The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

The Great Mother archetype appears across many cultures and mythologies. Christianity offers a primary example through the figure of the Virgin Mary. The Greek goddess Demeter is another example of this archetype. However, the Great Mother archetype is not restricted to human or humanlike forms. Many institutions and concepts have been described as motherly, including the earth, the nation, the sea, and the underworld. Jung says that anything associated with fertility or hollowness—such as a cornucopia, a garden, or even an oven—finds its roots in the Great Mother archetype. This breadth of representations—which can be either positive or negative—reinforces Jung’s claim about the dual nature and syzygy of all archetypes.

Therefore, the Great Mother can be a polarizing figure, aligned with either maternal care and fertility or retribution and seduction. Jung points to Mary as an example of this duality. She is represented in medieval Christian allegories as both the mother of Jesus and as the cross itself, which is a symbol of death and self-sacrifice. In these corresponding opposites, Mary is the bringer of both life and death.

A personal relationship with the mother archetype manifests in external relationships. Jung argues that an individual’s relationship with the mother within their personal unconscious and daily life has one of the greatest impacts on their psychological health. He writes: “I know from experience that a child is much more likely to develop normally than neurotically, and that in the great majority of cases definite causes of disturbances can be found in the parents, especially in the mother” (83). However, while his contemporaries who hold similar views point the finger of blame at actual mothers in the real world, Jung believes it is an individual’s relationship with the Great Mother archetype that extends outward into the physical world. He believes that the key to recovery is to embrace the archetype and dig into it rather than avoiding it.

Jung argues that disturbances in a child’s relationship with their mother can lead to a mother-complex. He says that the mother-complex emerges differently in boys and girls. In boys, he associates the mother-complex with sexual promiscuity and sexual orientation. Jung suggests that because the mother is the first feminine presence in a boy’s life, she has a profound impact in shaping his understanding of masculinity. Often, the mother’s impact on the psyche in a male child is so intricate that it is extremely difficult to untangle.

However, Jung proposes that the psychological relationship between a female child and her mother is more concrete. He highlights four negative results of the mother-complex in female children, each carrying different psychological consequences. In the first, the daughter may develop a “hypertrophy” of femininity, leading to an intense focus on childbirth. In this manifestation, she embeds her value and identity solely in her relationship with her own children. The second manifestation is an overdevelopment of eros, leading to sexual promiscuity and an obsession with sensation. In the third, the daughter clings to her own mother, demoting her own identity in favor of her mother’s influence. The fourth manifestation causes the daughter to develop a resistance to the maternal and distances herself from traditional feminine roles.

The previous chapter focused solely on the negative outcomes of the mother-complex, but Jung stresses that all archetypes and human connections to those archetypes exhibit a duality. While a mother-complex can have negative impacts on an individual, the manifestations of the complex can also present themselves in positive forms. For example, in the first manifestation in women, the overdevelopment of the maternal instinct is often highly regarded and viewed as a spiritual quality. Jung writes: “This is the mother-love which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends” (92).

Similarly, an overdeveloped eros—which is the second way that a mother-complex can manifest in girls—plays an important and necessary role in society. Jung argues that women who exhibit this trait can help heal men who have their own unresolved mother-complexes. The third manifestation—women who have a strong attachment to their mothers—also serves men since these women can project their own gifts onto men; Jung regards “emptiness” as an important feminine quality that benefits men. In the final manifestation, the women who reject traditional feminine roles will come closest to the experience of a man and will often have the most successful marriage of the four types.

For men, the Great Mother archetype represents an external force—something that is alien and outside of himself. For women, it is a representation of the self. The positive and negative outcomes of the mother-complex sheds light on the dual nature of archetypes. Jung argues that it is the syzygy of archetypes that inspires humanity to seek duality in themselves and in the cosmos, including the relationships between day/night, dark/light, and good/evil. There is even a corresponding relationship between the internal and external, as the psyche and the outside world impact one another. The dual nature of the Great Mother appears across mythologies and complexes, and “she assumes the attributes of wisdom as well as those of a witch” (102). While Western cultures often focus on separating these dualities in two parts, Eastern cultures place more emphasis on the convergence of the two.

Jung asserts that these dualities are important. He cites how modern philosophers seek to abolish the concepts of good and evil without understanding the impact these dualities play on the psyche. He references Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which introduces the concept of the superhuman or “Superman” after declaring that “God is dead.” Jung argues that a failure to incorporate the spiritual—that is, the collective unconscious—into the realm of the conscious is dangerous to the psyche and to the larger culture. By embracing dualities, humans can begin to experience individuation—the merging of dual forces.