|
Foreward by C.G. Jung A: THE CREATION MYTH |
The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Harry Hillman Chartrand
April 2002
He whose
vision cannot cover
History’s
three thousand years,
Must in
outer darkness hover,
Live
within the day’s frontiers.
GOETHE, Westöstlicher Diwan
Erich
Neuman
THE
ORIGINS
AND HISTORY
OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
WITH A
FOREWORD BY C. C. JUNG
TRANSLATED FROM THE
GERMAN
BY R.
F. C. HULL
BOLLINGEN
SERIES XLII
Copyright 1954 by Bollingen Foundation Inc.,
Published by
First
Princeton/Bollingen Paperback Printing, 1970
Third
printing, 1973
THIS
VOLUME IS THE FORTY-SECOND IN A
SERIES OF BOOKS
SPONSORED BY BOLLINGEN
FOUNDATION.
Originally published in German
as
Ursprungsgeschichte des
Bewusstseins
by
Roscher Verlag,
Library
of Congress Catalogue Card No.: 53-12527
ISBN
0-691-01761-1
The AUTHOR has requested me to preface his
book with a few words of introduction, and to this I accede all the more readily
because I found his work more than usually welcome. It begins just where I, too, if I were
granted a second lease of life, would start to gather up the disfecta membra
of my own writings, to sift out all those “beginnings without continuations”
and knead them into a whole. As I
read through the manuscript of this book it became clear to me how great are the
disadvantages of pioneer work: one stumbles through unknown regions; one is led
astray by analogies, forever losing the Ariadne thread; one is overwhelmed by
new impressions and new possibilities, and the worst disadvantage of all is that
the pioneer only knows afterwards what he should have known before. The second generation has the advantage
of a clearer, if still incomplete, picture; certain landmarks that at least lie
on the frontiers of the essential have grown familiar, and one now knows what
must be known if one is to explore the newly discovered territory. Thus forewarned and forearmed, a
representative of the second generation can spot the most distant connections;
he can unravel problems and give a coherent account of the whole field of study,
whose full extent the pioneer can only survey at the end of his life’s
work.
This difficult and meritorious task the
author has performed with outstanding success. He has woven his facts into a pattern and
created a unified whole, which no pioneer could have done nor could ever have
attempted to do. As though in
confirmation of this, the present work opens at the very place where I
unwittingly made landfall on the new continent long ago, namely the realm of
matriarchal symbolism and, as a conceptual
frame
xiii
work for his discoveries, the author uses a
symbol whose significance first dawned on me in my recent writings on the
psychology of alchemy: the uroboros. Upon this foundation he has succeeded
in constructing a unique history of the evolution of consciousness, and at the
same time in representing the body of myths as the phenomenology of this same
evolution. In this way he arrives
at conclusions and insights which are among the most important ever to be
reached in this field.
Naturally to me, as a psychologist, the most
valuable aspect of the work is the fundamental contribution it makes to a
psychology of the unconscious. The
author has placed the concepts of analytical psychology - which for many people
are so bewildering - on a firm evolutionary basis, and erected upon this a
comprehensive structure in which the empirical forms of thought find their
rightful place. No system can ever
dispense with an over-all hypothesis which in its turn depends upon the
temperament and subjective assumptions of the author as well as upon objective
data. This factor is of the
greatest importance in psychology, for the “personal equation” colors the mode
of seeing. Ultimate truth, if there
be such a thing, demands the concert of many
voices.
I can only congratulate the author on his
achievement. May this brief
foreword convey to him my heartfelt thanks.
C. G. JUNG
xiv
ndexThe FOLLOWING ATTEMPT to outline the archetypal stages in the development of consciousness is based on modern depth psychology. It is an application of the analytical psychology of C. G. Jung, even where we endeavor to amplify this psychology, and even though we may speculatively overstep its boundaries.
Unlike other possible and necessary methods
of inquiry which consider the development of consciousness in relation to
external environmental factors, our inquiry is more concerned with the internal,
psychic, and archetypal factors which determine the course of that
development.
The structural elements of the collective
unconscious are named by Jung “archetypes” or “primordial images.” They are the pictoria1 forms of the
instincts, for the unconscious reveals itself to the conscious mind in images
which, as in dreams and fantasies, initiate the process of conscious reaction
and assimilation.
These fantasy-images
undoubtedly have their closest analogues in mythological types. We must therefore assume that they
correspond to certain collective (and not personal) structural elements
of the human psyche in general, and, like the morphological elements of the
human body, are inherited.
1
The archetypal structural elements of the
psyche are psychic organs upon whose functioning the well-being of the
individual depends, and whose injury has disastrous
consequences:
Moreover, they are the unfailing causes of neurotic and even psychotic dis
1. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” p.
155.
xv
orders, behaving exactly
like neglected or maltreated physical organs or organic functional
systems.2
It is the task of this book to show that a
series of archetypes is a main constituent of mythology, that they stand in an
organic relation to one another, and that their stadial 3 succession
determines the evolution of consciousness.
In the course of its ontogenetic development, the individual ego
consciousness has to pass through the same archetypal stages which determined
the evolution of consciousness in the life of humanity. The individual has in his own life to
follow the road that humanity has trod before him, leaving traces of its journey
in the archetypal sequence of the mythological images we are now about to
examine. Normally the archetypal
stages are lived through without disturbance, and the development of
consciousness proceeds in them just as naturally as physical development
proceeds in the stages of bodily maturation. As organs of the psyche’s structure the
archetypes articulate with one another autonomously, like the physical organs,
and determine the maturation of the personality in a manner analogous to the
biological hormone-components of the physical
constitution.
Besides possessing an “eternal”
significance, the archetype also has an equally legitimate historical
aspect. Ego consciousness evolves
by passing through a series of “eternal images,” and the ego, transformed in the
passage, is constantly experiencing a new relation to the archetypes. Its relation to the eternality of the
archetypal images is a process of succession in time - that is to say, it takes
place in stages. The ability to
perceive, to understand, and to interpret these images changes as ego
consciousness changes in the course of man’s phylogenetic and ontogenetic
history; consequently the relativity of the eternal image to the evolving ego
consciousness becomes more and more pronounced.
The archetypes that determine the stages of conscious devel
2. Ibid., p. 157.
3. [An adjective derived from Lat. stadium in the biological sense of “stage of development.” -
TRANs.]
xvi
opment form only a segment of archetypal
reality as a whole. But by availing
ourselves of the evolutionary or synoptic view we can make out a kind of
guiding line running through limitless symbolism of the collective unconscious
which helps us to orient ourselves in the theory and practice of depth
psychology. An investigation of the
archetypal stages also affords a better psychological orientation in a number of
ancillary subjects, e.g., the history of religion, anthropology, folk
psychology, and the like. All these
can then be brought together on a psycho-evolutionary basis which would promote
a deeper understanding.
Surprisingly enough, these specialized
sciences have not so far allowed themselves to be sufficiently enriched by depth
psychology, and least of all by Jungian psychology. In spite of that, the psychological
starting point of these disciplines emerges more and more plainly, and it is
beginning to become obvious that the human psyche is the source of all cultural
and religious phenomena. Hence a
final reckoning with depth psychology cannot be evaded much
longer.
We must emphasize that our exposition of
myth is not based on any specialized branch of science, whether archaeology,
comparative religion, or theology, but simply and solely on the practical work
of the psychotherapist, whose concern is the psychic background of modern man.
The connection between his
psychology and the deeper layers of humanity still alive in him is therefore the
real starting point and subject of this work. The deductive and systematic method of
exposition here adopted may at first obscure the topical and therapeutic
significance of our findings, but anyone familiar with psychic events at the
deepest level will recognize the importance and relevance of these connections,
whose detailed illustration by modern empirical material is reserved for later
examination.
As is well known, the “comparative” method
of analytical psychology collates the symbolic and collective material found in
individuals with corresponding products from the history of religion, primitive
psychology, and so on, and in this way arrives at interpretation by establishing
the context” This
xvii
method we now supplement by the evolutionary
approach, which considers the material from the standpoint of the stage reached
by the developing consciousness, and hence by the ego in its relations with the
unconscious. Our work therefore
links up with that fundamental early work of Jung’s, The Psychology of the
Unconscious, even though we may be obliged to make certain emendations.
Whereas in Freudian psychoanalysis
the evolutionary approach led only to a concretistic and narrowly personalistic
theory of libido, analytical psychology has so far failed to pursue this line of
inquiry any further.
The emergence of the collective human
background as a transpersonal reality has forced us to recognize the relativity
of our own position. The
multiplicity of forms and phenomena in which the infinite diversity of the human
psyche is expressed, the wealth of cultures, values, patterns of behavior, and
world views produced by the vitality of man’s psychic structure, must make any
attempt at a general orientation seem, at the outset, a perilous venture. Yet such an attempt has to be made, even
with the knowledge that our specifically Western orientation is only one among
many. The evolution of
consciousness as a form of creative evolution is the peculiar achievement of
Western man. Creative evolution of
ego consciousness means that, through a continuous process stretching over
thousands of years, the conscious system has absorbed more and more unconscious
contents and progressively extended its frontiers. Although from antiquity down to recent
times we see a new and different patterned canon of culture continually
superseding the previous one, the West has nevertheless succeeded in achieving
an historical and cultural continuity in which each canon gradually came to be
integrated. The structure of modern
consciousness rests on this integration, and at each period of its development
the ego has to absorb essential portions of the cultural past transmitted to it
by the canon of values embodied in its own culture and system of
education.
The creative character of consciousness is a
central feature of the cultural canon of the West. In Western culture, and
partly
xviii
also in the
The creativity of consciousness may be
jeopardized by religious or political totalitarianism, for an authoritarian
fixation of the canon leads to sterility of consciousness. Such fixations, however, can only be
provisional. So far as Western man
is concerned, the assimilative vitality of his ego consciousness is more or less
assured. The progress of science
and the increasingly obvious threat to humanity from unconscious forces impel
his consciousness, from within and without, to continual self-analysis and
expansion. The individual is the
bearer of this creative activity of the mind and therefore remains the decisive
factor in all future Western developments. This holds true regardless of the fact
that individuals co-operate and mutually determine the spiritual democracy in
which they live.
Any attempt to outline the archetypal stages
from the standpoint of analytical psychology must begin by drawing a fundamental
distinction between personal and transpersonal psychic factors. Personal factors are those which belong
to one individual personality and are not shared by any other individual,
regardless of whether ether they are conscious or unconscious.
Transper-
4 . Mead,
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, pp. 228
f.
xix
sonal factors, on the other hand, are
collective supra- or extra-personal, and are to be regarded not as
external conditions of society, but as internal
structural elements. The
transpersonal represents a factor that is largely independent of the personal,
for the personal, both collectively and individually, is a late product of
evolution.
Every historical inquiry - and every
evolutionary approach is in this sense historical - must therefore begin with
the transpersonal. In the history
of mankind as in the development of the individual there is an initial
preponderance of transpersonal factors, and only in the course of development
does the personal realm come into view and achieve independence. The individualized conscious man of our
era is a late man, whose structure is built on early, pre-individual human
stages from which individual consciousness has only detached itself step by
step.
The evolution of consciousness by stages is
as much a collective human phenomenon as a particular individual phenomenon.
Ontogenetic development may
therefore be regarded as a modified recapitulation of phylogenetic
development.
This interdependence of collective and
individual has two psychic concomitants. On the one hand, the early history of the
collective is determined by inner primordial images whose projections appear
outside as powerful factors - gods, spirits, or demons - which become objects of
worship. On the other hand, man’s
collective symbolisms also appear in the individual, and the psychic
development, or misdevelopment, of each individual is governed by the same
primordial images which determine man’s collective
history.
Since we have undertaken to expound the
whole canon of mythological stages, their sequence, their interconnections, and
their symbolism, it is not only permissible but imperative to draw the relevant
material from different spheres of culture and different mythologies,
irrespective of whether or not all stages are present in any one
culture.5
5. A thorough investigation of the archetypal stages in
individual spheres of culture and mythology would be exceedingly interesting,
because the absence or overemphasis of individual stages would enable us to draw
important conclusions about the culture concerned. Such an inquiry will doubtless be
undertaken at a later date.
xx
We do not therefore maintain that all the
stages of conscious development are to be found always, everywhere, and in every
mythology, any more than the theory of evolution maintains that the evolutionary
stages of every animal species are repeated in man’s evolution. What we do maintain is that these
developmental stages arrange themselves in an orderly sequence and thus
determine all psychic development. Equally we maintain that these archetypal
stages are unconscious determinants and can be found in mythology, and that only
by viewing the collective stratification of human development together with the
individual stratification of conscious development can we arrive at an
understanding of psychic development in general, and individual development in
particular.
Again, the relation between the
transpersonal and the personal - which plays a decisive role in every human life
- is prefigured in human history. But the collective aspect of this
relationship does not mean that unique or recurrent historical events are
inherited, for up to the present there has been no scientific proof of the
inheritance of acquired characteristics. For this reason analytical psychology
considers the structure of the psyche to be determined by a priori
transpersonal dominants – archetypes - which, being essential components and
organs of the psyche from the beginning, mold the course of human
history.
The castration motif, for instance, is not the result of the inheritance of an endlessly repeated threat of castration by a primordial father, or rather by an infinity of primordial fathers. Science has discovered nothing that could possibly support such a theory, which moreover presupposes the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Any reduction of the castration threat, parricide, the “primal scene” of parental intercourse, and so on, to historical and personalistic data, which presumes to paint the early
xxi
history of humanity in the likeness of a
patriarchal bourgeois family of the nineteenth century, is scientifically
impossible.6
It is one of the tasks of this book to show
that, in regard to these and similar “complexes,” we are really dealing with
symbols, ideal forms, psychic categories, and basic structural patterns whose
infinitely varied modes of operation govern the history of mankind and the
individual.7
The development of consciousness in
archetypal stages is a transpersonal fact, a dynamic self-revelation of the
psychic structure, which dominates the history of mankind and the individual.
Even deviations from the path of
evolution, their symbology and symptomatology, must be understood in relation to
the prior archetypal pattern.
In the first part of our exposition - The
Mythological Stages in the Evolution of Consciousness - the accent lies on the
wide distribution of the mythological material, and on demonstrating the
connections between the symbols and the various strata of conscious development.
Only against this background can we
understand the normal developments of the psyche, as well as the pathological
phenomena in which collective problems constantly appear as the basic problems
of human existence and so must be understood in that
light.
Besides uncovering the evolutionary stages
and their archetypal connections, our inquiry also has a therapeutic aim, which
is both individual and collective. The integration of personal psychic
phenomena with the corresponding transpersonal
sym
6. See infra, p. 53, note
16.
7. It is in this sense that
we use the terms “masculine” and “feminine” throughout the book, not as personal
sex-linked characteristics, but as symbolic expressions. When we say masculine or feminine
dominants obtrude themselves at certain stages, or in certain cultures or types
of person, this is a psychological statement which must not be reduced to
biological or sociological terms. The symbolism of “masculine” and
“feminine” is archetypal and therefore transpersonal; in the various cultures
concerned, it is erroneously projected upon persons as though they carried its
qualities. In reality every
individual is a psychological hybrid. Even sexual symbolism cannot be derived
from the person, because it is prior to the person. Conversely, it is one of the
complications of individual psychology that in all cultures the integrity of the
personality is violated when it is identified with either the masculine or the
feminine side of the symbolic principle of
opposites.
xxii
bols is of paramount importance for the
further development of consciousness and for the synthesis of the
personality.8
The rediscovery of the human and cultural
strata from which these symbols derive is in the original sense of the word
“bildend” – “informing”. Consciousness thus acquires images
(Bilder) and education (Bildung), widens its horizon, and charges
itself with contents which constellate a. new psychic potential. New problems appear, but also new
solutions. As the purely personal
data enter into association with the transpersonal, and the collective human
aspect is rediscovered and begins to come alive, new insights, new possibilities
of life, add themselves to the narrowly personalistic and rigid personality of
the sick-souled modem man.
Our aim is not confined to pointing out the
correct relation of the ego to the unconscious, and of the personal to the
transpersonal. We have also to
realize that the false, personalistic interpretation of everything psychic is
the expression of an unconscious law which has everywhere constrained modern man
to misinterpret his true role and significance. Only when we have made it clear to what
degree the reduction of the transpersonal to the personal springs from a
tendency which once had a very deep meaning, but which the crisis of modern
consciousness has rendered wholly meaningless and nonsensical, will our task be
fulfilled. Only when we have
recognized how the personal develops out of the transpersonal, detaches itself
from it but, despite the crucial role of ego consciousness, always remains
rooted in it, can we restore to the transpersonal factors their original weight
and meaning, lacking which a healthy collective and individual life is
impossible.
This brings us to a psychological phenomenon
which will be fully discussed in Part II, under the “law of secondary
personalization.” This maintains
that contents which are primarily transpersonal and originally appeared as such
are, in the course of de
8. Here we would only
emphasize the material content of the symbols. The healing and “whole-making” effect of
the emotional components of the collective unconscious is discussed in Part
II.
xxiii
velopment, taken to be personal. The secondary personalization of primary
transpersonal contents is in a certain sense an evolutionary necessity, but it
constellates dangers which for modern man are altogether excessive. It is necessary for the structure of
personality that contents originally taking the form of transpersonal deities
should finally come to be experienced as contents of the human psyche. But this process ceases to be a danger to
psychic health only when the psyche is itself regarded suprapersonally, as a
numinous world of transpersonal happenings. If, on the other hand, transpersonal
contents are reduced to the data of a purely personalistic psychology, the
result is not only an appalling impoverishment of individual life - that might
remain merely a private concern - but also a congestion of the collective
unconscious which has disastrous consequences for humanity at
large.
Psychology, having penetrated to the
collective layer in its investigation of the lower levels of the individual
psyche, is faced with the task of evolving a collective and cultural therapy
adequate to cope with the mass phenomena that are now devastating mankind. One of the most important objectives of
any depth psychology in the future is its application to the collective. It has to correct and prevent the
dislocation of collective life, of the group, by applying its specific points of
view.9
The relation of the ego to the unconscious
and of the personal to the transpersonal decides the fate not only of the
individual, but of humanity. The
theater of this encounter is the human mind. In the present work, a substantial part
of mythology is seen as the unconscious self-delineation of the growth of
consciousness in man. The dialectic
between consciousness and the unconscious, its transformation, its
self-liberation, and the birth of human personality from this dialectic form the
theme of Part I.
9. Cf. my Depth Psychology and a New Ethic.