Projections and archetypesDr. von Franz a post-jungian psychologist explains the reality mix-up in this way:
"What we cannot any longer see is that such processes [pre-conscious processes that take place in a human being before awareness occurs] also should mirror the origin of our outer cosmic world. This is because the old identity [between our unconscious psyche and the outer world] has been disturbed and other new projections have been produced - projections which seem to us to represent ”objective” scientific models of the outer world. These new models have pushed away the old ones and thus we see the old ones as projections. If I may use a drawing, the process of projections is very much like this: |
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A, the human being or the ego in the centre of his field of consciousness, looks at an object, he being the subject. When there is an original projection it means that an archetype has been constellated in the unconscious, B. The subject stares at the object, C, and can make no sense of it, but wonders what the Hell it is!
Then he gets an idea and conceives of the object as being so and so, but he is not aware of the fact that the archetype, B, has been constellated in his unconscious and has conveyed to him the model of the idea from which he recognizes C; he sees only that the object coincides with his idea. This is what constitues the cognition process as a whole.
Now, this mode of apperception is all right as long as it works. If, for instance, I say that Mr. X seems to me to be a genius and he continually behaves as if he were and never does anything to contradict my opinion, then nobody will ever convince me that he is not a genius. But if one day he behaves like a complete idiot (that is the factor of the disturbance), then I will say: 'Now why, and how, did I ever get the idea that this man was a genius?'. But only when there is a disturbance, a not coinciding, do I begin to realise that something has happened which must have disturbed my ideas. This is the case which Jung mentions: the projection does not fit anymore.
For instance, I want to be convinced that an object is like this or that, but my ideas does not fit, there are a lot of factors which, as one says in modern science, do not converge, there is no convergence of result. In the Hubble idea of the expanding universe the other results of atomic investigation do not coincide and you have no convergence of results, you begin to wonder if this is not just a speculative idea, or, in our language, a projection of Hubble’s. But as long as the results seem to converge in the same direction, as long as the object seems really to behave in accordance with my mental model, I have no reason to withdraw the projection. I will be naively convinced that I know the quality of the object itself.
So one reason for withdrawing a projection is that the idea of the object does not fit the facts, that something limps somewhere and does not coincide with the facts.
The other very frequent possibility is that another archetype constellates (D): a second archetype pushes itself forward in the unconscious and puts another model, or idea, into the subject's mind, and another projection onto the object. The subject then jumps to this new idea claiming that this is the truth and the former idea was an error, an illusion - a projection. Looking back, one calls it a projection, but as long as one is caught in it, as long as the archetype is validly constellated in one's unconscious and conscious, one will never call it a projection but will consider it to be true cognition. The subject then feels that he is talking about true facts as honestly as he can.
This shifting of archetypes naturally generally coincides with outer changes in conditions so that certain theories do not fit them any longer. As long as we feel subjectively that we are not talking about projections but about the true quality of the object - a special aspect of our western mentality - then we call it the scientific truth.” [Segal, 1998, p.242]
So from the above passage, we see that an archetype are used as long:
(1) ...there are no disturbances (2) ...the person or group of persons do not see the disturbances (3) ...the person or group of persons see the disturbances but repress them (which increases tension)
If a scientific paradigm is thought of as a constellation of archetypes, then new ideas and theories within the paradigm are either modifications of existing archetypes or new archetypes that can be placed in a meaningfull relation to the existing ones, as shown on figure 4. |
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Figure 4: The ideas and concepts that constitute a scientific paradigm, can be thought of as a constellation of archetypes.
However, the disturbances that a given paradigm represses will not only cause “tensions”, they will also serve as a catalysator for a new paradigm, see figure 5.
In the process of replacement, both paradigms exist at the same time, which makes it impossible for a scientist in one paradigm to communicate with a scientist in the other. An example of this is the discussion between Einstein and Bohr, where Einstein did not accept the implications of the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’. Right untill his death in 1955 Einstein maintained his position. Niels Bohr are generally accepted to be the winner of the discussion since experiments has turned out to be consistent with his interpretation. But in a way they were both right, using Dr. von Franz figure, Bohr was looking at the object using archetype D (paradigm D) and Einstein was using archetype B (paradigm B). They experienced reality in two different, incompatible, ways - they lived in two different realities!
Assuming that that is the correct way to interpret it (and if I remember correctly, I think Thomas Kuhn was a spokesman for a similar idea [Kuhn, 1962]) it means that experiments could be performed that supported Einsteins view, they just had to be performed by observers using paradigm B as the "veil" they use as reality perception. |
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Figure 5: When a new paradigm is replacing an old one, there is a period where they both exist at the same time. This corresponds to two different realities existing at the same time. |
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