Complex (psychology)

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In psychology, a complex refers to an associative and psychoenergetic unit of images and ideas, feelings and thoughts. The term comes from the Latin com-plector : to summarize, to include; complexus : woven together, enclosed; complexio : connection, summary. As a grouping of emotionally “charged” psychological contents into a kind of association, “the complex is a higher psychological unit”, to which further ideas can be attached.

Due to their emotional coloring and association patterns, complexes often unconsciously (often suppressed, partly caused by disorders in early childhood development) influence actions , thinking , dreams , but also obsessions and other neuroses . Complexes can express themselves and develop positively or negatively, depending on whether and how the ego succeeds in establishing a conscious relationship with them. The psychological process through which complexes arise is also called “ compression ” or “condensation” in some places .

CG Jung understood psychological complexes not only as “real” in the sense of “effective”, but also as something objectively ( ontic ) existing regardless of whether they arise in people through repression from the content of consciousness or from unconscious developments. According to this view, there are not only the complexes acquired through individual experience, but also typical archetypal patterns of complexes (see also examples below), which can develop in humans relatively independently of and before any cultural imprint. According to Jung, the archetypes are effective as general human-psychological basic structures even in typical complexes.

Psychological discovery of the complexes

To discover the complexes, CG Jung conducted his association experiments with patients. “In doing so, I discovered the emotional complexes that were always registered beforehand as reaction errors.” Because complexes manifested themselves in having an unconscious effect on consciousness and thus “disturbing” it. With certain stimulus words or trigger situations, a complex can be “constellated” or “activated” in humans, and they have their “own specific energy”. “What happens in the association experiment also happens in every conversation between two people. […] The unity of consciousness is broken and the intention of the will more or less difficult or even impossible. [...] Indeed, an activated complex momentarily puts us in a state of bondage, of compulsive thinking and acting ”. The complex "has its own wholeness and has a relatively high degree of autonomy [...] [it] can usually be suppressed with some effort of will, but not proven away, and when the opportunity arises it emerges again with original strength". From clinical practice, Jung discovered a phenomenon that is not pathological (morbid) but normal, although depending on the situation, it is also disturbing: “It is simply something important, and with everything that has an intense emotional value difficult to deal with because such contents are somehow connected with physiological reactions, such as the heartbeat, the tone of the blood vessels, the processes in the intestines, the breath and the innervation of the skin. "

Formation of complexes

Jung wrote about the emergence of complexes: “The etiology [cause] of their emergence is often a so-called trauma, an emotional shock or the like [...] One of the most frequent causes, however, is the moral conflict, which has its ultimate reason in the apparent impossibility to affirm the whole of the human being. ”According to Jung, complexes always contain something conflicting, cause it or arise from it. They are essential, “downright focal points or nodes of the spiritual life [...]. But they denote the unfinished business in the individual [...]. It [the complex] evidently emerges from the clash of a demand for adaptation with the particular and unsuitable quality of the individual with regard to the demand ”. According to this view, complexes are not only psychological contents that have been "split off" from consciousness, but also those whose striving for acceptance by the ego, for "belonging" (integration) is repulsed by the ego, so that they have an increasingly conflict-laden "life of their own." “Lead to attract attention.

Archetypal complexes

Jung distinguished between purely personal complexes and those with a collective, archetypal background. "The reintegration of a personal complex has a relieving effect and often has a direct healing effect, while the collapse of a collective-unconscious complex is a very unpleasant, even dangerous sign". The reason for the particular danger that archetypal complexes pose for the ego-consciousness lies in their energetic potential to permanently seize the ego-consciousness and thus make it unfree; socially this is particularly dangerous if it is a mass phenomenon up to “ mass psychosis ” z. B. in potential wartime occurs.

Jung: "Where the complex area begins, there the freedom of the ego ends, because complexes are psychic powers whose deepest nature has not yet been explored". Nevertheless, “autonomous complexes belonged to the normal phenomena of life” because they made up the “structure of the unconscious psyche”. From the point of view of this psychology, it is crucial how an individual or a society relates to the currently “constellated” archetypal complexes.

Complexes in dreams and delusions

“Dream psychology shows with all the desirable clarity how the complexes appear personified when they are not suppressed by an inhibiting consciousness [...] We observe the same phenomenon in certain psychoses, where the complexes become 'loud' and appear as 'voices' that are absolutely have personal character. It is quite natural that 'independent complexes' exist contrary to every postulated 'unity of the I'. ”“ The personification of the complexes is not necessarily pathological in itself. ... And one can also train oneself in such a way that they are also visible or audible while awake. ”Therefore, one should“ today dare to hypothesize that complexes are partial psyches blown off. ”The term“ partial psychics blown off ”emphasizes the aspect of complexes as fragmentation phenomena in the psyche, which, depending on the severity, can also lead to neurotic or psychotic symptoms.

Autonomous complexes and parallels to belief in demons

CG Jung repeatedly emphasized the extensive or complete autonomy of complexes from self-consciousness : that “a complex with a given tension or energy charge has the tendency to become a small personality of its own.” Because complexes at times heavily occupy a person's consciousness, him Being able to make you “obsessed” by an idea or a wish, they are often viewed in a non-scientific ideological context as “ demons ” crouching on a person. “One says of a complex emotion: 'What got into him again today?', 'He was ridden by the devil', etc.” The interplay of complex suppression and complex obsession could “ultimately give rise to the neurotic dissociation of personality”. This phenomenon can be well observed in the area of ​​sexuality, for example, where socially or morally conflict-laden sexual fantasies are suppressed most of the time, but then again (repeatedly) pushing them towards a form of realization with “compelling power”.

Examples

Examples of typical unconscious complexes, some of which were first described by Sigmund Freud , are:

The so-called “ I complex ” plays a special role in the concept of “complexes” according to CG Jung : “The ego is also an agglomeration of highly tense contents, so that in principle there is no difference between the ego complex and any other complex.” The ego complex Complex is a sub-unit of the psychological wholeness of the human being, the main carrier of consciousness of the psyche and as such “of high continuity and identity with oneself”. “The ego complex is a content of consciousness as well as a condition of consciousness , because I am conscious of a psychic element insofar as it is related to the ego complex.” For the ego complex see also ego consciousness .

  • Persona as a “publicly preferably presented” part of the ego complex or as an “appearance” of the individual in the social space attached to the ego.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CG Jung, GW 18/1, §82.
  2. ^ Dictionary of analytical psychology. Retrieved July 5, 2013 . ; Langenscheidt's Latin dictionary
  3. ↑ CG Jung gave his inaugural lecture as a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1934 on the subject of "General information on complex theory". Its revised new edition reads “About psychic energetics and the essence of dreams” (1949) can be found in the collected works (GW) vol. 8, §194ff.
  4. ↑ CG Jung: On psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §196.
  5. ↑ CG Jung: On psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §198.
  6. ↑ CG Jung: On psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §199–201.
  7. ^ CG Jung, GW 18/1, §148.
  8. ^ CG Jung: About psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §204.
  9. ^ CG Jung: Psychologische Typologie (1928), GW 6, §924-926.
  10. ↑ CG Jung in: The psychological foundations of the belief in spirits , lecture from 1919, last written (expanded) version from 1948, GW 8, §590.
  11. ↑ CG Jung: On psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §216.
  12. ↑ CG Jung: On psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §218.
  13. ↑ CG Jung, GW 6, §420.
  14. ↑ CG Jung, GW 18/1, §150.
  15. ↑ CG Jung: On psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §203.
  16. ↑ a b C.G. Jung, GW 18/1, §149.
  17. ^ CG Jung: About psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §204.
  18. ↑ CG Jung: On psychic energetics and the nature of dreams (1949), GW 8, §207.
  19. ↑ a b C.G. Jung, GW 6: §730.