Carl Jung first introduced his ideas about the collective unconscious in the early part of the twentieth century. Since then, terms have been commonplace: collective unconscious, archetype, shadow, and symbol. We think we know what they mean, and we use them in a variety of contexts, from science to spirituality to art. But they’ve shifted. When I went back through and looked at works of Jung that I had read decades earlier, they were not the same as what I remembered. My memories of Jung’s ideas are instead their children, nourished by my own thoughts and the works of others: Joseph Campbell, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gloria Anzaldúa, and many more. For me, his ideas were also a bridge to understanding the power and wisdom behind non-Western philosophies and ways of knowing.
Jung was a Westerner, but nonwestern communities shaped his way of thinking about spirituality. He had experience with the religion of his birth, Christianity, but he went deliberately beyond it to see how other peoples in other places experienced the unconscious. Was it the same with all peoples? Over the years, Jung traveled all over Africa, to India, and to the United States. He spoke with people from all those places–for example, the Elgonyi in Uganda, and the First Nations Pueblo people in New Mexico. He did view it through a colonizer’s lens, and he never overcame the deep racism of mistaking nonwestern peoples as “primitive.” All the same, he gained a depth of knowledge of the human psyche, and this knowledge now belongs to everybody.
As he studied indigenous peoples, so now, indigenous people are studying him and using his work. Here, for example, is an ongoing research study that builds off his work, co-designed with and benefiting indigenous people in Australia: Recasting Jung Through an Indigenist Approach to Deepen Shared Knowledges of Well-being and Healing on Australian Soils: Protocol for a Qualitative Landscape Research Study. I found it online while searching for modern-day research involving Jung, so I don’t know anything about it besides what’s on the website.
The background of the study is that “The colonization of Australia is responsible for complex layers of trauma for the First Nations peoples of the continent. First Nations Australians’ well-being is irrevocably tied to the well-being of the land.”
(No kidding! Actually, everyone’s well-being is irrevocably tied to the well-being of the planet. Western science has only recently noticed.)
The study is a “landscape-based approach to collaborative research” and is “tied to First Nations Australians’ worldviews of landscape.” The research team comprises two First Nations and three non-First Nations researchers, and care has been taken to ensure that First Nations peoples have control over the research collection, cultural safety, and ownership of the results.
Jung’s theories inform the study but they are also challenged, and the overall approach is Indigenist. “The Jungian framework is used for developing connections and research concepts between First Nations and non-First Nations Australians through Jung’s understanding of the importance of meaning-making, spirituality, storytelling, and symbolism to human psychological well-being.” My takeaway is that it provides for a culturally appropriate common frame of reference.
Ultimately, the aims of the project are “to deepen shared knowledges of well-being and healing on Australian soils,” “to deepen the theory underpinning the project,” to build “meaningful and reciprocal connections with First Nations Australians,” and to use those connections to collaboratively develop future research. I’m intrigued and hopeful that the research will fulfill its goals.
I’m also looking forward to seeing new theory being developed. History keeps moving, and so must we.
Kristin Ann King 