Jung's Explanation of the Collective Unconscious
After his first visit in 1909, Jung returned to the United States periodically to deliver lectures, lead seminars, counsel individuals, and conduct anthropological research on the Southwestern Native American tribes. In this lecture delivered in 1936 to followers in New York, Jung explained his distinctive concept of the collective unconscious: The contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness and therefore have never been individually acquired but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. In contrast to the many Western thinkers who held that the human mind was at birth a blank slate, Jung believed that it was in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions.
After his first visit in 1909, Jung returned to the United States periodically to deliver lectures, lead seminars, counsel individuals, and conduct anthropological research on the Southwestern Native American tribes. In this lecture delivered in 1936 to followers in New York, Jung explained his distinctive concept of the collective unconscious: The contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness and therefore have never been individually acquired but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. In contrast to the many Western thinkers who held that the human mind was at birth a blank slate, Jung believed that it was in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions.