Understanding Racial Hatred in Carl Jung's Book, The Personal and Collective Unconscious

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Our lives are dictated by events that occurred before we were even born. How else can we explain the racial hatred thrown about in America? It is not something we are born with and it does not occur unless someone is taught the behavior. More often than not we find ourselves questioning events and what caused them to occur instead of digging deeper and asking why they occurred.

According to Carl Jung in his book “The Personal and Collective Unconscious” people programmed with certain instincts. He either believes that we are programmed like birds to instinctually know or feel drawn to certain things or that throughout the generations we have been taught specific things over and over again that we now view them as instincts. Jung asks, “Could the longing for a god be a passion welling up from our darkest, instinctual nature, a passion unswayed by any by any outside influences, deeper and stronger perhaps than the love for a human person?”(496) I think that Jung is saying that people exude certain qualities based on the instincts they constantly try to suppress. Such as the woman’s story he mentioned in the book; she was having dreams about a divine father-lover that brought her comfort and a sense of peace. Yet she had no idea why she was dreaming about a divine being since she did not believe in any god. So Jung deduced that it was her unconscious speaking to her through her dream trying to get her to recognize that there was a god. If this happened to everyone then why do so many people still believe there is no such thing as a god?

Have you ever questioned what made the Nazi’s try to completely wipe out all of the Jews? The obvious answer would be Hitler made them, but when we consider free will we cannot accept this statem...

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...plains what Jung meant by the collective unconscious it makes sense. It is our ancestors, culture, and previous experiences that make up our schemas, and if one of the “important” values is suppressed the unconscious tries to bring it out through our dreams.

There are many reasons why certain events occur. Whether it is our ancestors, culture, or underlying factor’s that bring about the event. Therefore, in order to break the cycle that has come about from these factors we must recognize what they are and then seek to control them. This is the only way we will be able to break the cycle or history repeating itself. Otherwise we may be like the Grecian and Roman Empire’s that fell because they were unable to change their ways.

Works Cited

Lindenfeld, David. "Jungian Archetypes And The Discourse Of History." Rethinking History 13.2 (2009): 217-234. Print.

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