LACK AND TRANSCENDENCE THEORY EXTRACT 2

 I have an analytical mind and often there are so many scattered ideas and disparate theoretical fragments all vying for attention that I find it difficult to organize. However, I'm hats not insisting that these thoughts are particularly profound! Recently a friend helped me draw connections from Lacan and the scopic drive to Jung and the collective unconscious. My frantic scrawl may be a bit ambiguous, but I'll try to clarify what he taught me:

          Jung outlines two levels of unconscious- the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Unconscious processes are not directly observable, but the products of the unconsciousness that cross the threshold of consciousness can be divided into two classes:
1. recognisable material, (of a personal origin) these are individual acquisitions or products of instinctive processes that make up the personality as a whole.
2. forgotten or repressed contents, which can come to the fore in a varying degree of intensity/ prominence at any time.
this makes up the PERSONAL UNCONSCIOUS, it is comprised of personal elements, and is therefore entirely relative. 
          The COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS however, is decribed by Jung as a 'lake' of archetypal images that cannot consciously be reached: "here resides contents of unknown origin that cannot be ascribed to individual acquisition, rather they are peculiar to mankind in general." The collective unconscious therefore has a history that has developed/ evolved over time “Our unconscious mind... is a storehouse of relics and memories of the past” (p.44) from which the whole of mankind partake. This is evidenced in the literary tropes and mythological motifs  consistently present in narratives across the world, such as 'The Original Sin', ''The Descent of Man', 'Katabasis' (Orpheus and Eurydice) and 'Nekyia'. In fact, the motif of Nekyia is found everywhere in antiquity and practically all over the world. “It expresses the psychological mechanism of introversion of the conscious mind into deeper layers of unconscious psyche.” (p.41)
           Universal lack could then stem from the 'lake', or rather the yearning to comprehend its magnitude despite never being able to abandon consciousness fully enough for this to happen. Wanting to examine 'triggers' that might hint at connections to the 'lake', Jung experimented with word association, but we can extend his findings out to include visual stimuli. Each trigger was said to bring about a moment of revelation, a kind of 'einfall' (a German word with no real English equivalent, which means a thing which falls into your head from nowhere). Resonating triggers would attest to a "complex, a conglomeration of psychic contents characterised by a peculiar or perhaps painful feeling-tone, something that is usually hidden from sight. It is as though a projectile struck through the thick layer of the persona into the dark layer." (p.53)
       So when an image punctures or wounds you, it is because the instinctive emotional reaction affects and invades you. Emotions Jung ascertained, were stronger than the ego-complex, they could only be controlled by suppression or severe force; hence "the energy/ intensity of the ego-complex which manifests itself in will power gradually decreases as you approach the darkness of the unconscious." (p.48) But then does this disregard the subjectivity of our object/ image choices? We do not all find affinity with the same 'triggers'.

All information gleaned from 'C.G. JUNG, ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY ITS THEORY AND PRACTICE' printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd. in 1968