In civilizations, chaos arises when the energies represented by the archetypes are ignored, subverted, overthrown, denied, assaulted, or dismissed. This process, and its final product, is a form of primordial “religion.” Adjusting to society is not the goal of Jungian psychology, it is self-actualization, self-realization, which in turn allows the individual to rightly place environment and emotions into their right context, their regulated context. Failing to incorporate within the psyche these pivotal points, these bundles of psychic energy, results in neuroses, or worse. Jung identified the archetypes that reflect pivotal aspects of universal thought and sentiment specifically as points of encounter for the self in the quest for harmony. Von Franz wisely begins at the beginning, as do Jungian and other psychological schools, in accounting for the functions of the mind, and looking to psychic harmony as the tacit aspiration of the self.Įxtrapolating, then, one might say that “religion” is successful to the degree that it services the regulatory function of the psyche.
Religion means the “psychic regulatory system” in this very basic sense of providing a child with social and mental images and emotional experiences that will allow the child to prosper, to allow the child to achieve the tools for reconciliation, for harmony of self and environment. Would that fairy tales were in every child’s hands! They make order out of environment and universe without heavy-handedness. The fairy tales present to children essential images, symbols, and emotional undercurrents. Positive socialization can help guide a child to harmony. But as environment grows complex, the tools of the mind are easily outstripped.
This search for meaning is only a search for harmony with this environment, a search to reconcile mind and instinct. The wonder at the environment and self become layers of conflicting emotions, products of the interaction taken by us and sifted by the mind to make a meaningful narrative of reality. Not so the human being, whose consciousness quickly opens the gulf between image or instinct, and mind, reflection, and consciousness. Little regulation is needed, and thus we wonder at how little instruction a newborn animal requires from its mother. These images or impressions evoke seamless functionality in animals, what we call instinct. Consciousness brings these observations directly into the instincts and emotions, into the psyche. Religion is the cultural product of human observation of the universe and its wonders, terrors, mysteries, sources of fear, recognition of cycles (birth and death, seasons, light and dark, etc.). “Religion” on the most primitive level signifies the psychic regulatory system that relates to the dynamism of the drive. The primordial connection of image and instinct … explains the bond between instinct and religion in the widest sense. A baseline description of religion is offered by Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise Von Franz in her essay “The Bremen Town Musicians.” Her work on fairy tales and their universality is a trove of ideas and information, and in this essay one finds, almost in passing, this discussion of religion:
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