The Ethnic Unconscious

Between the personal and the collective unconscious lies a layer of psychological material about which very little is known. This layer consists of pockets of ethnic influence and for this reason I refer to it as ‘the ethnic unconscious’. These pockets reveal themselves usually in the form of very dramatic dreams that are generally mistaken for either personal dreams or dreams arising out of a deeper, more truly collective level. The layer of the ethnic unconscious, however, is not personal because it is composed of contents that pre-date the life of the individual and that did not enter into the unconscious of the individual through the senses. This layer may be thought of as collective only in the sense that it is shared by all people; however, the symbols that are its contents appear as particular ethnic expressions rather than in the shape and guise of the more generalised, elementary archetypes. It is truly an intermediate layer.

Though Jung argues for two primary divisions of the unconscious (personal and collective), he also argues without elaboration, for several intermediate layers between these two divisions. This is most clearly seen in the model he used for a lecture on the structure of the psyche (HANNAH 4): Since layers B, C and D consist of contents that could easily be made conscious, I assume the only truly intermediate layer to be E. It is difficult to categorise clearly these layers and probably the best approach is to see the contents of the psyche as existing along a continuum. This was Jung's way:

The deeper ‘layers’ of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. ‘Lower down’, that is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they become increasingly collective until they are universalised and extinguished in the body's materiality, i.e. in chemical substances (JUNG 5, p. 173).

However, dream material is rising into conscious view at this time which lends greater understanding to