Ecopsychology — *research notes — Jungian thought on the collective unc — Attachment Theory — Object Constancy — WordPress as container — semantics — cognition

So I want to express my gratitude to WordPress first today.  For building this beautiful container for their blogs.

I’m afraid we have a pretty large problem on our hands,  but we can solve it — because of WordPress.

When Carl Jung wrote about the collective unconscious before WWI, it was because some of his patients were having dreams.   In the dreams they would describe things from other cultures that it was impossible for them to have known.  There is a famous case and I could get that reference, but, later!

At any rate — what it meant was that how could a simple coal miner come up with images of Egyptian things back in 1900 — in his dreams? He had no possibility of exposure to those things?

Okay so, Jung felt that as humanity had evolved through time our brains hold the “unconscious memories” of all that has gone before.  I’m going to explain this the way that Lionel Corbett explained it to me while I was at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He used the ocean, but I shall use the fountain!

Imagine that the container for the water — the bowl of the fountain — is all the consciousness in the whole world that has ever evolved in humankind to this day.  Since Time began. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Creationist or a Darwinian in your thought on this.  Nor does it matter which of the world’s religions you choose to identify with.  Just think of it like Humankind and Time.

So when Jung was working he would talk to his patients about their dreams.  All of a sudden the coal miner would start to describe something like this picture below!

Now, Jung was very well-educated and he knew of art.  So Jung knew what this was, as do I.  It is Nefertiti? Or close enough.

How could the coal miner be dreaming about something he had never seen and could not possibly know?

To Jung, the image came because in the collective unconscious we all know the same things!  Our brains developmentally “hold” all this.  Except — imagine how much Time, then, we are holding!

Jung felt that the image was arriving as a symbol!

Imagine that this symbol “swam” up from the bottom of the container of water that is in the fountain and went into a dream that the coal miner (his patient) was having.

So, that is how we think of the deep collective unc.  It’s like the deepest ocean ever!

Anyway, Jung would take notes on all of this and this is how he formed part of that theory!

Look back up at the picture of the fountain again.

There is no possible way that our minds can have all that knowledge available at once, no?  No!

It would be too much.  Jung often felt that the ‘collective unc.” was sending a necessary image at just the right time!  Perhaps he felt it was a numinous thing?  Lionel Corbett taught us about the numinosum.

Can we ever know what is at the bottom of the collective unc?  I don’t know.  You see, if you think of the ocean and what lies at the bottom of the sea there are areas we have never explored yet.  In fact?  I tend to think that the starfish are there because of the stars in the sky myself?  As if the bowl of heaven is like a dome.  As above, so below.

At any rate, let us imagine the Web as if it is the collective unc of the entire globe?  And the “consciousness” too!

Lionel Corbett explained that the part of the conscious mind we use at any given time is like the waves on the very top of the ocean’s surface!  In other words — most of us are only at the very top layer in the great sea of knowledge that we share.

So, most of us can look at the waves in the picture I am showing you to the left and know that this is an ocean wave because we have seen waves?  But?  Did you know that there were other types of depictions of waves?  The classical civilizations often used symbols to depict them — like this picture of the vase I am showing you below!

See the fishes and the dolphins on this piece of pottery?  And those circular motifs?  The spirals are the waves!  Here are more images of stylized waves from the web.

So, in our “container” of the fountain above — think of the top three inches as being the amount of consciousness humanity is using — and the next and deeper levels as you descend to the bottom as entire sea of the collective unc.

Have you ever tossed a penny into a fountain?

Well, image that an image that “floats” up from “underwater” at the bottom like that — to be like somebody went down and retrieved a relic penny.

The collective unc. can be seen like a repository of everything humankind has ever known.  All over the world and since the Dawn of Time when man first became conscious.

All right.  Yesterday I saw some very troubling videos, my WordPress friends.

I’ll have to go back and get the link on my “aquarium heads” research and the one on the language of the emoticons — but let’s look at these videos below!

All right, I lost my train of thought — but to get back.  What if language is lost or being lost and so is metaphor?

This is an important question given that CNN article I reffed yesterday.

So, yesterday I looked at vids on texting and emoticons because I wanted to see what is happening with them.

Let’s watch and observe as a therapist does — about what is going on! (Family Systems Theory) –as modality!  By using a technique from Family Therapy.

I once had the opportunity to see how family therapists worked during my training practicum at Pacifica at Family Therapy Inst. in SB.  In my view, I am able to look at the vids much as the therapists of yore were behind a glass that was a one way mirror.

So — I have a lot of thoughts on what I’ve just seen.  Going to take a break now, but I will return for more thoughts on all of this tonight.  I am interested in the language, the alienation, the constant communication and the lack of face to face dialogue in the videos above when looking through a systems lens.

WordPress, thank you — for being you!  For a scholar like me.

xxoo!