Interesting post, on a perennially fascinating topic. The angle of comparing it with takes on Reddit added flavor, although the results are not surprising - the ability of those folks to think in nuanced ways about anything that touches on their complexes is extremely limited.
And one minor note - Freud did talk about what Jung ended up calling the collective unconscious, though he didn't explore it at all. He called images that couldn't be labeled repressed "phylogenetic traces" - but considered them worthless fantasies and escapes from reality.
Finally though, the real rub about the idea is: what reason beyond it's relatively reasonably-soundedness does one have for considering it? I mean there's tons of ideas that sound reasonable that ended up being complete bullshit. So for every example you could give of an initially out-there sounding theory that ended up being proved true, there are about a million that have been discredited (the aquatic ape theory is my personal favorite - someday that's going to proven true, gosh-darn-it).
And the evidentiary reasons why Jung said he believed revolves around episodes that are quite contested. So is it interesting? Yes. Is it true? I have never seen a particularly compelling or solid examination of this.
P.S. There is actually a trickle of interesting work being done on hive mind or "collective consciousness" in humans. This older one - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=12066871446597425934&hl - has received the most attention and is perhaps one of the more interesting reviews.
Thank you for an absolutely fascinating response. I think your summary of it as an interesting hypothesis lacking rigorous proof is spot on. It's a good working hypothesis but it's very far from a given.
And as for the Freudian note that is very interesting I did not know he talked about these phylogenetic traces that sounds like something very worthy of exploring. I think looking at what's on the table there was something that they were both seeing that exceeded their model of the mind. The collective unconscious was Jung's hypothesis but still unproven and as far as I know there's been no advance on it since depth psychology has very much left the mainstream. Of course I could be ignorant of a more recent hypothesis and I hope I am but yeah I think the attempts they made were to capture what some would call an known unknown (which is what I guess all hypothesizing sets out to do).
And finally this bit about the hive mind is fascinating! I'm very curious to see how these researchers have defined and explored it thanks for the tip off.
Thank you for the wonderful article! Now I can't help but wonder how one might begin to provide evidence for or prove Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.
Interesting post, on a perennially fascinating topic. The angle of comparing it with takes on Reddit added flavor, although the results are not surprising - the ability of those folks to think in nuanced ways about anything that touches on their complexes is extremely limited.
And one minor note - Freud did talk about what Jung ended up calling the collective unconscious, though he didn't explore it at all. He called images that couldn't be labeled repressed "phylogenetic traces" - but considered them worthless fantasies and escapes from reality.
Finally though, the real rub about the idea is: what reason beyond it's relatively reasonably-soundedness does one have for considering it? I mean there's tons of ideas that sound reasonable that ended up being complete bullshit. So for every example you could give of an initially out-there sounding theory that ended up being proved true, there are about a million that have been discredited (the aquatic ape theory is my personal favorite - someday that's going to proven true, gosh-darn-it).
And the evidentiary reasons why Jung said he believed revolves around episodes that are quite contested. So is it interesting? Yes. Is it true? I have never seen a particularly compelling or solid examination of this.
P.S. There is actually a trickle of interesting work being done on hive mind or "collective consciousness" in humans. This older one - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=12066871446597425934&hl - has received the most attention and is perhaps one of the more interesting reviews.
Thank you for an absolutely fascinating response. I think your summary of it as an interesting hypothesis lacking rigorous proof is spot on. It's a good working hypothesis but it's very far from a given.
And as for the Freudian note that is very interesting I did not know he talked about these phylogenetic traces that sounds like something very worthy of exploring. I think looking at what's on the table there was something that they were both seeing that exceeded their model of the mind. The collective unconscious was Jung's hypothesis but still unproven and as far as I know there's been no advance on it since depth psychology has very much left the mainstream. Of course I could be ignorant of a more recent hypothesis and I hope I am but yeah I think the attempts they made were to capture what some would call an known unknown (which is what I guess all hypothesizing sets out to do).
And finally this bit about the hive mind is fascinating! I'm very curious to see how these researchers have defined and explored it thanks for the tip off.
Thank you for the wonderful article! Now I can't help but wonder how one might begin to provide evidence for or prove Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.
How do you think the collective unconscious relates to the 8 types?