Mythmaking Enterprise You\'re Unconsciously Doing

Mythmaking Enterprise

You're unconsciously doing this because of..." This phrase became more and more common in everyday speech. The Freudian idea that persons often act as the result of motivations that they are not aware or 'conscious' of, located deep in their childhood or even have their roots in recent events that are simply too painful to acknowledge, has become accepted into American popular culture. However, the Jungian idea of the collective unconscious is slightly different than Freud's division of the individual's psyche into the superego, ego, and primitive id. Karl Jung acknowledged that every person had a personal unconscious of forgotten memories and traumas, but he also believed that all humans shared a collective unconscious of archetypes, myths, and communally shared ideas.

Unlike the personal ideas of the area of the unconscious that are specific to the individual, the idea of the collective unconscious suggests that the human community shares certain specific, particular concepts or stories known as myths. Although these ideas not articulated upon the surface, they are made evident in the myths and stories produced by the community. Jung might note that Freud's chose a myth to express the idea of the Oedipus complex, or the hostility of child-parent relations between the child and the parent of the same sex. Rather than a tale of the Greek classical belief in the unavoidability of fate, as the surface meaning of the Oedipus story might seem to express, the tale becomes an expression of the entire human community.

But is the collective unconscious really shared by all persons, or do different communities have specific, personal concerns, generated by real historical pressures from the outside that produce the collective unconscious, much in the same way that similar childhood traumas may produce a similar set of associations within different personal unconsciousness? A contrary way to read the myth might be that the ancient Greeks saw filial loyalty and piety as the most important value or expression of their particular community, and the idea of unknowingly transgressing this norm was an issue of anxiety for the community. Thus, this idea is expressed in the Oedipus myth. This interpretation stresses the more specific, collective concerns of the Greeks, rather than human being's more general concern of the son's assuming the role of his father.

Do myths reflect the concerns specific to a community, and thus reflect unconscious but real elements of human life? Or is there a shared, primitive concern that extends beyond any one cultural context, whether it is classical Athens or today? The strict Jungian conception suggests that the collective unconsciousness is the same, and all myths share similar archetypes or basic structures and characters within the collective unconsciousness. A better way of adjusting Jung's ideas to what is known about anthropology, and the transmission of stories to different communities, might suggest that different communities exhibit kinds of the collective unconsciousness.

Consider one of the oldest myth of origins, that of Gilgamesh. Jung might state that the oldest myth is a kind of primordial reflection of all of the earliest human impulses, fears, and ideas and that this is why there are so many flood myths in all cultures. However, the Gilgamesh myth is actually based upon that of a real Mesopotamian king. When it was first written, it may have been used as a tribute to this king, as an expression of his near superhuman greatness in the common memory of his people, who saw this man as an ideal king, in contrast perhaps to the more fallible leadership of the day. (Past leaders often look better than current leaders; one might suggest is a shared trope in many collective unconsciousness-based myths!) The tale contains a flood, and a great warrior, like many myths of origins in the Jungian conception of the collective unconsciousness.

However, the Gilgamesh myth is not simply about the flood. It also reflects specific values of understanding the impermanence of society and the capricious nature of the gods. As Gilgamesh learns to become a better man and a better leader, specific community values are expressed that may have been the concerns of Mesopotamian society, not simply the human consciousness, such as the need for a strong king and the capricious nature of a world where natural disasters and foreign invasions were common. The continued resonance of the Gilgamesh myth could suggest that the myth has a common, human resonance that transcends its specific and original concerns. But rather than demonstrating the evidence of the collective mythmaking unconscious, it might simply demonstrate the historical need for leadership at times of crisis, and frustrations with common natural disasters. This myth than became reinterpreted in other communities.

There are many stories of floods that punish the wickedness of humankind in a variety of Near Eastern cultures, and their commonness of location suggests that these early myths were disseminated by storytelling, or perhaps of a shared memory of a real, natural event. This idea that the flood myth was spread to a variety of neighboring cultures through storytelling and travel, not because of some shared collective unconscious must not be discounted. What may seem to be the collective unconscious may be simple 'learning' like the spread of a common language or set of skills. But what may be a genuine, shared human impulse like a collective unconsciousness is the impulse to explain, to tell stories, and to use the mythology of others. Although myths may have their roots in specific historical events, concerns, and communal contexts, the durability of such myths and their ability to affect the other myths of neighboring communities gives the stories an additional resonance that affects, however 'unconsciously,' the way persons who hear such myths see the world. But the variety of interpretations of this event provides a kind of template of the different community concerns, and the fact that so many communities made creative use of this myth, even past Near Eastern communities that affected our own culture today, means that the idea of a punishing natural event still has resonance within the unconscious story-making persons of the contemporary world -- not that a flood is part of a collective unconsciousness.