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[MBTI General] What are your thoughts and opinions on the collective unconscious ?

VicDaMan

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Joined
Feb 23, 2017
Messages
9
MBTI Type
INTJ
- Hey so I've been thinking about this a lot lately and it's starting to bother me, the collective unconscious (a term coined by Carl Jung, refers to structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings of the same species.)
- So basically the collective unconscious is the hive mind, it states that all individuals within the same species have a similar structure in our unconscious mind.
- As I kept researching I discovered that Carl Jung believed that Ni dominants had a knack to uncover the collective unconscious
- I thought that it would make sense that Ni dominants would have the best grasp of collective unconscious sense Ni works in the unconscious so the more we use Ni the more control and knowledge we have over the unconscious, so it would make sense that Ni doms have the best grip of collective unconscious.
- I also believe if Ni dominants were to peer into the collective unconscious too much that it could destroy a sense of self
- Yesterday i felt like my mind was being torn apart by all the aha moments i was getting i wanted to turn it all off it felt almost magical
- Well tell me what you think about the collective unconscious and if you have any experiences diving into it.
 

Pionart

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Sep 17, 2014
Messages
4,036
MBTI Type
NiFe
Ah, this is one of those things that I've read a lot about, I've namedropped a lot, but I still don't quite understand what is.

I believe that I have delved a lot into my unconscious mind through psychosis (Jung was psychotic often as well).

Psychotic people often experience the same themes and come across the same archetypes in their stories.

I sometimes wish I had documented my experience better, like Jung had, a las it is all locked up deep in my mind.

When I notice a slightly too bizarre coincidence, I tend to connect it to the collective unconscious.

At one point, I was writing an idea, and found that Charles Manson had written the same basic idea. Heh :p

Would it destroy a sense of self, or the ego? Because these are very distinct things, no?

In particular, one wishes to find one's true self and overcome the ego.

The ego is what we identify with, the self that which we are.

Both are held also as archetypes.

The Self archetype is linked to the Christ archetype. Gnostics would likely back this up.

I've taken on new personas briefly connected with different archetypes, to experience and learn.

I most likely have a lot more to say on this subject, I will write later.
 

VicDaMan

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Joined
Feb 23, 2017
Messages
9
MBTI Type
INTJ
Then your experience with the collective unconscious is very similar to mine and I don't think it's a coincidence that you're the first one to respond to my thread considering that you're a Ni dom.
- On a side note I'd like to discuss my theory on why Carl Jung an INTJ was the first one to openly announce the existence of the collective unconscious
- Jung himself stated that Ni doms usually have an intimate experience with the collective unconscious, and from experience I can say that this is true, but then question is why an INTJ why not an INFJ ?
- When I speak to my sister (an INFJ) she can start talking about the most abstract concepts, but she can't really put it into words well, but I can understand her ideas and put them into words using an external form of organization (Te)
- She I believe that Jung was able to peer into the collective unconscious like many other Ni doms before him, but the only difference is that he used Te to create an external system (MBTI- cognitive functions) to explain the phenomena that only a select few are prone to viewing.
 

Pionart

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Sep 17, 2014
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NiFe
I've seen Jung typed as INFJ at various places. Assuming he's INTJ, it may be that thinkers are more likely to get intellectually about such matters, whereas an INFJ may talk of a similar thing in more humanistic terms. I also notice that I have a tendency to phrase things in ways I've seen them phrased in other places, as far as my Fe goes. Perhaps Te is more likely to paraphrase themself?

Jung only spoke a bit about the cognitive functions. Most of Psychological Types is based on introversion/extroversion, and he has work on other personality archetypes such as the persona as well as archetypes in general. Much is dedicated to discussing ideas related to the mediaeval alchemists and the psychic journey of transformation one embarks on. I found his thoughts on the journey to be most helpful/stimulating.

The next area which I am heading towards is Magick, particularly Chaos Magick. I believe this will help me to add structure to my insights and make real world progress in achieving my goals through the use of prescribed and creative methods to enact change in the world around one through use of magickal techniques. Likely, this will involve delving again into the collective unconscious.

I've been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia due to my experiences over the last few years. What this means exactly for me I'm not sure, but I don't find it too worrying.
 

Mole

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Mar 20, 2008
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Literacy is counter intuitive so it is necessary to repress parts of ourselves into our unconscious. Dr Freud provided therapy for the literate by making the unconscious, conscious.

However Dr Freud has fallen out of favour because now we live in electronic tribes like Typology Central and all social media. And now we no longer repress parts of our self into our unconscious.

And we are now subject to all the social ills of traditional tribes, only today we are in electronic tribes.

But fortunately for those in prosperous literate countries, literacy is the antidote to both traditional tribes and electronic tribes.

But for those living in spoken cultures in traditional tribes without literacy, they are driven to frenzy by the addition of electric tribalism onto traditional tribalism. We see this everyday in our newspapers and on our TVs in the Middle East and Africa.

So it is plain we need to have a Manhattan Project of literacy and libraries in traditional tribal countries. By giving millions of mobile phones to those in spoken cultures in traditional tribes, piling electronic tribalism onto traditional tribalism, we are driving them into a frenzy.
 

Pionart

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NiFe
Literacy is counter intuitive so it is necessary to repress parts of ourselves into our unconscious. Dr Freud provided therapy for the literate by making the unconscious, conscious.

Jung said something along the lines of language being the complex cry of one searching for water. So language is a structure on its own that has to be learnt, a tool, and what is intuitive is the underlying needs and desires underpinning the message. What I've noticed, is that often what someone says bares a striking resemblance to what is happening around them at the present time. For example, I've witnessed a psychotic person state that their house was on fire, but I knew based on the similarity to the environment that actually they were saying that they were feeling overheated due to the weather, but they had stated this as a cryptic message based on an internally held image.

So, one way to understand what someone is truly saying, is to understand what is happening in their environment, and drawing a parallel. The message spoken will often be an aspect of the environment that is being hidden, so a good way to quiet one's thoughts is to become conscious of what one is missing by maintaining awareness of one's environment, especially those parts one would prefer to block out from awareness.
 

anticlimatic

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INTP
So basically the collective unconscious is the hive mind, it states that all individuals within the same species have a similar structure in our unconscious mind.

- I thought that it would make sense that Ni dominants would have the best grasp of collective unconscious sense Ni works in the unconscious so the more we use Ni the more control and knowledge we have over the unconscious, so it would make sense that Ni doms have the best grip of collective unconscious.
- I also believe if Ni dominants were to peer into the collective unconscious too much that it could destroy a sense of self
- Yesterday i felt like my mind was being torn apart by all the aha moments i was getting i wanted to turn it all off it felt almost magical
- Well tell me what you think about the collective unconscious and if you have any experiences diving into it.

I think if there is a collective unconscious it's mechanical and structural, void of any content for the sake of existing explicitly for form.

I think you might be confusing your own extroverted thinking (hivemind by nature) for a phantom ideal you've constructed and called 'the collective unconscious,' but in the off chance that you're not, I'd be quite curious what's beyond the veil. Maybe you could share some of these ah-ha moments? :)

Personally I feel there is likely an equal amount of collective unconsciousness as there is collective consciousness. Both existing on a gradient scale from common fundamentals to more detailed and abstract experiences and impressions.
 
Joined
Aug 7, 2019
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775
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
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This is also my question. I have been trying to comprehend the theory but by not referring to Jung.
Collective is an opposite with personal. I understand that When something is collective, it applies to all, not only to a person as a unique individual. So collective unconscious could mean anything that are unconscious to every person.
I have a simple example may be different with Jung with something that is collective. In math, we learn that 1+1 = 2. This is a collective notion, which applies to all even though with someone who doesn't even understand it. But I doubt whether it is literally unconsciously collective, since mathematicians are aware of it, so it is probably not unconscious for someone who understand it. I imagine that math applies to all but only mathematician are aware of it.
When we use the word "We" as a plural subject, we basically mean that it is not the speaker on his own that does something, but more than one person including the speaker. The word we could mean collective.

Back to Jungian theory.
Jung distinguishes between the personal unconscious and collective unconscious.
Example of collective unconscious are archetypes and instinct. But I still don't understand this.
 
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