The Collective Problem: Death of Symbol & “Loss of Soul”

Artist: Jake Baddeley

"The structuring of our minds makes us experience existence in the dualistic form of the world of ‘outer’ objects, which we are able to organize, and of ‘inner’ impulses, which we find hard to master" (Whitmont, 1969, p. 29). This dualism reflects an essential problem in modernity: the erosion of symbolic perspective. When consciousness becomes confined to literalism, the bridge between the psyche and the collective collapses. Whitmont defines the symbolic perspective as rooted in the image, "the basic or original unit of mental functioning” (p. 28). A "true symbol," Jung explains, is “an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formulated in any ... better way (CW 15, para. 105)" (Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986, p. 144). 

This psychic formulation expresses what cannot yet be consciously known. Thus, "a symbol always presupposes that the chosen expression is the best possible description or formulation of a relatively unknown fact (CW 6, para. 814)" (Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986, p. 144). When symbolic capacity atrophies, life loses depth—what Jung called a “loss of soul." "Even in advanced civilizations, human consciousness has not yet achieved a reasonable degree of continuity" (Jung, 1964, p. 24), and the psyche may be suppressed “without one’s knowledge or consent and even against one’s intention" (p. 25). Whitmont attributes this to psychiatry’s fixation on pathology, which "bases the evaluation of normalcy upon the observation of disturbed psychology" (1969, p. 23). 

"To do so," he warns, "would be the equivalent of attempting to understand walking … as nothing but preventing falling" (p. 26). The essential relation between the loss of symbol and loss of soul, then, is that "symbols renew psychic life" (Whitmont, 1969, p. 27). To "renounce the prejudice that … its concept-based, abstract frame of reference is the totality of the psyche" (p. 28) is to reclaim the symbol as medicine.

Refernces

Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Aldus Books Limited.

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.

Whitmont, E. C. (1969). The Symbolic Quest. Princeton University Press.