Jung taught that the psyche consists of various systems including the personal unconscious with its complexes and a collective unconscious with its archetypes. Jung’s theory of a personal unconscious is quite similar to Freuds creation of a region containing a person’s repressed, forgotten or ignored experiences. However, Jung considered the personal unconscious to be a “more or less superficial layer of the unconscious.” Within the personal unconscious are what he called “feeling-toned complexes.” He said that “they constitute the personal and private side of psychic life.”³ These are feelings and perceptions organized around significant persons or events in the person’s life.

Jung believed that there was a deeper and more significant layer of the unconscious, which he called the collective unconscious, with what he identified asarchetypes, which he believed were innate, unconscious, and generally universal. Jung’s collective unconscious has been described as a “storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from man’s ancestral past, a past that includes not only the racial history of man as a separate species but his pre-human or animal ancestry as well.”⁴ Therefore, Jung’s theory incorporates Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as ancient mythology. Jung taught that this collective unconscious is shared by all people and is therefore universal. However, since it is unconscious, not all people are able to tap into it. Jung saw the collective unconscious as the foundational structure of personality on which the personal unconscious and the ego are built. Because he believed that the foundations of personality are ancestral and universal, he studied religions, mythology, rituals, symbols, dreams and visions.

He says:

“All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche, and all claim supreme authority for themselves. What is true of primitive lore is true in even higher degree of the ruling world religions. They contain a revealed knowledge that was originally hidden, and they set forth the secrets of the soul in glorious images^.5

I get this type of question more often than not from clients…and it’s posed in a few different ways. I too have asked myself from time to time “what the hell is going on with me?!”

But the gist of the feeling (or question) is something like this…  “I’ve lost interest in people, friends, work or family”, a gnawing feeling of dread and/or anxiety… the loss of curiosity for studying, or spiritual growth… and sometimes the total bottoming out of energy which often gets labeled “depression”.

It’s hard for me to communicate or deliver the fundamental question to clients because we are so “in it” (in the experience of it) that we miss a crucial stage.

In my world, there are two categories of complaints we as humans express.

There are the symptoms of a situation or issue (which has the most acute form of attention), and then there are root issues… which would be the deeper question or “cause” for the complaint.

”Why am I here?”

“What’s the meaning of life?”

“What am I suppose to be doing with myself?”

“Why am I so unhappy?”

Emotional Investment

At our core we are all emotional beings. Virtually every decision, reaction and behavior comes, on some level, from an emotional need or desire. While we love to see ourselves as essentially logical, rational, pragmatic creatures, the truth is, often we’re not. For the most part, we are overwhelmingly emotional beings.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you have a finite amount of emotional currency to spend each week (just like the wages you earn from work) and that you need to invest those dollars wisely to ensure the best possible return. Of course, we could argue back and forth about the notion of having a finite amount of emotional dollars to spend each day or week, but I think we can safely say that our emotional bank account is not some bottomless pit. It can run out from time to time. And for many people it does – sometimes for months or years at a time. I think we all know people who have invested their emotional dollars poorly and have suffered the consequences of living on or below the emotional poverty line.

What happens with most emotional investments is this little issue called “life”. We make the investment, expect a return, and then watch as life changes the rules. A double blow if the investment fails to return. What we need to explore is balance, common sense, and a little less attachment (all your eggs in one basket). By simply remembering you are not a bottomless pit of energy, you will begin to question what (or who) you invest your emotions in and hopefully avoid the huge disappointments that happen when your expectations are dashed