The concept of the collective unconscious is primarily associated with the name of Jung, a Swiss psychoanalyst, physician, follower of Freud and creator of his own theory of analytical psychology. When Jung spoke about the collective unconscious, he referred to Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Hartmann as his forerunners. In other words, the term “collective unconscious” is not Jung’s idea. In the history of culture and philosophy, this term is very widely represented. Perhaps Jung’s merit lies in the fact that he introduced the collective unconscious into the field of medicine, psychiatry and personality, which is what psychology actually does. The central concept of the collective unconscious is the concept of “archetype”. Jung correlates the archetype with Plato’s idea — it’s like a certain matrix, a certain willingness, our disposition to do something, to feel something. And archetypes relate not only to our forms of knowledge, but also to our forms of feeling, reacting, and behaving, encompassing all our mental ways of life, starting with our bodily, instinctual foundations, and ending with some spiritual manifestations. In the ontological structure, the cold, most basic level is also represented by archetypes. That is, we can think that the concept of an archetype in this sense is as necessary as the zero point is necessary for us to imagine a natural series of numbers. What archetypes did Jung identify? Jung said that there are so many archetypes, that there are an infinite number of them. You can call the central archetypes — this is the archetype of the shadow, this is the alter ego, this is not-me, this is that I am not aware of myself, this is the archetype of anima and animus. Anima are feminine manifestations, tendencies, intentions of a man’s psyche, and animus are some kind of masculine tendencies and ways of reacting to a woman’s psyche, or, as Jung wrote, modes of reaction. In the event that our ego (our self) is not very stable, we can be trapped by these archetypes. In this case, we have the phenomenon of obsession with either the anima in men or the animus in women. Another very important archetype, to which both Jung and post—Jungians attribute great importance and which has been studied in great detail, is the archetype of the mother. Because it is assumed that the mother is, as Jung wrote, the beginning of all beginnings, and the relationship with the mother, based on this archetypal matrix or scheme of interaction, largely determines our way of interacting with the outside world. If we had a reliable holding company, a reliable relationship with our mother, and a reliable kind of attachment, then we go on into life boldly, because we understand that somewhere behind us there are hands that will support us if necessary. If we have a negative version of the mother archetype, we fearfully go out into the world or deliberately boldly, bravely, recklessly and sometimes very riskily. Therefore, for example, the riskiness of our behavior — there is such a term — we can relate to how successful the experience of a given person’s own motherhood was. Another important, but not so developed archetype is the archetype of the father. If the archetype of the mother gives us some kind of vitality, vitality and strength, resourcefulness, then the archetype of the father can be considered as those patterns of behavior, those patterns of reaction that direct us to some activity and to some kind of release into life. A very famous modern researcher Murray Stein identifies three types of fatherhood and connects them with the Greek gods — Uranus, Kronos, Zeus. He identifies different types of reactions to life and different patterns of behavior in people, depending on the type of fatherhood they have. In the event that a person is dominated by the Uranic type of consciousness, as he said, this male representation, then such people are characterized by a feeling of timelessness, a feeling of duration that has no end: when we have an event, we do not understand when it began, when it ended, and such absolute hopelessness. The second type of fatherhood that can be associated with the name of Kronos is that we have a tension line between consciousness and the personal and collective unconscious, which runs through the parameter of time regulations, clarity, rigidity, such anancasts. We even have some examples from our cultural and personal social history, for example, a five-year plan at the age of four. Everyone asked the question: why make a five-year plan if you immediately implement it in four years? But this preoccupation with time, this preoccupation with a clear structure, is the development of the collective unconscious. But, on the other hand, this ironic type of consciousness, following the author, is marked by the fact that there is a break with physicality, that is, these are pure schemes, naked plans that have nothing to do with bodily reality. We have entire periods of cultural history, we can just consider when one or another type of consciousness dominates. And finally, the last type of consciousness is Zeus, consciousness is associated with the name of Zeus, when we have a rigid hierarchy, like Zeus from Olympus ruled everyone, and this rigid hierarchy is considered the most advanced version of the archetype of the father. Another archetype that is also very important is the archetype of the child, which allows us to touch childhood states, it means the beginning of our lives, the beginning of new beginnings. And this archetype is often transferred or mixed with the archetype of the self. For Jung, the self is the supreme archetype, he said: “This is God within us, this is the beginning and the end of everything, the ego emerges from the self.” If we take Jung’s topological model and return to the idea of how the collective unconscious is organized — it’s easier for us, as left-brain people, to have topological models — then the collective unconscious has several layers. One layer is the most archaic, Jung called it psychoid. Then there are the layers, the most archaic forms, which are the prototypes of everything, which are not detailed, these are animal archetypes or prehuman archetypes, which include the most basic, most archaic, most inhumanized emotions imaginable. Finally, there is a layer of the personal unconscious, and there is a huge body of research showing how the traumas of our ancestors invade our personal unconscious. What our parents, grandparents and grandparents have not lived through affects the way we behave, the preferences for responding — these are the archetypes that dominate, that take over us, and we, of course, are not aware of it or are little aware of it. For example, there is a well—known fact — I was very shocked by it at the time – from one report that people who survived the Holocaust, but the survivors, of course, in the second generation have such a manifestation of manic joy that they survived, the second generation after the Holocaust survivors, and the third generation is unfertile. That is, it’s as if this trauma of the Holocaust, or indeed any trauma of the third generation, pops up. And, of course, as a citizen of this country and as someone who supports this country, I think: what kind of injuries are popping up in our country now? These are probably the traumas that our grandparents went through. But if you think that a huge number of traumas have accumulated in the collective unconscious of our country: the revolution, the Civil War, the Great Patriotic War, collectivization and perestroika — this was undoubtedly also a trauma — then I think that we now have a huge layer of traumatic experience that we are poorly aware of, but nevertheless we We are acting. Speaking of trauma, we can say that there is an archetype of trauma, and it is worth returning to the concept of an archetype. An archetype is a pure schema, it is a pure structure that has no content of its own and is filled with the content of the current material. And if, say, the hero schema, the hero archetype, is activated now, then I will find those events in my life where I can be a hero. If I have the victim archetype actualized now, I will find those events, those circumstances where I can be a victim. And this archetype, as a pure structure, has a hierarchy in itself. And our task, the task of people with consciousness, is to have contact with these archetypes, not in their most archaic, inhumanized form, because we cannot control them, but still try to ask ourselves what motivates us, what patterns are pushing us here or there, and try to find them. to control as much as possible. Source