The Collective Unconscious: A Psychological Analysis

aggression and expressions of revenge that were planned for the object. Even the suicidal tendencies of melancholia are more comprehensible when it’s understood that the patient's bitterness falls alike on the ego itself as it does the object of his love and hate. In melancholia, as well as in other narcissistic conditions, a feature of emotional life is strikingly shown which, since the time of Bleuler, has been designated as “ambivalence.” By this, it’s meant that hostile and affectionate feelings are directed against one and the same person.

From the analysis of the narcissistic conditions, knowledge of the structure of the ego and of the separate factors from which it is built has resulted. From the analysis of the maniacal delusion of

being watched, it’s concluded that in the ego there is an agent that continually watches, criticizes and compares the other part of the ego and thus opposes it. It is believed when a patient imparts a truth that is not yet sufficiently appreciated. When he complains that all his actions are spied upon and watched – all his thoughts recorded and criticized – he errs only in transferring this distressing force to something alien, outside himself. He feels the dominance of a factor in his ego, which compares his actual ego and all of its activities to an “ideal” ego that he has created in the course of his development. The creation of this “ideal ego” took place with the purpose of again establishing the self-satisfaction that was wrapped around the original infantile narcissism. However, since then, this self-satisfaction has experienced so many disturbances and disparagements that they have been neatly organized into one litany of repeated accusations.

This self-observing agent – the ego-censor – is the conscience. It is the same factor that at night exercises dream-censorship and creates the suppressions against inadmissible wish-impulses. Under analysis in the maniacal delusion of being watched, it reveals its origin in the influence of parents, tutors and social environment and in the identification of the ego with certain of these model individuals.

All of these conclusions apply to the psychoanalysis of narcissistic conditions to advance the concept of ego-libido or narcissistic libido. The libido theory will survive in triumphing over the whole line from the simplest true neurosis to the most difficult psychotic derangement of the individual. For the libido is known to be a characteristic that is is continually struggling against subordinating itself to the realities of the world. However, Freud said it is most probable that the ego instincts are indirectly swept along by the neurogenic excitations of the libido and forced into a functional disturbance. However, when the egoistic instinct is confronted with the accompanying action of self-preservation, every theoretical difficulty is overcome.
Men who have survived the endangering of their lives tell us that they were not at all afraid, they only did something. They turned the weapon against the wild animal, and, in fact, that was the most purposeful thing to do.
The condition of fear is in all cases purposeless, and its lack of purpose is obvious when it reaches a higher level. It then disturbs the action of fight or flight that alone is purposeful and serves the ends of self-preservation.

Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis

Freud compared psychiatry and psychoanalysis and explained psychiatry does not apply the technical methods of psychoanalysis and neglects to look for any significance in the content of the obsession. Instead of first seeking out more specific and immediate causes, psychiatry refers us to the very general and remote source—heredity. However does this imply a contradiction, a conflict between them? Do they not supplement one another? For does the heredity factor deny the significance of the experience; is it not rather true that both operate together in the most effective way? Since there is nothing in the nature of psychiatric work that must repudiate psychoanalytic research, it must be the psychiatrists who oppose psychoanalysis, not psychiatry itself.

Psychoanalysis stands in about the same relation to psychiatry as histology (the study of the microscopic structure of tissues) does to anatomy. Histology studies the closer structure of tissues and cells, and anatomy studies the outer forms of organs. A contradiction between two types of study – where one simplifies the other – is not easily conceivable. Freud noted:

You know that anatomy today forms the basis of scientific medicine. However, there was a time when the dissection of human corpses to learn the inner structure of the body was frowned upon as much as the practice of psychoanalysis is today, despite its attempts to ascertain the inner workings of the human soul. Similarly, in the not too distant future, the realization will come that a psychiatry that aspires to scientific depth is not possible without a real knowledge of the deeper unconscious processes in the psychic life.

Psychoanalysis can understand what it was that happened within the patient, but it has no means of making the patient himself understand it and want to change it. The patient still has to will this insight into action.

Bronze shield in Delphi Museum, Greece

Projection

Projection was conceptualized by Freud in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess and further refined by Anna Freud. In projection, Anna Freud considered thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one's own are deleted from one’s psychical functions and placed in another. What the ego repudiates, it splits off and places in another.

Projection tends to come to the fore when there is a stressful or unfamiliar personal crisis. It is found in neurotic or psychotic personalities functioning at a primitive level, as in narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder.

Painful, salacious, guilty, angry, obsessive thoughts and feelings that are automatically repressed into the unconscious project onto other people because they are a convenient, alternative target. “Neurotic projection” (emotionally delusional) unconsciously perceives others acting in ways that embodies what one is panicked and terrified about in one’s self.

Projection may also be used to ignore negative attributes of other people while simultaneously assuming they are like us. “Complementary projection” assumes that others do, think and feel in the same way as we do, as in the “false consensus effect.” Thus, we see our friends as being more like us than they really are. This may explain why a husband or wife may dislike each other’s friends and family because “complementary projection” ignores the negative.

“Projection” is an automatic process whereby the contents of one’s own unconscious are perceived to be in others. Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings. It is only by distinguishing certain properties of the object as different from our own projections are able to really know what is happening.

“Cum grano salis” (with a grain of salt), we always see our own unavowed mistakes magnified in an opponent. Excellent examples of this are found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness, we will be unable to see through our projections, but must always succumb to them because the mind’s natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected because projection is not a conscious process.

One meets with projections, one does not make them. The general psychological reason for projection is always an “activated” unconscious that seeks expression. It is possible to project certain characteristics onto another person who does not possess them at all. This is generally the case when the object is not conscious of the qualities in question. Projections change others into a replica of one’s unknown obsessions.

“Projection” is a dissemination process:
• First, one’s subjective content becomes alienated from the subject and is, so to speak, embodied in the object; and
• Secondly, the object’s unknown content is replaced by one’s subjective content.

Jung distinguished between “passive” projection and “active” projection. “Passive” projection is completely automatic and unintentional, like falling in love. The less we know about another person, the easier it is to passively project unconscious aspects of ourselves onto them. “Active” projection is better known as empathy—we feel ourselves in the other's shoes. Empathy that extends to the point where we lose our own standpoint becomes “identification.”

The projection of the personal shadow generally falls on persons of the same sex. On a collective level, it gives rise to war, scapegoating and confrontations between political parties. Projection that takes place in the context of a therapeutic relationship is “transference” that depends on whether the analysand or the analyst is the one projecting.

Projecting one’s own thoughts or emotions onto others allows the person to see their dysfunctionality without the attendant discomfort of knowing these animosities originated internally. For example, someone, who does not really know another person in a stressful situation, automatically (unconsciously) projects onto this person a traumatic repressed memory. Projections isolate others from their reality, and the libidinous pleasure of the psychic masochist is satisfied.

Projection is also a common attribute of paranoia, where people project the disapproval of themselves onto others. Empathy, where a person experiences the perceived emotions of others, may be considered as a “reverse” form of projection whereby a person projects other people’s emotions onto themselves. “Identification” may also be a form of reverse projection.

Projection was one of Anna Freud's original “defense mechanisms.”
In terms of Carl Jung’s contra-sexual complexes – anima and animus – projection is both a common cause of animosity and a singular source of vitality. When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love.

Carl Jung believed that only until there is an obvious break between what we imagine to be true and object reality is there a need to speak of projections:

• Projection . . . is properly so called only when the need to dissolve the identity with the object has already arisen. This need arises when there is discordance for any reason with the object reality. From this moment, the previous partial identity acquires the character of the projection. The term projection therefore signifies a state of identity of the subject that has become noticeable in opposition to the true identity, other than the subject’s projected obsession.

Jung considered that the unacceptable parts of the personality represented by the shadow archetype were particularly likely to give rise to projection, both small-scale and on a national/international basis. He said:

“Wherever known reality stops when we are engaged with the unknown, there we project a shadow archetypal image. All projections provoke counter-projections when the object is unconscious of the intent and circumstances of the projection upon it by the subject."

In a therapeutic sense, knowing that “projections provoke counter-projections” is a cause to recognize that compulsive shadow type projections by the subject (repeating the same projections) on “unknown others” is a “double reflection.” All doubly reflected communications make contrary accusations possible. Thus, the subject who passes judgment is disclosed by the way he judges. The subject needs the insight to understand it in this way.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder—“Anal Character”

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) is the mental disorder of striving for too much success. A “repetitive thought process” to achieve perfection is the ultimate goal of the OCPD person and failure is seen as earth shattering. OCPD is the disorder that, on the outside, seems useful. A drive to succeed is very appealing, but OCPD pushes it past the line of success and into the realm of isolation, anxiety, and depression.

An obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is defined to be “...an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it.” This means that the person's world perspective has, for the most part, always been skewed with expectations that differ from the rest of his or her culture. Deeply-rooted and longstanding, the OCPD’s overly perfectionistic behaviors seem OK to that person. Psychologists call this “ego-syntonic,” which means that the person with OCPD feels his esoteric outlook is good and correct.

Because it is a personality disorder, the person with OCPD is comfortable with their high standards and perfectionist mindset. It is accepted as a virtue, even though it frequently hampers success. The test-taker who stops and overthinks question number 4 will do so even if it prevents him from from completing all 20 questions on the test. In retrospect, he might think to complete the test, then review for oversights.
Back in the early 1900s, Freud observed and treated patients with OCPD. From his findings, he noted, "persons with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) are characterized by the three 'peculiarities' of orderliness (which included cleanliness and conscientiousness), parsimony, and obstinacy." Freud also called it, "a neurosis connected with difficulties at the anal phase in psychosexual development," and made a distinction between Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which he referred to as a "symptomatic neurosis" and OCPD, which he referred to as a "character neurosis."

Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder

Research on the treatment of OCPD has been more frequent in the past few years, but is still a relatively untouched area of psychology. While therapeutic practices are constantly being revised, the methods held in psychodynamic therapy for a patient with OCPD have shown to be effective. The goals in psychodynamic therapy are to help the patient step back out of the stressful situation and recognize his or her feelings in that moment. This encourages the person to step back and pull out of the stressful situation and think why a lack of control over the situation would cause him or her, as well as others, pain and guilt. The therapist reminds patients with OCPD that everyone makes mistakes. Once they are made, the only solution is to accept their occurrence, take responsibility for them and ensure that they are controlled and not repeated in the future. We can only respect others as much as we respect ourselves. In fact, when detailing a situation where excessive control is brought into consciousness, the first step to correction has been taken. The patient is usually very critical of himself, so modification of the harsh superego is also a high priority in this school of therapy.

Passive-Aggressive Personality

How do you know you are dealing with a passive-aggressive person? An ancient Chinese proverb describes passive-aggressive behavior as “a fist hiding behind a smile.” The NYU Medical Center defines a passive-aggressive individual as someone who, uncensored, "may appear to be sympathetic.” However, after considerable reflection, the realization finally arises that they are really doing more for themselves than anyone else. A passive-aggressive is a personality type, behavior, defense mechanism that allows people to turn aggression on and off like a light switch to fit the situation for their own personal gain. It’s a subheading of sociopathic behavior where there is no guilt or insight about the reality of feelings—just “mob or herd mentality” or as best described by Orwell in 1984—“groupthink.”

In the presence of others, they can be conciliatory or argumentative depending on the political points to be scored. “Looking out for number 1” is definitely operative, but to be arrogantly dismissive, cover-up, deny or do not answer what can be commonly deduced by the audience is “passive-aggressive.”
As for the target of the passive aggression, experiencing this kind of behavior can “make you feel like a crazy person,” explains Scott Wetzler, Ph.D., vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center. “You're being told what's happening isn't happening, and yet there's something very withholding about the interaction. You know something is going on, and it’s being denied.”
This situation is a primary focus in marriage because outside marriage the passive- aggressive would be considered a candidate for an ambassadorial position. Ironically, the husband/wife is in the unenviable position of having to bear the repeated personality swings of this supposedly decent woman/man. After several years, the realization finally strikes that nothing is ever going to change. In fact, it will probably get worse. A good test to gauge the severity of the condition is to recall the last time the passive-aggressive partner said, “I’m sorry. Let’s talk about it. I love you (ironically, sexual intimacy has been dismissed by this partner).” In some cases, they dig even deeper into their behavior.
It is usually the aggrieved partner who has been repeatedly “sorry” and has compromised only to avoid protracted arguments. These repeated compromises are evidence of a lack of mutual trust and a breakdown of communication. The passive-aggressive, consciously or unconsciously, doesn't care anymore and has severed any emotional respect in the marriage. This sociopathic behavior is guiltless and provides the aggrieved party the perfect opportunity to address the situation, not overreact and take the necessary steps to move forward and out. The aggrieved is off the roller-coaster, so there is no reason for regressive emotions—the pre-oedipal complex of refusal, which is a passive pleasure in acceptance/identification with the pain. As an adult who can do something about the situation, this is the one time when the path of least resistance does not apply.
Tolerating passive aggression will only encourage the negative behavior to continue and intensify. If the aggrieved partner has confronted the passive-aggressive situation and there is denial or no change, it’s time to take action.

Doctors will not formally diagnose a person with a passive-aggressive personality because it is not a disorder. However, a doctor can identify a behavioral pattern that requires treatment after identifying the symptoms that affect life, work, and relationships. A referral would then be made for mental health counseling to help identify passive-aggressive behavior, why it needs to change and how to change it.

Nonetheless, passive aggressive behavior is almost impossible to treat. The main reasons are:
1. The person with the behavior is unaware of their behavior.
2. The person has been like this or conditioned to act like this since childhood, and it is now second nature.
3. Treatment is required, which means they first have to recognize the problem. Also, treatment must be completed, which can take years. Most drop out of therapy before any results.
While basically not “bad” people, they will most likely ignore whoever questions their behavior and turn it around saying: “It’s your problem.” For those in passive-aggressive relationships where one partner is willing to change, but the other lacks the insight to acknowledge the problem or just doesn’t care enough to try, the following coping strategies are suggested:

1. Passive-aggressives operate from an ego-driven, hidden script. When their ego is threatened, there are immediate countermeasures that are unpredictable and most likely have not even been discussed with the other. One never knows when their actions will catch the other by surprise. Denial and counter accusations – “you’re just paranoid/angry” – are their most obvious weapons because they lack insight or couldn’t care less what the other partner thinks. For these reasons, when dealing with a chronic passive-aggressive, diplomacy is the best policy. Next is keeping a healthy distance, which won’t bother them even if they do notice.
2. Understandably, being on the receiving end of passive-aggressive behavior is upsetting. However, when the aggrieved argues and “strikes back" with sharp language, the passive-aggressive will most likely respond with denial, claims of victimhood or even more covert hostility. One should not give the passive-aggressive the power to co-opt another into their passive-aggressive behavior.

3. Trying to change a chronic passive-aggressive using prolonged dialogue is admirable, but futile because passive aggressiveness is complex and deep-seated. A passive-aggressive person must change themselves through insight and experience, which might include the loss of a partner. Life does not guarantee someone a happy ending, especially at someone else’s expense. It is no other person’s job to change this person. The best way to deal with passive-aggressives is to solidly taking charge of one’s own actions and wave good-bye to the person on the roller-coaster you just exited.

Guilt

“Guilt” is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes – accurately or not – that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is the feeling of self-punishment or a vindictive attitude toward oneself. It is closely related to the concept of remorse or despair of failing to meet one’s goals thus minimizing our successes due to obvious limitations of character. The process of guilt comes when an individual becomes aware of these indicators that negate any redeeming qualities.

Guilt is an important factor in perpetuating OCD symptoms. Guilt and its associated causes, merits, and demerits are common themes in psychology and psychiatry. Both in specialized and in ordinary language, guilt is an affective state caused by self-inflicted emotional reactions in which one experiences conflict after doing or not doing something that one believes one should have or should not have done. It gives rise to a feeling which does not go away easily because it is driven by “conscience.”

Freud described this as the result of a struggle between the ego and the superego (parental imprinting). Freud detached God’s role in illness and wellness. While removing one source of guilt from patients, he described another. This was the unconscious force within the individual that contributed to the illness. In fact, Freud came to consider “the obstacle of an unconscious sense of guilt...as the most powerful of all obstacles to recovery.”

Guilt is often associated with depressive anxiety, which has been called “the disease of false guilt.” At the root of false guilt is the idea that what you feel must be true. If you feel guilty, you must be guilty!” In mania, the patient succeeds in applying guilt to "the defense mechanism of denial by overcompensating—the reenactment of being a person without guilt feelings." One of the most important themes running throughout Freud’s work is the barrier between “repeating” and “remembering.” There are, so to speak, “contrasting ways of bringing the past into the present” but only to the extent of taking action – doing something positive – to overcome it.
If past events are repressed from memory, they are repeated without reason. Psychoanalytic theory prods the memory to break the stranglehold that neurosis has on repetition. Freud defined the “unconscious repetition compulsion” to mean “active repetition of passively endured experiences for the purpose of restoring a lesion in narcissism inflicted through passive submission.”
The child’s life is a running battle with passivity that starts in the cradle and ends in the grave. Reality forces the child in another direction. This is visible from the use the baby makes of his “activity.” The aggressive drive is mobilized in defense and fighting off “external intrusion” into the baby’s private life regulated by erroneous precepts of intrauterine omnipotence and megalomania—automatic feeding, bathroom functions and sleep.

PART FOUR

Concept of the Collective Unconscious

Jung’s concept of collective unconscious was based on his experiences with schizophrenic persons when he was on the staff of the University Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich ("Burghölzli") from 1900 to 1909. Eugen Bleuler was the clinic’s director. Jung became a senior physician in 1905. In correspondence with Freud, Jung claimed that he had informed Bleuler about the subject of psychoanalysis and had recruited him for the movement. In fact, it can be shown that Bleuler was familiar with Freud's publications even before Jung came to Burghölzli and that he had written a very positive review of the hysteria study. Jung received his doctorate (1902) and postdoctoral qualification as university lecturer based on Bleuler's reports to the Department of Medicine and continued to give lectures on certain recurring topics, such as the theory of hysteria, until the summer semester of 1914, well after his resignation. Minutes of departmental meetings that have not been previously evaluated appear to indicate that the department's rejection of the founding of a "psychopathologic research laboratory," expected by Jung, was a major factor leading to his resignation on March 7, 1909. Though initially Jung followed the Freudian theory of the unconscious as the psychic strata formed by repressed wishes, he later developed his own theory of the unconscious to include some new concepts. The most important of them was the archetype.

Archetypes constitute the structure of the collective unconscious: they are psychic innate dispositions to experience and represent basic human behavior and situations. Thus, mother-child relationship is governed by the mother archetype; father-child—the father archetype. Birth, death, power and failure are controlled by archetypes. The religious and mystic experiences are also governed by archetypes. Archetypes manifest themselves through archetypal images in all cultures and religious doctrines and in dreams and visions. Therefore, Jung focused a great deal of attention onto the psychical focuses that created the dreams and symbol interpretations in order to discover the compensation induced by archetypes as marks of psychic transformation. The most important of all is the Self, which is the archetype of the center of the psychic person—wholeness. The Center is made of the unity of conscious and unconscious reached through the individuation process.

The collective unconscious is a universal datum, i.e., every human being is endowed with this psychic archetype-layer from his birth. One cannot acquire this strata by education or other conscious effort because it is innate. It can also be described as a universal library of human knowledge or the sage in man— the very transcendental wisdom that guides mankind. Jung stated that the religious experience must be linked with the experience of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Thus, God himself is lived like a psychic experience of the path that leads one to the realization of his psychic wholeness.

PART FIVE

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was an Austrian medical doctor and psychotherapist. He received a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1895. During his college years, he became attached to a group of socialist students and found his wife-to-be, Raissa Timofeyewna Epstein. She was an intellectual and social activist who had come from Russia to study in Vienna. They married in 1897 and eventually had four children, two of whom became psychiatrists. He began his medical career as an ophthalmologist, but he soon switched to general practice and established his office in a lower-class part of Vienna across from the Prater, a combination amusement park and circus.

His clients included circus people, and it has been suggested that the unusual strengths and weaknesses of the performers led to his insights into organ inferiorities and compensation. He then turned to psychiatry.

In 1907, he was invited to join Freud's discussion group, the “Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.” Along with Freud and Jung, Adler is considered to be one of the three founding figures of depth psychology that emphasized the unconscious and psychodynamics. After writing papers on organic inferiority, which were quite compatible with Freud's views, he wrote a paper about an “aggression instinct,” which did not receive Freud’s approval. He then wrote a paper on children's “feelings of inferiority,” which suggested that Freud's sexual notions be taken more metaphorically and not so literally.

Although Freud named Adler the president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and the co-editor of the organization's newsletter, Adler didn't stop his criticism. A debate between Adler's supporters and Freud's was arranged, and it resulted in Adler, with nine other members of the organization, resigning to form the Society for Free Psychoanalysis in 1911.

During World War I, Adler served as a physician in the Austrian Army, first on the Russian front and later in a children's hospital. He saw firsthand the damage that war caused, and his thoughts turned increasingly to the concept of social interest. He felt that if humanity was to survive, it had to change its ways.

Inferiority Complex

Every human being develops complexes caused by emotional energy focused on any number of secret desires, singular goals, ideas or objects. An inferiority complex is a lack of self-worth—doubts, feelings and questions of not being good enough. It is often situated in the unconscious and is thought to cause afflicted individuals to try too hard or become antisocial. The term was coined to indicate covert low self-esteem. For many, it is developed through a combination of genetic personality characteristics and childhood.

Adler wanted to postulate a single "drive" or “motivating force” behind all behavior and experience. By the time this theory had gelled into its most mature form, he called that motivating force the striving for perfection. It is the desire we all have to fulfill our potentials—to come closer and closer to our “ideal.” Contemporarily, it is very similar to the more popular idea of “self-actualization.” However, "Perfection" and "ideal" are troublesome life goals in psychology because each person’s definition is different. In fact, many people live very sad and painful lives trying to be perfect!

Striving for perfection was not the first phrase Adler used to refer to his single motivating force. His earliest phrase was the aggression drive, referring to the reaction we have when the other drives – such as our need to eat, be sexually satisfied, get things done, or be loved – are frustrated. It might be better called the “assertiveness drive,” since we tend to think of aggression as physical and negative. But it was Adler's idea of the “aggression drive” that first caused the friction with Freud. Freud was afraid that it would detract from the crucial position of the sex drive in his psychoanalytic theory. Despite Freud's dislike for the idea, he himself introduced something very similar much later in his life: the death instinct.

Another word Adler used to refer to basic motivation was compensation or striving to overcome. Since we all have problems, short-comings, inferiorities of one sort or another, in his earlier writing, Adler felt that our personalities could be accounted for by the ways in which we do or don't compensate or overcome those problems. The idea still plays an important role in his theory, but he rejected it as a label for the basic motive because it makes it sound as if one’s problems cause us to be our “true” selves.
All of us are pulled toward fulfillment, perfection, and self-actualization; yet some of us -- the failures -- end up terribly unfulfilled, baldly imperfect, and far from self-actualized. We lack social interest because we are too self-interested; and we are too self-interested because we are overwhelmed by our inferiority. When successful, thinking of others is easier. If we are not – if life is getting the best of us – then our attentions become increasingly focused on ourselves.

Everyone suffers from inferiority in one form or another. For example, Adler began his theoretical work considering organ inferiority. Each of us has weaker, as well as stronger, parts of our anatomy or physiology. Some of us are born with heart murmurs or develop heart problems early in life; some have weak lungs, or kidneys, or early liver problems; some of us stutter or lisp; some have diabetes, or asthma; some have weak eyes, or poor hearing, or poor musculature; some of us have innate tendencies for weight gain or thinness; some of us are terribly tall or terribly short; and some of us are smarter than others.
Adler noted that many people respond to these organic inferiorities with compensation. They make up for their deficiencies in some way: the inferior organ can be strengthened and even become stronger than it is in others; or other organs can be overdeveloped to take up the slack; or the person can psychologically compensate for the organic problem by developing certain skills or even certain personality styles. There are many examples of people who overcame great physical odds to become what those better physically endowed wouldn't even dream of becoming. Sadly, though, there are also many people who cannot handle their difficulties and live lives of quiet despair.
But Adler soon saw that this is only part of the picture. Even more people have psychological inferiorities. Some of us are told that we are dumb, or ugly, or timid. Some of us come to believe that we are just plain no good. In school, we are tested over and over, and given grades that tell us we aren't as good as the next person. Or we are demeaned for our pimples or our bad posture and find ourselves without friends or dates. Or we are not picked for basketball games. In these examples, it's not a matter of true organic inferiority -- we are not really retarded or deformed or weak -- but we learn to believe that we are. Again, some compensate by becoming good at what they have identified as needing more training and practice. More compensate by becoming good at something else, but still retain a sense of inferiority. And some just never develop any self-esteem at all.
Adler also noted an even more general form of inferiority: the natural inferiority of children. All children are, by nature, smaller, weaker, less socially and intellectually competent than the adults around them. Adler suggested that, if children's games, toys, and fantasies are examined, they would tend to have one thing in common: the desire to grow up, to be big, and to be an adult. This kind of compensation is really identical with striving for perfection! Many children, however, are left with the feeling that other people will always be better than they are.
When one is overwhelmed by the forces of inferiority – whether they be body issues, the antagonisms of contemporaries, or just the general difficulties of growing up – one develops an inferiority complex. Adler identified the inferiority complex as an important element in one’s personality development. But the inferiority complex is not just a little problem; it's a neurosis, meaning it's a life- size problem. You become shy and timid, insecure, indecisive, cowardly, submissive, compliant, and so on. You begin to rely on people to carry you along, even manipulating them into supporting you: "You think I'm smart / pretty / strong/ sexy / good, don't you?” Eventually, the insecure person who needs constant attention and approval becomes a drain on others and is left alone. Nobody can take all that self-centered neediness for long!
Another way in which people respond to inferiority besides compensation and the inferiority complex is the development of a superiority complex. Adler’s philosophical roots for “striving for superiority” were based on Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic). This can be contrasted to Freud's pleasure principle (will to pleasure). Nietzsche considered the will to power the basic motive of human life. Although striving for superiority does refer to the desire to be better, it also contains the idea that it is better to outperform others, rather than being our best. Adler later tended to use striving for superiority more in reference to unhealthy or neurotic striving.
The superiority complex involves covering up inferiority by pretending to be superior. If you feel small, one way to feel big is to make everyone else feel even smaller! Bullies, braggarts, and petty dictators everywhere are the prime examples. More subtle examples are the people who are given to attention-getting dramatics, the ones who feel powerful when they commit crimes, and the ones who put others down for their gender, race, ethnic origins, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, weight, height, etc., etc. Even more subtle still are the people who hide their feelings of worthlessness in the escape afforded by alcohol and drugs.

“I can’t help the way I feel” by John Isaacs depicting metaphorically the resulting metamorphosis of a diseased and uncontrolled emotional landscape. The merciless superego and id have taken over.

PART SIX

What are Inevitable Truths in the Collective Unconscious?

In creating psychoanalysis, Freud’s pioneering efforts centered on the two most basic instincts—Eros and Thanatos (Sex and Death). By uncovering them in the identified levels of consciousness of his patients, he channeled their willpower, character and mental discipline into reconciliation with their unconscious dreams, wishes, fears and insecurities that would sustain a living and productive balance.

Man’s archaic heritage forms the nucleus of the unconscious mind. Whatever part of that heritage that has to be discarded (evolution) falls victim to the process of repression. This selection is made most successfully by one group of instincts rather than another. The sexual instincts are able to defeat the intentions of repression and to enforce their representation by substituting structures of a disturbing kind. For this reason, infantile sexuality, which is held under repression, acts as the chief impulsive force in the construction of symptoms. The essence of its content, the Oedipus Complex, is the nuclear complex of neurosis. The sexaul aberrations of childhood, as well as those of mature life, are the ramifications of the same complex.

The principal processes invoked

are:
1) infantile fixations of the libido (Oedipus Complex);
2) continued repression resulting from conflict between the sexual tendencies and the Ego complicated by the Super-Ego and the Ego-Ideal;
3) regression, i.e. a turning back of the libido of the adult to the infantile fixations. The sexual impulse will find occasion to regress in this way when the exercise of its function, in a later and more developed form, meets with powerful external obstacles that prevent it from attaining the goal of satisfaction.

For Freud, regression was therefore always a matter of the libido; not a general regression to more primitive modes of functioning, but a sexual regression only; and, in itself, it gives rise to different sexual outlets. It is the combination of repression with a regression that gives rise to the psychoneuroses.

According to Carl Jung, each person has not only their own unique unconscious mind, but also shares some elements of unconsciousness with all other people. He called this shared unconscious the “collective unconscious.” Jung suggested that there are archetypes (images and memories of important human experiences) that are passed down from generation to generation. These archetypes can be common designs, shapes, colors, and figures seen over and over again throughout time. For example, Jung suggested the rash of sightings of disk shaped UFOs was related to an “archetype of a godlike form of perfection” projected by people who wanted to be saved from destruction by some superhuman force.

In Jung’s The Structure of the Psyche, he wrote:

The collective unconscious – as far as we can say anything at all about it – appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious…We can, therefore, study the collective unconscious in two ways: either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual.

Adjusted by failure, inevitable truths are experienced regardless of psychical awareness. Birth, sex, choosing right and wrong, aging, and death are inevitable truths. In other words, it doesn’t really matter whether you believe them or not. In conjunction with personal circumstances and choices, they happen and acceptance of them is a necessary part of being a mature adult. Love is the sum of inevitable truths because it is love that keeps our minds moving in the right direction. It is life’s ultimate motivation and experience. When life really hits, consciousness is sharpened. One cannot live in the preconscious.

Recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BCE and coincides with the invention of writing. So, relatively speaking, what is the point of continuing to ask:
• Why was I born?
• Who am I?
• What’s going to happen to me?
• What’s next?
• What if I make this mistake again?
• What is the meaning of life?
• Can I change anyone other than myself?
To the point, is there really an ultimate answer? The Greeks had no answer for the afterlife, so they concentrated on the best answer for the present, even using “divination” at Delphi. Life “just is,” and the only way to handle it is to “keep moving.” That might seem like a simplistic platitude, but what else can anyone really say except, “think good thoughts and do your best.” At the very least, the incessant questioning about life’s irreversible truths is a trigger point in identifying a “fixation” in one of the Freud’s psychosexual development stages. Freud called OCPD, and its associated repetitive, redundant overflow, "a neurosis connected with difficulties at the anal phase in psychosexual development."

Freud defined the “unconscious repetition compulsion” as meaning active repetition of passively endured experiences for the purpose of restoring a lesion in narcissism inflicted through passive submission—the first being the loss of the autarchic fantasy in the womb. The grotesque fact is that the first year-and-a-half of life of a human being is not directly recorded—not even in the form of accessible memories. In direct contradiction to this lack, the unconscious, wordless reactions – as deciphered through the growth of the child and grown-up – are overwhelming.

This dichotomy, as addressed by Freud and his psychoanalytic colleagues, provided good reasons for the assumption that the child lives for some time in the fantasy of magic omnipotence, which is the basis of the “autarchic fantasy.” Autarchy denotes self-sufficiency; so it is not the mother who feeds the child, but these indispensable requisites of nutrition and pleasure are part of the child’s own omnipotence. This all adds up to a “dream” of unexplained reality.

The first rude shock that fantasy and reality do not coincide – in a series of long and protracted disappointments – is mostly connected with the child’s first months of feeding.

The gradual collapse of autarchic fantasies in the child produces the “lesion in narcissism inflicted through passive submission” obviously because a child is helpless without muscles and mobility. Thus, as an adult, there is this “unconscious repetition compulsion” to restore the narcissistic break at birth, plus multiple other “breaks” as a child, adolescent and adult. Based on personality type, some overcome and become the adult guardian for their “inner child;” others are emotionally scarred by their families, friends, classmates and fellow employees and are repeatedly trying to figure out “why.” However, the genesis began at

birth.

In consequence, life acceptance is an inevitable truth. Albert Camus said:

• The realization is that life is ironical and cannot be an end but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it. It is not a matter of what life is going to do for you, but what you are going to do for life.

Another hard reality is that “friends” are relative to immediate situations and transitional. Sophocles (496-406 BCE) said:

• The good befriend themselves.

In order to reconcile levels of consciousness, it is necessary to define and control self-on-self reflecting: “Who is talking my head, e.g., mother, father, wife, my inner child, offspring, siblings, co-workers, neighbors, boss, etc.?” Maybe it is one’s “internal critic”—the superego. It could also be one’s traumatized “inner child” arrested in a psychosexual development stage by unresolved and repressed childhood fears. Adult reflection knows that pain is inevitable, but suffering is not. Forgiveness unhinges the injustice collector’s persecution as a clean conscious discharges guilt.

Once identified, bringing the voice into the present and describing it allows one the freedom to control it outside the connected past feelings experienced in passive childhood acceptance (regardless of age). Adult acceptance permits “letting go” of the pre-oedipal anger of the first “slap and cry” out of the intrauterine birth canal. When one does not forgive his parents, he forever remains a child. Even worse, one keeps feelings of inferiority and anger alive. Distinguishing between “adult and childhood problem solving” facilitates the resolution of unresolved fears/insecurities that were repressed unconsciously in childhood. In effect, crossing this threshold is an inevitable first step to adult maturity. From grade school through high school and college graduations, there were endless comparisons to others in an attempt to be successful in a career and marry. These “comparisons” were an inevitable truth as a youth, but are not essential to an adult’s mindfulness whose goals have potentially been fulfilled and are still becoming. A consciousness centered on “self” – comfortable in one’s own skin – is an acceptance of “self” without comparing. Can anyone afford to hate themselves? One does not do that oneself. The first person one has to be honest with is oneself.

Internal fortitude – mental willpower – is an inevitable truth because it cannot be “cut and pasted” into another’s psyche. A human being’s choice of goals, objectives and mental discipline produces the individual he is and is to become. At its essence, willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptation in order to meet long-term goals. Research has shown that self-discipline was more important than IQ in predicting academic success. Some elements of willpower are:
1. Delay gratification to meet long-term goals.
2. Reject destructive thoughts.
3. Employ a detached emotional state.
4. Monitor self-on-self reflection.
5. Forgive yourself—Set yourself free from every childish, adolescent, brainless, evil and cruel thing you have ever done. One learns from their mistakes or is doomed to repeat them. Consequences make or break people. There are no loopholes. Karma is perfect and moves one forward.
Golden Endless Knot. Concept of Karma.

6. Maintain an Adult ego state—In Thomas Harris’s book I’m OK, You’re OK, Harris argues a functioning person needs three ego states to be present in their psych in order to be complete—P-A-C, The Parent, Adult, Child Model. When one is arguing with one’s self, that person is in the Parent-Child ego state. When one forgives himself and outgrows his childish self, which is also a release from the Parent ego state, the Adult ego state starts to emerge. Harris summarized contamination of the Adult by the parent as “prejudice” and contamination of the adult by the Child as “delusion.” A healthy, functioning individual is able to separate these states but needs them in their psyche in order for them to be complete.
a. Someone who excludes the Child ego state completely cannot play and enjoy life, while someone who excludes their Parent ego state can be a danger to society. They may become a manipulative psychopath who does not feel shame, remorse, embarrassment or guilt.
b. Harris identified individuals with blocked Adult ego states who were psychotic and terrified and vacillated between the Parent ego state’s archaic admonitions and the raw emotional state of the Child. Drug treatments temporarily disrupted the disturbing ego states that allowed the “recommissioning” of the Adult ego state by therapy. A similar approach was used for Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression).

Sexual fulfillment is an overpowering and inevitable truth. That’s not a surprise. Where would we be without it? However, as an adult, it is connected to social responsibility and family values.

The hot-wiring effects of creation in DNA are 80-20: 80% representing orgasm—ejaculation of semen by the male and involuntary vaginal contractions in the female; and 20% representing a penal penetration into the vagina. Those males who have an inferiority complex about the size of their penis should only be concerned if they are impotent, suffer from premature ejaculation or have urinary or prostate issues. Once penetration has been achieved, it represents 20% of sexual intercourse. The orgasmic reward is 80%; thus the end justifies the means.

Change is another inevitable truth. Two quotes from Heraclitus (Greece, Ephesus, 534-474 BCE) illustrate this:
1. “The only thing constant is change (universal flux).
2. “No man ever steps in the same river twice—for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”

However, change is a two-way street: 1) random chance; and 2) internal fortitude and choice. If an antagonist said “just shut up and go away” causing a diminutive reaction, then one has fallen into their trap. Their happiness is not dependent on you, and one’s happiness is not dependent on them. This is a “lose-lose” situation because it is a matrix confrontation of ego against ego. It’s about the elements of the machine, and all the elements are the same for everybody. Real change has to accommodate reality—both external and internal. It is just some people transcend better than others—their “attitude” conquers all. Where “attitude” is the only issue and there is no reason to endure it for either party, just move on—“You cannot change anyone but yourself.”

Each person prides themselves as an “independent thinker,” so why would anyone think that a few choice words will change them. The more one repeats, the more annoying, not convincing, one becomes.

Relationships are all about compromise, and there’s no such thing as a perfect match. But it should be decided what’s non-negotiable in a relationship. Sacrificing these nontransferable needs will not change these people. There are others out there who might even accept them just the way they are. Relationships deserve to be happy and that starts by discovering that someone who requires the least amount of compromise.

Freud hypothesized that every idea was accompanied by the idea’s antithesis. During stressful situations (anger, exhaustion, intimidation, multitasking, guilt), he noted that the “counter-will” – the opposite of the subject’s “will” – can temporarily appear and dominate the conscious “will.” Counter-intentions are stored at an unconscious level and are suppressed and inhibited by normal consciousness, which as a rule is under the orders of the preeminent ego-consciousness.

Each intention and counter-intention has their separate physiological substrate in the nervous system. Stressful, emotionally charged situations create an “affect.” The “affect” is the bodily visceral reaction (increased heart rate, hyperventilation) and the psychic reaction of the self-observing activities of inner physiological changes (fight or flight). The “affect” is the “look” of the recipient of a passion.

Once someone is “psyched out,” intent and self-possession are weakened; however, the “counter-will” – stored in the unconscious – has not been affected. Thus, counter-intentions – having enjoyed a sort of suspended existence in a shadow kingdom – temporarily emerge like evil spirits in the gap created by the lapse in ego-consciousness.

Once the unconstructive side-effects of the counter-will are known, mental self-discipline must be vigilant and strengthened to recognize them and not allow their negative consequences. Consequently, mental self-discipline – mindfulness – is an inevitable truth that is based on control.
Excessive pride or “narcissistic personality” – “hubris” from ancient Greek – is an inevitable truth that must be controlled. The consistent theme of the following references is that “man” has become his own “god:”
• The Biblical story of man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:22-24, NRSV):
o 22 Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man; and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.
• The Greek’s underpinning premise for all their laws and literary works:
o Those who succumb to “hubris” (arrogance before the gods) suffer the divine retribution of Nemesis, the just distributor of “fortune’s chance.”
• The first chapter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics titled “The Love of God and the Decay of the World:”
o In knowing about good and evil, human beings understand themselves not within the reality of being defined by the origin, but from their own possibilities, namely, to be either good or evil.