Art or Science-The conception of the human mind?

Carl Jung argued that the mind contained the psyche and this is rooted as deeply as the biological legacy we inherited from thousands of years of evolution. Dr. Raya Jones from the Cardiff School of Social Sciences discusses the differences between the science of the psyche and the science of biology and how these created two fundamentally different arguments within the field. 

The mind is created over time and conceptualized as the soul. It is part of our conscious as a people and determines who we are, what we believe, and how we perceive the world. The biological sciences focus more on the empirical view of the body as a collection of wiring, chemistry, and anatomy that makes us physical humans. The problem is that the mind-body connection has never been made scientifically. 

Jung also believed in a collective unconscious that is deeper than our individual unconscious. It is something that connects all human beings together through their species. This existence is often seen as the wise old man who has accumulated centuries of knowledge that carries through to each new batch of people and makes its way into generations. They are archetypal images of human life.

The mind is inherited the same way that the body is inherited.  Our biological traits are carried through from our parents and great grandparents and are part of what makes us biologically human, monkey, or anything else.  It is associated with Darwin’s Origin of Species and simply comes with each child upon birth. 

The psyche is the formation of who we are and the conception of our spiritual self. The collective unconscious is that which we hold in common to all human beings and creates the structure of our mind and how we take in and develop information as a species. Without that structure our individual psyche could not create unique but similar schemes associated with our personalities. 

Each human is connected to other human beings through our social and biological traits. Some argue that we as a species are connected together on a deeper collective unconscious level that predates our own understandings of the world. What makes us distinctly human is our ability to be conscious of our own existence and that existence within a wider world. We are human because we are aware that we are human and all humans hold similar traits.

The author attempts to explain the differences between biological science and the science of the psyche. There is a constant debate among the many theorists and scientists as to what this means. Some will rely heavily on the physical and testable while others will move more into the mystic forms of the psyche. Both are rational explanations of the parts and the whole. Our parts are derived from our biological side while our whole is manifested as our soul. 

We can move beyond this report to find something related to marketing and business. There are recurrent themes within society that take on different forms.  Advertisements seek to create a connection to our inner world. For example, a commercial related to something sad may prompt us to purchase protection (i.e. insurance or safety equipment) while one that taps into a positive feelings may prompt us to relive that experience (i.e. music or vacation) again. Brand identity and marketing can successfully create positive or negative feelings in our audience based upon the mental frameworks in which customers understand them.

Jones, R. (2013). Jung’s “psychology with the psyche” and the behavioral sciences. Behavioral sciences, 3 (3).