THE
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
It is precisely the loss of connection with the past,
our uprootedness, which has given rise to the ‘discontents’ of civilisation and
to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical
promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our evolutionary
background has not yet caught up.
Are these words of
Carl Gustav Jung the nostalgic musings of an old man past his best or are they
an insightful comment on our age? We value the freedoms we have won, the
advances we have made and the solidarities we experience with others around the
planet. But do we pay attention to where we have come from? Do we write off our
ancestors as pre-scientific, as people who have nothing to teach us moderns?
Jung was the
renowned advocate of the unconscious in each of us and the collective
unconscious of all of us. In his long life as a psychiatrist, he studied every
avenue that might open up our knowledge of what is unconscious. He quickly
grasped that mental illness could often be cured by helping a person become
aware of what lay hidden below the surface of their lives.
There are
different ways in which we become aware or wake up. Lent is one of them. When
the scribe Ezra read the book of the Law to the people who had returned from
exile they were ‘all in tears.’ They woke up and realised they had abandoned
the ways of their ancestors and ended up as ‘discontents.’ It is no easy matter to probe our unconscious
and interpret our dreams, as Jung did. But we are given these forty days to
reflect on who we are and what we believe.
We can deflect our
frustration on to someone like Trump, who seems not to care about the history
of his own country or of others, some of which he hasn’t even heard of. We
cannot do much about him. History will judge him. But we can do something about
ourselves and our readings for the next forty days are like incoming drones
that we can either repel or welcome.
9 March 2025 Lent 1 C Dt
26:4-10
Rom 10:8-13 Lk4:1-13
