Jungian Therapy, Jungian Analysis, New York

Collective

from Jung Lexicon by Daryl Sharp

Collective. Psychic contents that belong not to one individual but to a society, a people or the human race in general. (See also collective unconscious, individuation and persona.)

The conscious personality is a more or less arbitrary segment of the collective psyche. It consists in a sum of psychic factors that are felt to be personal [“The Persona as a Segment of the Collective Psyche,”CW 7, par. 244.]

Identification with the collective and voluntary segregation from it are alike synonymous with disease.[The Structure of the Unconscious,” Ibid, par. 485]

A collective quality adheres not only to particular psychic elements or contents but to whole psychological functions.

Thus the thinking function as a whole can have a collective quality, when it possesses general validity and accords with the laws of logic. Similarly, the feeling function as a whole can be collective, when it is identical with the general feeling and accords with general expectations, the general moral consciousness, etc. In the same way, sensation and intuition are collective when they are at the same time characteristic of a large group.[“Definitions,”CW 6, par. 692.]