#invidual

How Animal Crossing can improve your mental state

header @maigo.sirose on instagram Some of you might know Animal Crossing by now since the hype around the newest release of the game left nobody unfamiliar with the franchise. Yet many players who actually play Animal Crossing might not know what the original purpose and idea behind this cute time-killing game is. Despite many people who played that game ever since the first game came out and…

Individuation process as per Carl Jung is the process of becoming one’s self, gaining individuality, which can mean our own uniqueness which is incomparable and makes me a single, homogeneous being.

The more I realise the self, the more will I be independent and embrace my inner self. My inner self is a combination of diving into my conscious and unconscious mind. So, individuation process is essential for a healthy living personality since it helps in understanding our own psyche.

Psyche is a combination of ‘conscious realm’ & ‘unconscious realm’, where ‘ego’ is a part of former and ‘personal & collective unconscious’ are a part of the latter respectively.

Source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjgEOLocrus

Personal Unconsciousness consists of ‘the repressed/ suppressed elements from one’s life’, based on individual’s personal experiences of life. The personal conscious includes the individual's spirit as well as his or her spirituality, orientation to the outer world (optimism vs. pessimism, introversion vs. extraversion), beliefs and behaviors. Jung's concept of the personal unconscious includes the thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences, and emotions that are not permitted by the ego are maintained in the unconscious. These may range from experiences to traumatic events or thoughts. For example our dreams, fantasies, or our artistic expressions such as visual art, poetry, or music we create.

Collective Unconscious :  Collective unconscious includes the archetypes and instincts. If I look back at the history of my existence till 16 generations, then there are 65,536 people existed for me to exist today. So, in a way I have inherited collective unconcious from thise 65k people. The fears one inherits from the earliest human ancestors and comes out by default when they encounter a thing or situation similar to that in real life at the moment. The intuition/instincts that something is about to happen are a part of it. For example when we see some wild animals, we are fearful or when we have some kind of intuition or sixth sense of something bad to happen while entering into a situation.

“Archetypes are images and themes which have universal meanings across cultures which may show up in dreams, literature, art or religion.” (Jung, 1947)

Archetypes provide a structure to the parts of our psyche and psyche functions optimally when the parts of psyche are balanced and are not inflated or deflated. Inflated parts are which suffer from over expression. Deflated parts are which under expressed or suppressed. 

Now if look at balancing of the parts of psyche, then there is a need to confront our unconscious to be able to practice individuation process. How do we do so? 

By analysing and recording the dreams of ourselves, we can reach at the level of converting unciouscious into consciousness but that's like a continuous long process. For analysing the dreams, most important is to understand the most important archetypes (as described by Jung). 

The Persona : The persona is like a mask we wear through which we present ourselves to the world. This is the role a person plays, the way he present himself the world which can be different from who we really are. for example : a father, a mother, an actor, an engineer or any tag we carry with us when we are interacting with outside world. Personas are very strong at the following places : Police stations, Hospitals, Court rooms, Schools (Indian context) and even Indian mothers who are sacrificing a lot for their families do carry very strong personas of a mother at times.  

Animus/ Anima :  The “anima/animus” consists of the unconscious feminine side in males and the masculine tendencies in women. Each sex carries the attitudes and behavior of the other by virtue of living together for centuries. The psyche of a woman contains masculine behaviours or tensdencies (the animus archetype), and the psyche of a man contains feminine tendencies (the anima archetype). So it is like a mirror of our opposite biological sex.

The Shadow : Shadow For example : when my father tries to complete his aspirations of becoming an IPS/IAS officer on me as a daughter and asks me to opt for this profession. Or if my mother asks me not to behave in a particular manner, it is their shadow they are imposing on me. So, I can say that Shadow is the part of personality which is suppressed because of the fear of punishment or some other reasons (like fitting in a society). 

The Self : the self is the real me which provides me the sense of uniqueness and unity as an individual. As per Jung, the ultimate goal of every individual is to achieve a state of self-actualisation, which comes with understanding the archetype ‘the self’. 

My Reflections : 

I completely agree with the quote in Carl Jung’s book, ‘Man & his symbols’ : 

“A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one.”