#83 Joseph Lee on Jung and Archetypes

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association.</span> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Can archetypes be modeled, analyzed, and applied in support of national security? During this episode, Joseph Lee discusses Carl Jung, collective consciousness, and archetypes. Our wide ranging discussion covers a comparison between Jung and Freud, Joseph Campbell’s work on myth and the hero’s journey, the Marvel universe as a modern day collection of stories about gods, the power of rituals, and archetype emergence.</span></p> <p>Here is the story Joseph shared towards the end of the discussion: </p> <p style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "text-decoration: underline;">Max Zeller’s dream</span>. A psychoanalyst living in California, Zeller had become troubled by his work after World War II, for he worked with relatively few individuals while the world remained in turmoil. So he went to Europe to meet with Jung and had this dream:</p> <blockquote> <p style="font-weight: 400;"><em>“A temple of vast dimensions was in the process of being built. As far </em><em>as I could see—ahead, behind, right and left—there were incredible </em><em>numbers of people building on gigantic pillars. I, too, was building on</em> <em>a pillar. The whole building process was in its very first beginnings, but </em><em>the foundation was already there, the rest of the building was starting </em><em>to go up, and I and many others were working on it.</em></p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Jung said, ‘Ja, you know, that is the temple we all build on. We don’t know the people because, believe me, they build in India and China and in Russia and all over the world…You know how long it will take until it is built?’ And when Max Zeller asked how long, Jung said, ‘About six hundred