Bepaalde aspecten van de theorieën van Jung spreken mij enorm aan. Zo zie ik in het conflict van Felix ook wel een clash tussen de persona en de schaduw. De persona is de versie van hemzelf die hij nastreeft. De schaduw is zijn moeder, de versie die hij koste wat het kost vermijdt, maar toch ook in hemzelf schuift.
Myth evolves along with our soul (Jung 1940, p. 160) and what is of value for our development is understanding our current evolutionary state.
http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/the-10-best-movies-influenced-by-carl-jung/2/
Myth evolves along with our soul (Jung 1940, p. 160) and what is of value for our development is understanding our current evolutionary state.
Personal Unconscious
Jung’s idea of the personal unconscious is comparable to the unconsciousthat Freud and other psychoanalysts referred to. To Jung, it is personal, as opposed to the collective unconscious, which is shared amongst all persons.
The personal unconscious contains memories which are unaware we still possess, often as a result of repression.
As we exist in a conscious state, we do not have direct access to our personal unconscious, but it emerges in our dreams or in a hypnotic state of regression.
Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious is key to Jung’s theories of the mind as it contains the archetypes.
Rather than being born as a tabula rasa (a ‘blank slate’ in Latin) and being influenced purely by our environment, as the English philosopher John Locke believed, Jung proposed that we are each born with a collective unconscious. This contains a set of shared memories and ideas, which we can all identify with, regardless of the culture that we were born into or the time period in which we live. We cannot communicate through the collective unconscious, but we recognise some of the same ideas innately, including archetypes.
For example, many cultures have cultivated similar myths independently of one another, which feature similar characters and themes, such as the creation of the universe.
Archetypes
Jung noted that within the collective unconscious there exist a number of archetypes which we can all recognise. An archetype is the model image of a person or role and includes the mother figure, father, wise old man and clown/joker, amongst others. The mother figure, for example, has caring qualities; she is dependable and compassionate. We all hold similar ideas of the mother figure and we see her across cultures and in our language – such as the term ‘mother nature’.
Archetypes are often incarnated as characters in myths, novels and films – in the James Bond spy series, ‘M’ embodies the mother archetype, whom the spy trusts and returns to. Similar, archetypes permeate the cards of a Tarot deck: the mother archetype is seen in the qualities of the Empress card, whilst the Hermit embodies the wise old man archetype.
The Persona
Distinct from our inner self, Jung noted that we each have a persona – an identity which we wish to project to others. He used the Latin term, which can refer either to a person’s personality the mask of an actor, intentionally, as the persona can be constructed from archetypes in the collective unconscious, or be influenced by ideas of social roles in society. For example, a father may adopt traits which he considers to be typical of a father – serious or disciplining, for example – rather than those which reflect his actual personality.
Philip Zimbardo’s study of social roles in a prison situation (1971) further demonstrated the effect that our role has on our persona. Assigned a role, such as that of a prison guard, people often behave as they would expect someone in their role to act.2
As the persona is not a true reflection of our consciousness, but rather an idealised image which people aspire to, identifying too much with a persona can lead to inner conflicts and a repression of our own individuality, which Jung claimed could be resolved through individuation.
Shadow archetype
“Taken in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries.” Carl Jung in The Integration of the Personality (English translation).3
The shadow archetype is composed primarily of the elements of ourselves that we consider to be negative. We do not show this side of the self to the outside world as it can be a source of anxiety or shame. The shadow may contain repressed ideas or thoughts which we do not wish to integrate into our outward persona, but these must be resolved in order to achieve individuation. However, it may also include positive traits, such as perceived weaknesses (for example, empathy) which may not fit into the ’toughness’ that a person wants to present as a part of their persona.