Unconscious ties that bind – attending to complexes in the classroom: part 1

ABSTRACT

Recognized by few in theory and practice, unconscious dynamics affect all aspects of education, including teaching and learning, as well as assessment, coding, and teacher preparation. Jung proposed that the collective unconscious is akin to a very deep psychosocial well from which individuals, families, and cultures across time and place draw in order to organize and make meaning of life. If we accept this claim, then the ways we understand and attend to interpersonal dynamics within the classroom radically change. Here, in two conjoining parts, a case is made for the vital importance of acknowledging and working with the unconscious, particularly the cultural layer (Part 1) and the familial layer (Part 2) of the psyche. Attention in Part 1 is given to the social and political turn in Jungian psychology and its importance to the dramatically changing ethnocultural character of Canada’s classrooms (likewise with many countries today). The cultural unconscious, cultural complexes, scapegoating, and the critical intersection between groups and individuals are examined in relation to education.

KEYWORDS:

• Animated paradigm
• education
• globalization
• cultural unconscious
• cultural complexes
• scapegoating

This article is related to:

Unconscious ties that bind – attending to complexes in the classroom: part 2

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Alexandra L. Fidyk, PdD, poet, philosopher, and psychotherapist, serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Her work draws upon analytical psychology, Buddhist thought, process philosophy and poetic inquiry. She is past president (elect) of the Jungian Society of Scholarly Studies, and editor of a forthcoming collection of pedagogical essays, Jung in the Classroom (Routledge).

Notes

1. The feeling function, according to Jung, is a rational function, a type of consciousness that judges or evaluates the worth of a person or thing. It is not emotion or affect; rather, when it is differentiated, it is a kind of love or eros that includes ‘a deep empathy and closeness to the other and a certain distance … an understanding and a non-understanding, the latter consisting of a silent respect of the mystery of the other’s individuality’ (von Franz, cited in Fidyk, 2009b, p. 61).

2. The terms imaginal and archetypal are often used interchangeably. However, there are some slight differences. Imaginal connotes the place from which archetypes originate, though ‘place’ is not the precise term to describe the site of archetypal origination. Corbin (2000), one of the leading Western scholars on Islamic mysticism and the world of the imaginal, tells us, ‘The where, the place, is located in the soul. [ … ] One cannot say where the spiritual place is located. Rather than being situated, it situates, it is situating’ (p. 82). Both the conscious, and the unconscious are situated within the imaginal, as well as the archetypes which are encountered, attended, and acknowledged in post-/Jungian psychology as also situated within the imaginal. Note that ‘imaginal’ has also been used to characterize the paradigm which within this article has been named the animated paradigm.

3. Active imagination is a method of assimilating unconscious contents such as dreams, fantasies, and images through some form of self-expression. The aim is to give a voice to sides of the personality (particularly the shadow and anima/animus) that are typically not heard, thereby creating a line of communication between consciousness and the unconscious. Even when the drawing, painting, writing, sculpture, dance, and so on (the creation) is not interpreted, something happens between creator and creation that contributes to a transformation of consciousness.

4. The term ‘knowing field’ was coined by Dr. Albrecht Mahr in 1997 at the first international conference on Family Constellations in Germany. Family constellation is an event-oriented healing modality used to address transgenerational systemic entanglements. In family constellation work, representatives do not act out roles according to personality descriptions given by the client, as in psychodrama or role play. Instead, with a constellation set-up, the representatives move into and become part of the knowing field of the family and notably ‘take on the actual feelings and impulses of the real family members’ (Payne, 2006, p. 20).