From emotionally raw images to cultural images

Carta S.

2025-01-01

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Abstract

In the first volume, the role of the Ego had been relativized in favor of the Self. This chapter is dedicated to clarifying that the Ego is actually the teleological goal of the Self, as it is through the Ego that the Self’s complexes may become reintegrated, not through consciousness. As discussed throughout vol. 1, it is in the individual mind – in the mind of the infant and the child – that representations (“patterns”) constrained by primary affects and sensory-motor apparatus emerge. They are the first building blocks for the bottom-up process of further development of much more complex, abstract (spiritual), differentiated and numerous “archetypal” images. Considering that, like archetypes, most of cultural contents are also unconscious, this chapter tries to answer to the question: What is the difference between shared values and cultural norms on one side and pure archetypal contents on the other? Within this perspective, the role of cultural complexes in comparison with archetypes is discussed, and a special elaboration is dedicated to language as the most refined specific feature of the co-evolutionary perspective.