Consciousness Development

here alone has the canon of stadial development, collectively embodied in mythological projections, become a model for the development of the individual human being; here alone have the creative beginnings of individuality been taken over by the collective

Neumann argues that Western culture uniquely institutionalized a stadial, mythology-based model of consciousness development as the normative ideal for individual psychological growth.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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The supposed development of consciousness occurs from a darker level to a lighter one, from only matter to also spirit, from only nature to also culture. This ‘development of consciousness’ supposedly occurs historically in civilizations, phylogenetically in the species and race, and ont

Hillman critically exposes the ideological assumptions embedded in the developmental model of consciousness — its tripartite progress narrative across historical, phylogenetic, and ontogenetic registers — and implicitly challenges its authority.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

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Neumann uses myths, particularly myths of the hero in the process of surviving various monsters that can be equated with aspects of the unconscious, to find evidence of the ego’s emergence, survival, and progressive strengthening, thus organizing the myths along a continuum of the hero’s progress

Beebe provides a succinct summary of Neumann’s stage-by-stage mythological model of ego-consciousness development and notes its clinical adoption among Jungians alongside its critique as heroically Apollonic.

Beebe, John, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017thesis

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while there are stages in the development of consciousness, and myths which amplify these stages, each myth, as a style of ego-consciousness, is working continuously and contemporaneously, and that all the styles are in a constant state of interaction

Samuels, drawing on Giegerich, challenges the developmental sequence model by proposing that styles of ego-consciousness are simultaneously active rather than successively superseded.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis

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The growth of consciousness and of the ego is largely governed by this pattern. The stability of the ego, i. e., its ability to stand firm against the disintegrative tendencies of the unconscious and the world, is developed very early

Neumann situates the developmental pattern of consciousness and ego formation as beginning in early childhood, well before the individuation process becomes explicit in the second half of life.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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with increasing differentiation the zones under control come to be increasingly represented in the control organ of consciousness. This representation takes the form of images, which are psychic equivalents of the physical processes going on in the organs.

Neumann grounds the development of consciousness biologically, tracing its emergence from organic excitability through differentiation to ego-centered registration and image formation.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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its second phase brings development of the self and the integration of that system. But, although the transformation process runs in the opposite direction to the development which took place during the first half of life, the ego and consciousness are not disintegrated; on the contrary, there is an expansion of consciousness

Neumann articulates a two-phase model of consciousness development: the first builds ego differentiation, while the second — individuation — brings an expansion of consciousness through self-integration.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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The dragon fight is correlated psychologically with different phases in the ontogenetic development of consciousness. The conditions of the fight, its aim and also the period in which it takes place, vary.

Neumann maps the dragon-fight motif onto specific developmental phases of consciousness, showing how the same archetypal combat recurs differently at childhood, puberty, and the midlife transition.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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Neumann felt that he had avoided the trap of too facile an analogy between the development or evolution of the human species with that of an individual man or woman by using myth as metaphor, which is why he seeks for amplificatory material in what can be called the ‘folk history of consciousness’

Samuels clarifies Neumann’s methodological justification for the recapitulation thesis, noting his use of mythology as metaphor — the ‘folk history of consciousness’ — to bridge collective and individual development.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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Taking the development of consciousness as the decisive phenomena of human history, we arrive at an arrangement of the phenomena that does not, to be sure, coincide with the usual sequence of historical events, but makes possible the psychological orientation we require.

Neumann posits consciousness development as the organizing principle of ‘psychohistory,’ superseding conventional chronological history as the framework for interpreting archetypal material.

Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting

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if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of a much more recent origin than has heretofore been supposed. Consciousness come after language!

Jaynes offers a radical historicist counter-thesis: consciousness is linguistically constituted and therefore arose far later in human history than biological or depth-psychological evolution models assume.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis

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Consciousness as Force has created the world-movement and its problems; consciousness as Force has to solve the problems it has created and carry the world-movement to the inevitable fulfilment of its secret sense and evolving Truth.

Aurobindo frames consciousness development cosmically: consciousness as creative Force generates the world-movement and must itself evolve to resolve the problems it has produced, progressing through material, vital, and mental phases.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939supporting

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an emerging consciousness whose emergence cannot stop short on the way until the Involved has evolved and revealed itself as a supreme totally self-aware and all-aware Intelligence. It is this to which we have given the name of Supermind or Gnosis.

Aurobindo identifies the telos of consciousness development as the Supermind — a supreme self-aware Intelligence that is the inverted ground of the Inconscience from which evolution proceeds.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939supporting

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Man’s historical and psychological development shows that the role of the individual is just as important for humanity as is that of the ego and consciousness for the unconscious.

Neumann draws a structural parallel between the individual’s role within humanity and the ego’s role within the unconscious, underscoring the mutual necessity of differentiation for collective and psychic evolution.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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The kind of experience we shall have is prescribed by the archetypes, but what we experience is always individual.

Neumann clarifies that archetypal structures provide the framework for developmental phases while personal experience fills them uniquely, distinguishing collective pattern from individual expression in consciousness development.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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he has in the beginning principally to occupy himself with his own ego. In this egoistic phase of his evolution the world and others are less important to him than himself

Aurobindo describes the necessary egoistic phase of human evolutionary development as a prerequisite stage in which individuality is affirmed before higher spiritual realization becomes possible.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939supporting

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the more explicit emergence of the self into consciousness. The methods Jung used to help them with this complex project have come to be called Jungian analysis.

Stein describes the second half-of-life developmental phase as the explicit emergence of the self into consciousness, characterizing Jungian analysis as the primary method for facilitating this stage.

Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting

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the force of being is so much intensified, rises to such a height as to admit or develop a new principle of existence, — apparently new at least in the world of Matter, — mentality

Aurobindo traces the developmental emergence of mentality from life, arguing that each new level of consciousness arises when the force of being reaches sufficient intensity to generate a qualitatively new principle.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939supporting

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The ruling symbol of this condition is ‘ascension,’ and its symptoms are ‘losing the ground from under one’s feet,’ loss of the body rather than dismemberment, mania rather than depression.

Neumann warns that pathological inflation — over-identification of consciousness with spirit — constitutes a developmental arrest or regression, characterized by disconnection from the unconscious and body.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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the spiritual evolution begins when man as mind is capable of the movements of spirituality but mind also rises to its own highest perfection by the growth of the intensities and luminosities of the spirit

Aurobindo argues that spiritual development is not a sharp discontinuity but an interpenetrating evolution in which each level of consciousness reaches completion only through interaction with the emergent level above it.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939supporting

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Unlike persons of a more differentiated grade of consciousness, primitive people cannot usually act on the basis of the decisions of their egos, or as we might say, at will.

Hoeller, following Jung’s comparative framework, uses differentiation of consciousness as a criterion distinguishing ego-bound modern psychology from the unconscious-driven states of less differentiated consciousness.

Hoeller, Stephan A., The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982aside

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the emergence of a surface consciousness by force of life contacts is due to the fact that in both subject and object of the contact consciousness-force is already existent in a subliminal latency

Aurobindo argues that surface consciousness emerges through life-contacts precisely because consciousness-force is already latently present in both the perceiving subject and the perceived object.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939aside

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