Temporality & Meaning: a phenomenological approach to Jungian psychology

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Amid our culture of warring identities, this project asks if lived time can acquire shared meaning from theunconscious and if such meaning can be understood narratively. Jung provides a way into the problemthrough his concept of meaningful a priori psychic structures called archetypes. A phenomenologicalview of archetypes as 'world-related' rather than timeless symbol may allow a grounding of psyche in anidea of being-in-the-world that is authentic and ethical; radically altering our view of psychology'srelation to society and the environment. This move aligns archetypes with Heideggerian temporality,potentially creating another way to interpret subjectivity. The hypothesis is that temporality meetssubjectivity in Ricoeurian narrative identity, often viewed as created by conscious reflection. AHeideggerian approach to archetypes may allow us to extend narrative identity to the unconscious, thusrevealing temporality to be not only constructed but also always-already given.The project asks if temporality (lived time) can acquire shared meaning from the unconscious and if suchmeaning can be understood narratively. It tackles this through a phenomenological approach toanalytical (i.e. Jungian) psychology. Jung argues the unconscious contains a priori meaningful structurescalled archetypes. I explore if recasting archetypes as structuring processes exhibiting intentionality (i.e.,forms of consciousness that open a world), rather than as the timeless symbolic entities they are usuallyconsidered, grounds psyche in an idea of being-in-the-world that is authentic and ethical. This alignsarchetypes with phenomenologist Martin Heidegger's (1927/2010) idea of temporality, potentiallycreating another way to interpret subjectivity in our time of warring identities and psychic alienation. Theeffect would be to validate Jung's intuition that "at bottom the psyche is simply world" (CW9i, para.291);thus radically altering psychology's relation to society and the environment. The hypothesis is thattemporality meets subjectivity in phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur's (1985/1990b) idea of 'narrativeidentity'. This is often viewed as consciously created, but I explore if the concept can be extended to theunconscious, which Jung understands as an unreflective kind of consciousness (CW8, para.387). Theproject asks if this is achieved by viewing archetypes' intentionality as an unreflective narrativeconsciousness that opens a world; in this way, the research builds upon Freeman's (2016) idea of thenarrative unconscious.