Maybe the Collective Unconscious Keeps Us Feeling Jung

My career as a journalist, writer, and community relations manager has brought me in contact with thousands of people. Going back to my school years, I've been close to hundreds of them. A few I still see, a few more I communicate with through social media, but for most I've lost contact. I remember some names and I remember some faces, and some have disappeared from my conscious mind. Nevertheless, all are still with me and make me who I am now.

Could our brains be hardwired to the brains of others, and even to all of humanity? I think so. Psychologist Carl Jung thought so. He called it the collective unconscious. He taught that a segment of the deepest unconscious mind is genetically inherited and not shaped by personal experience. The collective unconscious is common to all human beings, responsible for a number of deep-seated beliefs and instincts, such as spirituality, sexual behavior, and life and death instincts. I submit that the collective unconscious mind connects us to those we know and used to know. (See https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-collective-unconscious-2671571)

I believe we find God in our collective unconscious. That's where he abides in all of us, and so knows our thoughts and deeds. But that's a post for another day.

Today, I want to share a passage written by psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. She doesn't mention Jung here, but she seems to embrace the theory of collective unconscious. "Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you have been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally) -- all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate to yourself and others. Sometimes you have conversations with them in your head; sometimes they speak to you in your sleep."

I have lived a lot of years. I hope I carry with me a little piece of all those who mean so much to me. You too?