Carl Jung Collective Unconscious - How to Prove Its Existence

For Carl Jung Collective Unconscious was the great discovery for modern psychology. The Collective Unconscious is the inherited part of the mind according to Depth Psychology. This means that its contents are not derived from the experience of the individual but are inherited and passed down through the generations. In this part of the unconscious we find the archetypes - the Hero Archetype, the Shadow Archetype, the Divine Child Archetype and all of the other archetypes.
In this episode we address Jung's difficulties in proving the existence of this Collective Unconscious without confusion from the other levels of the psyche and we look at his dream of the multi-level house and the patient at the Burghölzli hospital who had a vision with striking similarities to the liturgy of the Iranian Mithras cult which was popular among the legions of Ancient Rome two millennia ago.
For Jung the Collective Unconscious is a complete shift in our consciousness from the personal sphere to the impersonal. It is the transformation of the species. Let's dive in to Collective Unconscious Jung style.

Media Sources:

[brent]

I experienced two dreams in which I saw things and places that actually exist in Thailand, though I had never seen or known anything about them previously.

It just so happens that my work took me to Thailand for the first and only time. And I saw that a night market in Bangkok was exactly the same place I saw in my dream. And I saw what I came to learn were spirit houses (which I believe are unique to Thailand), a large one of which I had seen in a dream. There was no mistaking in the dream, nor in Thailand, that what I saw in my dream was a large spirit house.

To me, that says there is a way of knowing, seeing, experiencing without physically traveling to a place or time. Exactly how that happens I suppose is a matter of debate. My personal take is that we as humans have the capacity to tap into a greater consciousness, of which the universe/we is/are comprised. And that is basically how we can and do know things - or get very similar inspiration - without having physically experienced those things - or met with those people - ourselves.

[Eternalised]

Amazing content really!! Any particular book you recommend for reading Jung? Man and his symbols, Aion, Archetypes of the collective unconscious? Keep up the great content, i enjoy it!

[luciocastro]

Man, I love your channel and your work and I think this video could do a revisit. The collective unconcious to me shows the structuralist nature of Jung thought. In the end, archetypes are just blueprints for the mental manifestations you are going to encounter in your life, when they appear in your personal unconscious, they take the form of something you've seen that fits that archetypical role in that context. Jung's work on the nature of myths and arts is really the best way to understand how we tend to come up with the same stories/ideas. The psyche is just another organ, it functions in specific ways given its genetic material and environment.

[DPSDABDDST]

There was an aircraft (engine?) design around ww2 by two engineers in two competeing countries. The government thought he was a spy but it turned out it was completely by chance. Super interesting story.

[jimmoran]

I suspect myself of “knowing” things I can’t articulate. Personally I have anticipated actions/reactions that I lack an explanation of why I would come to expect the event. Better stated … after an event I “think” I knew that would happen. Like every Monday morning quarterback, it has to happen before I say … yeah I can see that happening. Maybe we are wired to want to understand our unconscious but the very fact of the unconscious makes that unattainable. Simply a prod to live more fully.

[tomstoffelsound]

Humans did have a collective religious, archetypal and mythological experience before being separated and spread out to distance lands. They all came from the same place, Babel. They were dispersed from there with different languages and carried the symbols and archetypes with them. This explains why ancient cultures (which “could not have influenced one another” according to conventional historical wisdom) have shared creation myths, flood myths, symbols, archetypes, etc etc.

These ancient cultures did not develop these ideas independently. They brought them with them from Babel.

Jung did indeed observe common symbols between seemingly isolated and independent cultures, but he needed the cause to fit the presently accepted view of history and evolution. Therefore, he created a “collective unconscious” which existed inside every human mind regardless of proximity. The more likely explanation is that mankind all taught, learned, and shared these myths and symbols with one another and continued to pass them down; but of course, this would contradict the evolutionary historian’s erroneous explanation of ancient cultural development. Thus, the idea of a “collective unconscious” was born.

Biblical history is accurate. There is more and more linguistic and archaeological evidence being discovered every day which supports this. The idea that cultures developed these symbols in complete isolation from one another is an inaccurate explanation of this phenomenon. The real explanation, in this case, is much simpler and intuitive.

[publicopinion]

But what about an ancient cultural meme that has been introduced into the human experience if Influential enough spreads out, therefore reorganizing human social and cultural organizations. But what about the ancient cultural memes that have been bouncing around long enough influencing how humans see the world and put meaning to it. I know there is a sense of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar and of reification through modes of enframing, doxa, identification, detachment. But how can we understand or know what human nature is if concepts and all type of ideologies have been influencing how we behave and through our own idiosyncratic experiences add context to our social life. We add meaning to life that wouldn't exist otherwise. But it's hard to dismiss if we do have an instinctual side and at a biological level that is being filtered through our epistemological viewpoints? So a type of human nature being modify with our extensions whether mental or physical.. These questions keep bouncing in my head I accept everything might be a human construction, yet it's hard to accept that because it dismisses anything objective outside the human experience. Yet it makes sense since how can I actually truly know anything about this reality if it's all based own my own worldview largely influenced by my biological existence and subjective human understanding of the world

[tryasking]

Could it be Jung Experienced { inner Pareidolia ), ? He Linked the Finding of the New Translation To His Memory of the Mans Description of the Sun. peace.

[soupbonep]

I remain a bit skeptical. The example of the patient is intriguing and may be an example of something like an instinct. But religious connections over the world probably go back to our African ancestors' rituals before we left the continent. It is fascinating!

[owretchedman]

The serpent is an ancient symbol for the sun. Light is a type of semen. The collective unconscious seems very close to the idea of karma and co-dependant arising. The easiest way to say this, I think, is that we are all the authors of one mind. Pre-WW2 Germany is fascinating because one day people are pushing around carts full of potatoes and the next day people are talking about quantum physics and relativity.

[EdgeOfEntropy]

So in other words, the Collective Unconscious is just a shared experience. The notion that we are somehow mentally linked to our ancestors is silly, and it is not provable.

[Fobgatahs]

Alternative explanation is existance of demons