In "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" Carl Jung distinguishes the "subject
level" and the "object level". Elsewhere (in "The
Constructive Method") Jung holds that repression, the process of suppressing
problematic mental content into the unconscious, is never able to eliminate
this content which reappears as neurotic conditions. This problem, a basic of
the psychoanalytic tradition, can take place in what Jung calls the
"object level" – our relationship with others in our life. The object
level is the level which relates to external objects in the patient's world. But
Jung adds another level, the "subject level", based on the idea that
every object in the patient's life represents a certain aspect of his
unconscious – the subject. This is why Jung, unlike Freud and Lacan, is
preoccupied with the subject itself, and not his relations with the object.
According
to Carl Jung, if we are disconnected from a repressed part of our unconscious this
part will be projected on an outside object. A part of the psychoanalytical
process is the transference of this projection to the therapist which enables
its manifestation and resolution. When psychoanalyzing a dream, for example, we
can treat symbols in the dream as manifestations of objects in our life, this
is the "object level". In addition, we can interpret them as symbols that
point to certain elements in us, this is the "subject level" which is
according to Jung more important and therefore should be the focus of psychoanalysis.
Freud and Jung were severely disputed on this point.
A central
part of Jung's theory in "The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" is the concept of "demon". The demon according to
Jung is an aspect of our psyche that is experienced as negative and therefore cannot
be conceived as part of who we are. Repressing the demon only makes it more
powerful and our fear on it increases.
According
to Jung in "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" the old
"naïve" human honestly believed in the existence of god and demons
which played various roles in his daily reality. He did not realize that these
demons are projections of himself casted on the external world. Man and his
world were, therefore, undistinguished. Modern rational man, on the other hand,
is aware of the fact that gods and demons are of his own imaginative making and
therefore, being rational, denies their existence and represses them into the
unconscious. Jung holds that this rationalist process causes mental energy that
was previously invested with the gods to be redirected inwards. The "naïve"
man was projecting his darker sides to demons, allowing him to remain
"clean" in his mental experience. Modern man, on the contrary,
overburdens his own unconscious with negative mental energies since he loses
touch with his own "demons" which are no longer manifested, only
repressed.
see also:
Read something:
see also:
Jung's Books and Essays
Jung and the collective unconscious – Freudian influence
list of Jungian Archetypes + short explanations
list of Jungian Archetypes + short explanations