By Dr. Y. Aditi
6 August 2021
Have you ever had one of those experiences where you said something to someone which completely took you by surprise followed by utter embarrassment? Have you ever behaved in a manner which caught you off guard and left you thinking ‘why did I do that’? Have you ever been in a discussion with someone where both of you not only failed to see eye to eye but were far removed from being objective, logical and purposive? If Carl Gustav Jung were your therapist, he would tell you something along the lines of ‘your so and so complexes were constellated during those situations and had assimilated you’.
Throughout the chapter on Review of Complex Theory and in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung refers to complex in many different ways. He calls it constellations, states of readiness, psychic factor, splinter psyches, split off psychic fragments, architect of dreams, emotionally toned contents and skeletons in the cupboard.
It was Jung’s famous Word Association experiment which led to his discovery of the complex. Every so often a stimulus word would trigger a complex in the individual taking the test and influence his response by provoking disturbed reactions, either in the form of delayed reaction or no response or a merely mechanical response or a rhyming word or a different response towards that particular stimulus word in the second run-through of the test. Upon accurate observations of these disturbed reactions, certain facts about the complexes could be uncovered. Jung (1972) described ‘the feeling-toned complex as an image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness…it has a powerful inner coherence, it has its own wholeness and, in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy, so that it is subject to the control of the conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness’. Apart from being an autonomic psychic entity, it also possesses energy which sometimes exceeds that of the ego consciousness. As a result, when a complex is activated or triggered or constellated, there can be lowering of consciousness, narrowing of vision, disruption of memory, interference of intentions of the will, automatic act, slips of tongue, slips in writing and even momentary spells of compulsive thinking and acting.
It is precisely such effects of the complexes which had conceived the notion of possession during the middle ages. The naïve and primitive people regarded the complex as beings in their own right, especially one with demonic qualities. Interestingly, Jung’s opinion was no different, of course he did not consider them as demons, but he was very much certain of their capacity to behave like independent beings in our psyche – they can appear and disappear according to their own whims and fancies and can compel us to think or feel or act in a certain way which is contradictory to our conscious intentions.
The inquisitive side of you must be eager to know how the complexes come into being. When a person experiences a deluge of emotions which incapacitate him to think or act rationally or in ways which his ego consciousness is accustomed to, the memory of this emotionally shocking or traumatic or morally conflicting experience is split off from consciousness causing dissociation. The dissociated memory is pushed down, or in other words, repressed into the unconscious and it remains there as splinter psyches or split off psychic fragments. Deep in the unconscious realm, the psychic fragments gather and cluster together based on their similar feeling tone and mutual core of meaning thus resulting in the conception of complexes. So in simple words, dissociation is the psychic activity or phenomenon which is responsible for the origin of complexes i.e., splinter psyches. Jung viewed dissociation as a normal psychic phenomenon that exists on a continuum extending from normal to abnormal states such as multiple personality or schizophrenic alterations of personality. Being dissociated and cast away from awareness, the complexes bubble up the conscious surface time and again to make its existence felt in ways which are not so pleasant, for e.g., slips of tongue, compulsive thinking etc. Dreams are also one of the primary means by which complexes try to emerge from the depths of the unconscious. Among those who suffer from psychoses, the complexes can appear as voices having a definite personal character.
Jung (1972) was convinced that the complexes are the via regia i.e., the royal road to the unconscious and not the dreams as Freud had proposed earlier. For Jung complexes are the living units of the unconscious psyche and play the role of architect of dreams and of symptoms manifested in our waking life. To put it in other words, it is not the dreams per se but the complexes – the stuff which dreams are made of – which can lead to a better understanding of the unconscious.
The complexes are ‘vulnerable points’ which we do not like to remember and still less to be reminded of by others, but which frequently come back to mind unbidden and in the most unwelcome fashion. They always contain memories, wishes, fears, duties, needs or views, with which we have never really come to terms, and for this reason they constantly interfere with our conscious life in a disturbing and usually a harmful way (Jung, 1933). Now, this leads to the question - Are the complexes really bad guys colonizing our psyche? Jung stressed that having a complex does not necessarily indicate inferiority. It only means that something incompatible, unassimilated and conflicting exists – perhaps as an obstacle, but also as a stimulus to greater effort, and so, perhaps, as an opening to new possibilities of achievement. He also strongly believed that the joys and sorrows of life depend on the complexes. It may sound like a romanticised notion at first, at least to me it did, but it is not far from truth. Because the complexes indicate unresolved problems and inability to adapt to and overcome certain challenges or conflicts life throws at us, they are indeed a cause of sorrow and suffering for the person. However, the complexes can also act as ‘seat of transformation’ or as Jung (1933) would call it ‘focal or nodal points’ of psychic life which we would not wish to do without…otherwise psychic activity would come to a fatal standstill. Seen in this light, the complexes are essential to our being and when gradually brought to awareness, complexes serve as springboards to psychic growth, integration, transformation and ultimately bestow inner bliss and calm from being one with self as opposed to a fragmented self.
References:
Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc.
Jung, C. G. (1972). Collected works of C. G. Jung: Structure and dynamics of the psyche (2nded., Vol. 8). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.