the side for fun. So music rejoined my public job persona. If you will. But anyway enough about me. Let's move on to the shadow. The shadow contains the parts of our personality that we do not want to consciously admit that we have, it's not easy dealing with the shadow because we keep most of the buried. These are the parts of ourselves that we do not like. And. We may be aware of some of this, but we're not aware of the whole thing. Gurdjieff we've talked about before he said that everyone has a chief weakness as he called it. Usually something, one does not want to admit to themselves or even recognize. And uncovering the chief weakness and then dressing. It can be a lifetime's work. It's certainly very hard to do. But it is only bringing up as much as possible of the shadow to our conscious awareness that we can continue to grow psychologically as a human being. And obviously personal forgiveness and not judgment can certainly play a role here. Oftentimes when one develops an insight into their own shadow. It could feel like noticing. An elephant in the room for the first time, even though one realizes then that the elephant has been there the whole time. Oftentimes in, in, um, therapy and psychological therapy, the therapist will recognize what the elephant is early on, but it may take years for the client to understand it. The therapist can not just tell him what it is and then send them a bill. The person must come to their own understanding of it. And that's what therapy is all about. And this is what it's critical to therapeutic process. Now I'm not going to go into what possible shadow elements there are. There's no need to shadow elements can relate to physical needs and desires, emotional issues. Scary and forbidden thoughts and so forth. These will of course vary from person to person. And I'm sure all of you have a sense of what I'm referring to. The sh the shadow exists in all of us. Now. I mentioned previously Young's four personality types. And those, if you recall our thinking. Uh, physical sensing, emotions and intuition. And we covered this in episode 68. And in that episode, I explained that we tend to favor one of the four functions and downplay its opposite, which gives us our own personality thinking, being opposite, to feeling. And intuition being opposite to physical sensation. And when we favor one of the functions, the opposite then can become part of our personal shadow. For example, a strong thinking analytical type might suppress their emotional side and the strong physical type person might suppress their intuitions. Not even know they exist. That there's a good tale as to what, when shadow is through the, The process of projection, we tend to project the shadow parts of ourselves onto others, and then dislike them for it. The person that hates people who are stingy, for example, maybe projecting their own buried stinginess as part of their shadow onto others. And just look at the extremes of both political parties, how they point their finger at the other side. And they say the exact same things. They fight unfair. They're not like us. They lie and cheat and not make us. Et cetera, et cetera. And religions of course do this as well. They project suppressed evils within, onto others. And this creates tremendous conflicts and wars. Now there are two aspects to the shadow, one personal and one collective. The personal element of the shadow or the things that we've experienced directly that we want buried. And the collective shadow though, contains things that society as a whole, there. Th this society that we are part of, wants to keep buried. And we absorbed this. The shadow of this collective shadow just by being part of society. Now I can say I'm older growing up in the 1950s and sixties. I can personally say that there were so many aspects of human sexuality that were deeply buried by society. Back then they sex was not discussed. In most homes. Not in the media. And it really wasn't until the sexual revolution of the mid late 1960s, that then things began to change. And they change very dramatically. In fact, It's hard to explain just how repressed the 1950s were. If you weren't there. And. Repressed. It was. And there are, of course, other aspects of social bearing of unpleasant issues beyond sex. Many problems in society are kept in the dark and continue to be kept in their poverty. Racism. Other societal problems are often swept under the rug. So the problem can no longer be seen. but it will eventually erupt as all things do like the race riots in America in the early 1960s. Okay. That's the shadow. Now we can move a bit lower down the pyramid. The community shadow is also part of the collective unconscious, but below the community shadow, we come to the archetypes there. They're what all humans share. It's not just our community or our society. And the key point that I want to bring out here. There are two major pillars to this collective unconscious that we all share. And that's the archetypal duality of what you would call is the anima and the animus. And I'm gonna spend a lot of time on this because it's so important. And it also ties in so directly to what we've been discussing, including linking left brain thinking to right brain reasoning. And a lot of what Hagle had to say, but first let's review what you meant by these two terms. Simply put for young, the animal represents the unconscious feminine side of an outward masculine oriented personality. And the animus is the unconscious masculine side of an outward feminine oriented personality. What this means is that when we identify as a male, and express our masculinity. The feminine side is then buried in the unconscious and when one identifies as female and they express their femininity, the masculine side is buried in the unconscious. Now need a pause here. And I want to discuss Young's use of the term masculine, feminine. I know in today's gender fluid world, the use of these terms may seem outdated and even sexist. And the key point is though young himself, even though he used the terms masculine and feminine and probably more than we would today or more than I'm going to be using today. He did not tie the anima and animus expression entirely to body type. Not at all. It was, did not have to do with the one was a physical biological male or female, but he did associate a number of traits and characteristics with a masculine and feminine attitude. Which he called the anima and the animus. So I think even the term animal and. M is the step away from the biological, male and female. And these terms are much broader than, than biology and the body. One is born with. And this is what we're going to explore. Now the terms themselves, animal and animals, they come from the Latin word for air breath, spirit pneuma. And they're very similar, but there, there were the two major polarities of the collective unconscious did the major duality. Uh, that, that, that is there. And. I discussed Young's collective unconscious. Uh, on memory in the last episode, you may want to refresh. That if you, if you care to that, that. Uh, memory is something we inherit by being born. The collective memories. And this is per physical inheritance, but, but there's more than just a physical inheritance. And again, that was episode 71, the previous episode. In that episode, I showed how the mind through memory and the body exist as one whole. Now I want to move away from gender stereotypes and discuss this deep polarity and what it actually represents within us. And many myths, religions and philosophies have pointed to this duality. Of course we've discussed being and nothing and Hagle, heaven, and earth and the Bible. And masculine and feminine. concepts are ubiquitous. Many languages today. You know, French when they took it, everything was either a little or a lot. And of course you have the yin and yang. I'm going to now talk about the Indian symbol here for a bit, because it describes what is going on with Young's anima and animus. And the collective unconscious, so well. The in yang symbol is used in much of Chinese philosophy. And in particularly there's the foundation of the Chinese eating or book of changes. And for more information and the itchy police see episode 30 of this podcast. Now the Indiana are the primary two forces of change in the Ching. And a good description of these two forces I found on the. Follows quote, Ian originally meant shady secret, dark, mysterious, cold. Yang in tournament clear, bright the sun heat, the opposite of Ian for these basic opposites, a complete system of opposites was elaborated in, represents everything about the world that is dark, hidden, passive, receptive, yielding, cool, soft, and feminine. Yang represents everything about the world that is illuminated, evident, active, aggressive, controlling, hot, hard, and masculine. everything in the world can be identified with either yin or yang earth is the ultimate Aeon object. Heaven is the ultimate yang object and quote. It's important to understand that the animal and the animal, the primordial yin and yang are not exclusively male and female. They stand for the main core polarities of the psyche, having an earth active and passive thought emotion, conscious unconscious and almost every other polarity. And what is important to realize is that both in and yang are always present. Buried within the N is the yang and buried within the yang is the N. And this is made clear in the yin yang symbol. The probably you're familiar with where there's a black dot within the white yang half, which symbolizes the N within the yang. And there was a white dot, but then the black in half. Which symbolizes the yang within the end and both are contained within a circle. Representing wholeness or the absolute. And this expresses beautifully. What young is saying here. The outward either yin or yang contains an inner element of its opposite. And this is how we come to an understanding of humans, anima, and an Ms. In the collective unconscious. Whichever side is being expressed consciously. The other side is Barry. And there's this balance going on between consciousness and unconsciousness. And. As I said, we often tend to project the inner onto others. And this is very true of the, of the, anima and animus. An animus yang will project the feminine yin outside of itself. It externalizes its inner unconscious self. And this takes the form of seeing beauty in a woman or the love of a mother, et cetera. And, the animus yin will externalize and project the masculine yang outside of themselves. And this can be in terms of, uh, a strong, handsome man showing strength in action, whatever. However it's expressed. And obviously I'm just give a couple examples. These projections can be numerous and varied. Indeed. Have the anima and the animus. They almost included an infinite number of variations. Young noted that the animals. Corresponds to the father figure the paternal logos and the animal to the mother. Figure the maternal eeros logos, the animals being more discriminating, more rational, dividing the world into abstract categories. Eros being more emotional stressing, wholeness and connection. Again, we are not talking about biological men and women here, but psychological tendencies and traits. And what's more and what's fascinating is these psychological traits correspond directly to the left brain and right brain hemisphere as we've discussed here. So often, particularly starting with episode 10 on the divided brain. This has been shown the right brain is more empathetic connective and the left brain is more discriminatory, more individualistic. There's more cohesion in the right hemisphere, which corresponds to the anima. And there's more separation in the left hemisphere, which corresponds to the animus. The left brain, the animus, the yang works better with tools and inanimate objects. Whereas the right brain, the anima, the end works better with people. As brain scientists have demonstrated the left brain controls the right side of the body and the right brain controls the left side of the body. That's why. Uh, most people are right-handed. because they being controlled by the left side of the brain, which is, more handy with tools and things like that. where the right side of the brain is more interested in, in people. and. This. This explains why males are often more tool oriented than females. And if tool setups in their, in their, garage or shed. Obviously there are exceptions to this. There are left-handed people. There are. Guys that don't have tool sheds, et cetera. Be. You know my point. There is a fluidity here. It's not a black and white situation. Now, as I said, the left brain is more rational individualistic and the right brain more emotionally connective. Interestingly though, there's one exception and that's where the anger, which tends to be more of a left brain thing. A separation from oneself of one cell from another. Where the right brain animals, more connecting and forgiving. What is important here is that we have both sides within us. One explicit, one implicit, and we tend to express one of the sides externally. Either the anime in, or the holistic big picture kind of activity of the right brain. Or the animal game more individually and either, or thinking or associated with left brain. The other half is not emphasized and it stays in the unconscious. Now there's so many interesting things I could go on and on talking about the distinctions here. For example, the animal wants to relate. The animals wants to create distinctions. The animal pulls people together. The animals pulls people apart. The left hemisphere of the animals is more associated with the individual conscious ego and the right hemisphere of the animal is more associated with the unconscious connection to the collective unconscious. The logo's rational thought tends to be more left-brain of the animus and more under conscious control. Whereas eeros the emotive. Connective response is more of the unconscious. Uh, it tends to be more of the right brain. A strongly formed ego is more left brain where the emotional connection of family and friends and community and mother and child is more right. Brain. And again, once again, there is fluidity here. But these differences cover wide range of psychological attitudes. And key point is these exist within all of us. One's being expressed. One's not being expressed, but it's still there. Now. The ego is itself. A left-brain conception, more of a left-brain consideration because the ego separates the individual from others. The ego is also somewhat in charge of the entire psych. He goes the captain of the ship, if you will. And of course their heart rebellions and mutinies, um, within the mind. And this is part of the process of individuation. The ego, however, must not fully separate itself from the right brand of the collective unconscious. Otherwise it becomes a destructive egomania. And likewise. one can not go too far without an ego. Everybody needs some sort of an ego. If it, if one loses one's ego and becomes totally submerged in the archetypes of the collective unconscious one could be lost at sea, so to speak. So we need to have some sort of central command of the ego. And as I said, the ego though can be more lopsided in some than another's. And just like with rulers, some egos are more authoritarian, more left-brain animus oriented and others are more cooperative, more animal oriented. It is also the UN that allows the ego. To connect to the collective unconscious. Remember the right brain animate is connective and it serves this role in connecting the animus oriented ego to the more animal oriented unconscious. So it's important to get in touch with his side of one's personality. If one is going to explore and bring up to the surface, certain elements of the unconscious. Now, these, these things exist within us all. They have different shades person to person. But the fundamental elements and polarities are the same something we all share. And I think this was Young's major contribution. And, but by digging down and understanding these aspects of personality, one can become a more integrated self and young call this the process of individuation. Now. Just a bit on Hagle weave. We've also, I mentioned how these terms. The anima and Anna's fits so well with Hegel's use of the word German word. For stop, meaning common thinking, which links to the left brain animus, either work, conceptualization and Vernon, linking to holistic reasoning. to the right brain, to the anima, to, uh, the connective big picture. And we did a whole episode on verse Staunton Vernon. Episode 37. If you want to check that out. Uh, finally, I would like to show how all this relates to Jewish mysticism. And in particular, the Kabbalah and the tree of life. And this just dawned on me as I was working on this, on this episode and preparing for it for Maura and mysticism in general, see episode seven, entitled Hagle and mysticism. Now central to Jewish mysticism is a diagram. Often called the tree of life. It is composed of 10 suffer off or emanations from the absolute. The diagram shows how the Sephora show the path from the divine world of the absolute down to the mundane existence. Now I did do a study of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism and many years ago, and including analysis of the 10 Sephora. But it was not until I was preparing this episode that I had a personal breakthrough in terms of relating the Kabbalah. To all that we've been talking about so far. And here's what I found. Some of you may be familiar with the tree of life diagram, and I would urge you all to Google it and take a look at it. And even now, if you can't. Because it'll really help your understanding of what I'm about to cover. And I, but I'll also posted to the diagram and the podcast, Facebook page. The 10 Sephora author arranged in three columns. There's a left, a middle and a right. And on the left and the right side, you have three Sephora Roth each in descending order. And there are four in the middle. Which are meant to balance the two opposing forces. No, it's not just Jewish mysticism. Christian mysticism has also used the tree of life diagram to show a path of redemption. Every And awakening to spirit the goal to balance the two sides in a sense spiritually. Now in taking another look at the tree of life diagram, it dawned on me that this is in fact, the map of the psyche is young. Describe the left side of the diagram, corresponds precisely to the elements of the left brain animus, the gang concepts. We've been discussing. And the right side of the diagram to the right brain animal again, concepts. Now to demonstrate this. I'll discuss these three pairs of opposites as we move down the tree. The first pair from left to right is Bina and Hoekema. And these are translated generally as understanding and wisdom. Being a being understanding and Hoekema being wisdom. And you see right here that this polarity is exactly what Hagle is describing with his verse Staunton for nothing. And these two Sephora. Be balanced. That is what we've been saying in this entire episode, relying solely on the left brain is relying on division and the ego only, and in eliminating and. Wisdom holistic reasoning needs its category of thoughts and abstractions of being the left brain to make sense of things. So they both need to come together. An integrated personality relies on both. Yeah. I was curious if Hagle. And any handwritten about the tree of life for the Sephora. There's not much there. Very little, although he probably was exposed to it. maybe through others. But, you know, certainly he had no knowledge of left brain, right. Brain research, which came far after Hagle, which has. Part of pulling this all together. Linking the psychology to the, to the human brain. However. What's important to note is this duality, this fundamental duality is central, not only to Young's archetypes, but to both Kabbalah. And Hagle. Both sense, this duality and the needs, the need for both ways of thinking. To have a fully integrated personality. Now, moving down below wisdom and understanding. Come the next peer Guevara and has said. The vert is generally defined as judgment and discipline. And it's on the left pillar has said, is generally described as mercy and kindness, and it's on the right pillar. And you can see a clear distinction here between the brain hemispheres again, and Young's the anima and animus. The Animas judges while the animal forgives. And it's not one side or the other that is right there. There's a time for both. And. It's up to the human to balance the two correctly in any situation. The final Sephora parents hood and nutsack, who it is on the left is suggested if a prayer of giving words to thought nutsack is on the right and stands for an everlasting, everlasting, timelessness or infinity. Suggesting the infinite domain contained in the collective unconscious. Who had gives form finiteness to the infinite. And again, Both the finite and the infinite must be balanced. And the infinite brings the reality to the, to the, to the finiteness. And, uh, it's so important to, do. to understand this, and this is absolutely key to Hegel's conception of well we've, we've talked about. Uh, of the finite in the, in the true infinite. I'm this. You can go back way back to episode four. I devoted an entire episode and just what true infinity represents and how it relates to the, to the finance. So that's the third. pear on the tree of life. Now, I know we've covered a lot here, so let me summarize. Young's theory of the psyche shows that our minds are much more than just ego consciousness, that our ego presents a persona or mass to the outside world. While at the same time getting more undesirable aspects of her personality hidden. And some of these dark parts of our personality, but keep, Hidden from others and even ourselves. And this is called the shadow. And we have both the personal shadow in a societal shadow. And the societal channel are those elements of the human site that are deemed negative or inappropriate by by society or culture. And as I said, some of the elements we're aware of and others not so. And below the shadow though. However, we come to two primary elements of the collective unconscious, the twin towers of the anima, and Anna's. Where the masculine attitudes are primarily outwardly expressed. The more feminine attitudes stay in the unconscious and where the more feminine attitudes are being primarily outwardly expressed. The more masculine attitudes at the end Mustang, the unconscious. And it's been shown and I have discussed hopefully enough that this is much more than just biological sex, but these represent two core psychic attitudes that have a certain fluidity to them. And they have multifaceted tendencies. They're not rigid categories. And Further, it has been shown that these attitudes correspond to the two brain hemispheres, as well as the And yang symbol and haggles for Staunton Vernon. And the Sephora of the mystic Kabbalahs tree of life. And finally, what is important about all this is that we first must realize that we have an unconscious part to our psyche, that it contains our types of where our, with Ines, all that we, we all share in these. And what we're consciously expressing conceals the other side of the circle. and which remains in the unconscious. And we should strive to understand this part of our psyche as best as we can. To realize it is part of us as well to incorporate. As much of it as we can into our ego consciousness. So we can have a fuller spectrum of consciousness, including these psychic elements. In our conscious awareness and attitudes for a more integrated, full holistic life. So. That is a wrap for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I know we covered a lot of ground here and hopefully. you've been intrigued by some of the new ideas in correspondences. I presented here. I know this has been a popular topic among listeners, and I look very much forward to your comments. And as always references will be posted at the podcast Facebook page at cutting of Geist in a few days. And please be sure to like, and follow that page because I do post there almost daily. You can also follow me on Twitter at cutting of Geist. And please feel free to share this episode on social media, to your like-minded friends. And T and help spread the word about this podcast. So once again, I'll be signing off by saying this is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. CNX time.