Does The Collective Unconscious Exist?

We all know that there is an unconscious that sometimes pushes us to act or fear certain circumstances that cannot be consciously avoided. But can there also be a collective unconscious that acts through us? Are we all connected in any way?

Let’s start with an example: when we were little we all learned to ride a bicycle, after a while we didn’t even stop to think about what we should do to keep our balance and pedal without falling to the ground.

Our brain and our muscles have stored that information to automate it, stored in a corner of our brain structures where there are those learnings that we do not pay attention to again.

Experts speak of the collective unconscious as something “innate to the human being”, a type of experiential warehouse that we all possess equally as a species, something similar to a “universal library” … of course it is difficult to understand and even accept, but it is without doubt an idea that is not without a certain beauty.

The collective unconscious and dreams 

It was Carl Jung who coined this term based on his long experience in psychiatry. For him, in our brain, in our mind, there are concepts called “archetypes”, they are like the basic dimensions of humanity: love, fear, integrity, being …

Essential dimensions that we all feel and suffer equally, something innate that we acquire as soon as we are born and that at the same time we inherit from our parents, and that these in turn have inherited from theirs. And now the question is And how do we access them, how do we remember them? Do we do it consciously?

It’s like remembering why we know how to ride a bike, or how we stay afloat when we swim. According to Jung, one way of reaching them is through dreams, which is why many of his investigations focused on the field of the dream, the moment in which, according to him, people have access to that unconscious that we all share.

Does the collective unconscious really exist? 

To accept the existence of the collective unconscious we should begin to believe that life, the entire universe is like living matter. Samuel Butler affirmed for example that every form of life has an unconscious memory, affirming even that the atoms themselves have it.

All this would show us that when we are born we arrive in this world with a kind of base memory inherited genetically from the origin of the human being, something with which we have evolved generation after generation, unconsciously keeping in our memory.

We all feel the same drives: love, anger, rage, fear … they are very strong emotions that are installed in our body and organism, it is something that we all know how to recognize. There are, for example, types of fear that many of us share equally: fear of the dark, surely due to a basic survival instinct, not being able to defend ourselves …

According to Jung, human beings usually have very similar dreams, images that only rise during that moment in which we are immersed in the dream world where situations, visions and experiences are outlined that we do not know very well how to explain, but which in turn tend to repeat themselves. in other people and in different cultures.

Perhaps it is nothing more than a chimera of a Freudian-line psychiatrist, or perhaps it is true that we all share a common “library of wisdom”. Do you agree? Perhaps we should do as Jung says: make the unconscious conscious. Only then can we observe it and understand what happens to us in a much better way.

The collective unconscious, brands and archetypes

In an interesting study carried out by Dornelles and Tena (2011) at the University of Medellín, the collective unconscious, brands and archetypes were related. The authors state that “not only is there a deep relationship between brands and archetypes, but the phenomenon of brands can also be understood using the archetypal profile of brands .” They point out that “from the brand image, the consumer establishes a positioning and the relationship with the archetypes present in the brands are the connection that unites the consumer and the brands . “

For this study, 15 archetypes were defined to be related to brands. Archetypes of Greek gods were chosen. The authors concluded on the archetypes that:

• They are symbolic elements.
• They are present in the collective unconscious of people.

• They can be studied through myths, dreams and epics.
• There are 15 very well defined archetypes in Greek mythology.

The collective unconscious takes on special interest and importance since thanks to it the attributes of the archetypes of the Greek gods can be identified and used in trademarks.