Curatorial Assignment on Your Networked Life: Collective Unconscious

This is the Curatorial Assignment on Your Networked Life for Theories of Media & Technology, DM-GY 6043-B.

C.G. Jung: Conscious - Personal Unconscious - Collective Unconscious

Sigmund Freud: Conscious - Sub-conscious - Unconscious

Resources

Collective unconscious wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious

Full text of "The Collective Unconscious and Its Archetypes": https://archive.org/stream/TheCollectiveUnconsciousAndItsArchetypes_100/ArchetypesAlongJung_djvu.txt

Discussion

Jung's theory of “collective unconsciousness” is an extension of Sigmund Freud “subconscious”. Jung argued that the behind the “subconscious” of each people there is a deeper, while all-connected “collective unconsciousness” [1]. For Freud, the conscious of each person is a glacier, a large amount of “self” is hidden under the sea level. But for Jung, the conscious of each person is an island, the giant proportion is not only hidden but also mutually networked to everyone. And inside the hidden area lies the “prototype” of all human being, functioning as the server.

Jung revealed a hidden psychological bond, which is also implies by physiological connection: We are human. That is the decentralized, P2P network interface we are born with.

It is intriguing to draw a parallel between the shift from Freud to Jung with Sherry Turkle's transition of idea. Originally, the individual spiritual is the major concern, while later a shift to collective network emerges. "... Instead of a quest for an idealized person, now there is the computer as a second self." [2] in 1984, "When I first called the computer a self... a person alone with a machine... this is no longer the case" in 1995, And in 2011, "computer connected us to each other...they keep us busy" [3] . Both of them started with individual sense of psychoanalytical and end up in networking.

References

1. Jung, Carl Gustav. "The concept of the collective unconscious." Collected works 9, no. 1 (1936): 42. Harvard.

2. Turkle, Sherry. The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Mit Press, 2005.

3. Turkle, Sherry. Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Hachette UK, 2017.