The Enormous Power of Toxic Collective Consciousness

The Enormous Power of Toxic Collective Consciousness

 

“Nations in a condition of collective misery behave like neurotic, or even psychotic individuals”  C.G. Jung CW18 Para 1330

An Institute Gone Insane 

A large invisible toxic bubble had descended from out of nowhere around the C.G. Jung Institute in Kusnacht. Everyone had gone insane. I felt like I was in a science fiction horror movie invasion of the body snatchers. I wasn’t sure who had been taken or who could I trust. An alien life form determined to extinguish rationality and intelligent dialogue about complex issues was taking over students one by one.    

I had returned to Switzerland to complete my training after taking a year off and had been elected as the President of the Student Council.  My years of experience in business and organizational development were seen as valuable to my friends and colleagues. I was deeply interested in how the demands of the soul and collective requirement for psychotherapists could co-exist in an increasingly regulated profession. 

Organizationally, the institute was going through a very difficult time in the early 2000s.  A conflict between the statutes founded the Institute in 1948 and a demand for change and transparency rose to a feverish pitch. The group elected to govern the institute felt their hands were tied by an organizational structure that couldn’t change. A group of analysts felt that their voices, cast with good intentions and openness, were being ignored and dismissed. Emotions were running high. People on both sides felt genuinely betrayed and hurt by accusations and callus words. Like children of warring parents, the student body had become embroiled in a fight that was not theirs to fight.

My friends who had hours and hours of analysis under their belts, which presumably had contributed to a modicum of awareness, were talking nonsense. Demonizing the members of the Institute’s ruling body as evil, Hitler-like, and ascribed to them motivations and intentions, that given the facts and the context, couldn’t be further from the truth.  

My experience at the Institute where I witnessed anger and emotions showed me the power of the group’s unconscious and its propensity to possess the awareness and rationality of good people. 

It is bigger than we are. 

We are all vulnerable to collective contagion.

The Power of Toxic Collective Consciousness

The evolving political spirit in the United States, and most recently, the violent events in the early days of January 2021, sent a shuddering recognition throughout the world and raised many questions.  

The world witnessed the power of the collective unconscious rage that was incited and unleashed in a group of people. It then spread through the collective like an uncontained wildfire.  

Who are all these people who believe the lies and the conspiracy theories? Who are these people who believed with all their hearts that storming the people’s house would resolve their frustrations?  

Many commenters and observers with perspective and grounding in the truth recognized and named this growing fire. They called out the insurrections and were aware of the danger that was growing from the lies of politicians.  

This is not a new phenomenon. 

Jung wrote about the same phenomenon in both world wars. It is archetypal and has understandable psychological foundations.

The psychological processes, which accompany the present war, above all the incredible brutalization of public opinion, the mutual slanderings, the unprecedented fury of destruction, the monstrous flood of lies, and man’s incapacity to call a halt to the bloody demon – are suited like nothing else to powerfully push in front of the eyes of thinking men the problem of the restlessly slumbering chaotic unconscious under the ordered world of consciousness. This war has pitilessly revealed to civilized man that he is still a barbarian . . . But the psychology of the individual corresponds to the psychology of the nation. What the nation does is done also by each individual, and so long as the individual does it, the nation also does it. Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation. (C.G Jung CW 7, para 4)

You might wonder how these cells purchase viagra in australia can help for determining the cause and present solutions. Nicotine, cheap sildenafil uk the substance in cigarette, contracts the vessels making healthy blood flow a quite complicated process. A number of online suppliers sildenafil españa http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482461379_add_file_1.pdf also offer free samples of erectile dysfunction medication. Some women viagra australia have extreme ache during the ovulation process when the ovaries float close to the fallopian tube is partially or completely closed. Jung wrote this 100 years ago about the first world war. His powerful observation is that collective events release the demons of the unconscious to a place where many individuals were possessed by numinous energy.  

Psychological Origins of Power 

This collective phenomena has deep psychological origins. The world has seen it before in this century as charismatic leaders are able to tap into the vulnerability of citizens.

In “A Clear and Present Danger”, a book of essays published by Chiron Publications, author Clarissa Pinkola Estes ties this archetypal phenomena to the fairy tale Bluebeard.  

She writes:
“We see Bluebeard , the charismatic killer and his vampiric tactics: to first seek a vulnerable populace; then purposely deceive  them by thrilling them with claims he can bring back their dreams; then using their svioursuized energy to attain malicious power over others”.   

She goes on to say, “this leader has no conscience, no reliable heart, faux words of compassion, no self accountability, and no sense of truth telling”. 

And we are susceptible to this phenomena when we are disappointed, shunned, hungry for honour, or want to be lifted from the humiliation of losing.   

Cries of xenophobia and ‘making our country great again’ tap into the unconscious fears, longings and hatred that lie buried in the group psyche and open a dangerous door for this demon to be let loose.   

Doing Our Work 

Jung’s message to us all is that the power of individual consciousness will affect the whole. Therefore, we must become aware of the dynamics of good and evil and be able to clearly identify where we are being swayed by the power of the crowd, and when we lose the ability to think for ourselves.    

Yet our work toward consciousness is a work against nature. The unconscious is against development and encourages neglect. It has the power to sweep our consciousness up and lull us into sleep. 

Using Pinokla Estes’ work on the fairy tale Bluebeard, we come to know that in order to stop the destructive intruder that seeks to dim the light of the psyche and consciousness, we must first name and acknowledge that we all have this energy in ourselves. To use the words of Pogo, “we have seen the enemy and he is us”. 

We must open the door of curiosity and ask the questions that will lead to an increase in our wisdom. But we cannot forget that the eruption of irrationality of the unconscious is only a thin veil away. We must remain ever vigilant.

 

Copyright Christina Becker
January 2021

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