Editing Collective unconscious (section)

== Evidence ==
In his clinical psychiatry practice, Jung identified mythological elements which seemed to recur in the minds of his patients—above and beyond the usual complexes which could be explained in terms of their personal lives.<ref>Singer, ''Culture and the Collective Unconscious'' (1968), pp. 37–39.</ref> The most obvious patterns applied to the patient's parents: "Nobody knows better than the psychotherapist that the mythologizing of the parents is often pursued far into adulthood and is given up only with the greatest resistance."<ref>Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 9.I (1959), "Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept" (1936/1954), ¶137 (p. 67). Quoted in Singer, ''Culture and the Collective Unconscious'' (1968), p. 39.</ref>

Jung cited recurring themes as evidence of the existence of psychic elements shared among all humans. For example: "The snake-motif was certainly not an individual acquisition of the dreamer, for snake-dreams are very common even among city-dwellers who have probably never seen a real snake."<ref>Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 8 (1960), "The Structure of the Psyche" (1927/1931), ¶310 (p. 148).</ref><ref name="ShelburnePage58" /> Still better evidence, he felt, came when patients described complex images and narratives with obscure mythological parallels.<ref>Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 8 (1960), "The Structure of the Psyche" (1927/1931), ¶311 (p. 148). "A more certain proof would be possible only if we succeed in finding a case where the mythological symbolism is neither a common figure of speech nor an instance of cryptomnesia—that is to say, where the dreamer had not read, seen, or heard the motif somewhere, and then forgotten it and remembered unconsciously. This proof seems to me of great importance, since it would show that the rationally explicable unconscious, which consists of material that has been made unconscious artificially, as it were, is only a top layer, and that underneath is an absolute unconscious which has nothing to do with our personal experience."</ref> Jung's leading example of this phenomenon was a paranoid-schizophrenic patient who could see the sun's dangling phallus, whose motion caused wind to blow on earth. Jung found a direct analogue of this idea in the "[[Mithras Liturgy]]", from the [[Greek Magical Papyri]] of Ancient Egypt—only just translated into German—which also discussed a phallic tube, hanging from the sun, and causing wind to blow on earth. He concluded that the patient's vision and the ancient Liturgy arose from the same source in the collective unconscious.<ref>Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 8 (1960), "The Structure of the Psyche" (1927/1931), ¶317–320 (pp. 150–151). The same example appears again in "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious" (1936), ''Collected Works'' vol. 9.I (1959), ¶104–110 (pp. 50–53), but Jung adds: "I mention this case not in order to prove that the vision is an archetype but only to show you my method of procedure in the simplest possible form. If we had only such cases, the task of investigation would be relatively easy, but in reality, the proof is much more complicated."</ref>

Going beyond the individual mind, Jung believed that "the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious". Therefore, psychologists could learn about the collective unconscious by studying [[religion]]s and [[List of religions and spiritual traditions|spiritual practices]] of all cultures, as well as belief systems like [[astrology]].<ref>Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 8 (1960), "The Structure of the Psyche" (1927/1931), ¶325 (pp. 152–153). "We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, whose originally chaotic forms were organized through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences are nothing but unconscious, introspective perceptions of the activity of the collective unconscious. Just as the constellations were projected into the heavens, similar figures were projected into legends and fairytales or upon historical persons."</ref>

=== Criticism of Jung's evidence ===

[[Karl Popper|Popperian]] critic Ray Scott Percival disputes some of Jung's examples and argues that his strongest claims are not [[falsifiable]]. Percival takes special issue with Jung's claim that major scientific discoveries emanate from the collective unconscious and not from unpredictable or innovative work done by scientists. Percival charges Jung with excessive [[determinism]] and writes: "He could not countenance the possibility that people sometimes create ideas that cannot be predicted, even in principle." Regarding the claim that all humans exhibit certain patterns of mind, Percival argues that these common patterns could be explained by common environments (i.e. by shared nurture, not nature). Because all people have families, encounter plants and animals, and experience night and day, it should come as no surprise that they develop basic mental structures around these phenomena.<ref name="Percival1993">R. S. Percival, "Is Jung's Theory of Archetypes Compatible with Neo-Darwinism and Sociobiology?", ''Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems'' 16.4, 1993.</ref>

This latter example has been the subject of contentious debate, and Jung critic [[Richard Noll]] has argued against its authenticity.<ref>See: Richard Noll, ''The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement'', New York: Free Press, 1997. For a synopsis of Jung and Noll: Wouter J. Hanegraaf, ''New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought'', State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=xnrT97nXzgQC&pg=PA505 505]–507. For a milder criticism on the same issue, from an analytic (i.e., Jungian) psychologist: George B. Hogenson, "Archetypes: emergence and the psyche's deep structure", in Joseph Cambray, Linda Carter (eds.),  ''Analytical Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives in Jungian Analysis'', New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=JZAaRpOyYa4C&pg=PA42 42].</ref>

=== Ethology and biology ===

Animals all have some innate psychological concepts which guide their mental development. The concept of [[imprinting (psychology)|imprinting]] in [[ethology]] is one well-studied example, dealing most famously with the Mother constructs of newborn animals. The many predetermined scripts for animal behavior are called [[innate releasing mechanism]]s.<ref>Singer, ''Culture and the Collective Unconscious'' (1968), pp. 88–90.</ref>

Proponents of the collective unconscious theory in neuroscience suggest that mental commonalities in humans originate especially from the subcortical area of the brain: specifically, the [[thalamus]] and [[limbic system]]. These centrally located structures link the brain to the rest of the nervous system and are said to control vital processes including emotions and long-term memory .<ref name="Hunt" />

=== Archetype research ===

A more common experimental approach investigates the unique effects of archetypal images. An influential study of this type, by Rosen, Smith, Huston, & Gonzalez in 1991, found that people could better remember symbols paired with words representing their archetypal meaning. Using data from the [[Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism]] and a jury of evaluators, Rosen et al. developed an "Archetypal Symbol Inventory" listing symbols and one-word connotations. Many of these connotations were obscure to laypeople. For example, a picture of a diamond represented "self"; a square represented "Earth". They found that even when subjects did not consciously associate the word with the symbol, they were better able to remember the pairing of the symbol with its chosen word.<ref>D. H. Rosen, S. M. Smith, H. L. Huston, & G. Gonzalez, "Empirical Study of Associations Between Symbols and Their Meanings: Evidence of Collective Unconscious (Archetypal) Memory"; ''Journal of Analytical Psychology'' 28, 1991.</ref> Brown & Hannigan replicated this result in 2013, and expanded the study slightly to include tests in English and in Spanish of people who spoke both languages.<ref>Jeffrey M. Brown & Terence P. Hannigan, "[https://jber-ojs-tamiu.tdl.org/jber/index.php/jber/article/viewFile/7116/6384 An Empirical Test of Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious (Archetypal) Memory] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826105336/https://jber-ojs-tamiu.tdl.org/jber/index.php/jber/article/viewFile/7116/6384 |date=2016-08-26 }}"; ''Journal of Border Educational Research'' 5, Fall 2008.</ref>

Maloney (1999) asked people questions about their feelings to variations on images featuring the same archetype: some positive, some negative, and some non-anthropomorphic. He found that although the images did not elicit significantly different responses to questions about whether they were "interesting" or "pleasant", but did provoke highly significant differences in response to the statement: "If I were to keep this image with me forever, I would be". Maloney suggested that this question led the respondents to process the archetypal images on a deeper level, which strongly reflected their positive or negative valence.<ref>Alan Maloney, "Preference ratings of images representing archetypal themes: an empirical study of the concept of archetypes"; ''Journal of Analytical Psychology'' 44, 1999.</ref>

Ultimately, although Jung referred to the collective unconscious as an ''empirical'' concept, based on evidence, its elusive nature does create a barrier to traditional experimental research. June Singer writes: 
{{blockquote|But the collective unconscious lies beyond the conceptual limitations of individual human consciousness, and thus cannot possibly be encompassed by them. We cannot, therefore, make controlled experiments to prove the existence of the collective unconscious, for the psyche of man, holistically conceived, cannot be brought under laboratory conditions without doing violence to its nature. ... In this respect, psychology may be compared to astronomy, the phenomena of which also cannot be enclosed within a controlled setting. The heavenly bodies must be observed where they exist in the natural universe, under their own conditions, rather than under conditions we might propose to set for them.<ref>Singer, ''Culture and the Collective Unconscious'' (1968), pp. 85–86.</ref>}}