Mass-Mindedness

Mass-mindedness (Massenhaftigkeit) is Jung‘s technical term for the psychological condition in which the individual loses the specific weight of his or her own differentiated life and becomes a carrier of collective affect — a unit in the crowd, a node through which the archetypal charge of the moment flows without encountering a personal ground that could slow or shape it. Jung’s central cultural-psychological writing on the theme is [[jung-undiscovered-self|The Undiscovered Self]] (1957); the topic recurs across [[jung-civilization-in-transition|Civilization in Transition]] (CW 10).

The clinical and political seriousness of the concept for Jung came from his witness of the twentieth-century mass movements — the totalitarian regimes, the wars, the rapid ideological possessions — and his recognition that the psychological condition underlying them was not simply error or stupidity but a genuine archetypal inundation that the under-individuated person cannot resist. The individual’s defense, in Jung’s late writing, is the slow work of individuation — the patient differentiation of the personal life against the collective pressure — which is not a private project but the contribution the individual can make to the health of the collective. See jung-undiscovered-self.

Relationships

• jung-undiscovered-self
• collective-shadow
• individuation