Fondements et implications philosophiques de la métapsychologie jungienne : la théorie de l’inconscient a la lumière de la métaphysique

Abstract

In a century in which psychological disorders, with their hordes of depersonalisation, claustrations and perversions, have become commonplace; in which the irrational, so condemned, rejected and repressed, is unleashed more violently, it is becoming urgent to ask questions about the ontology, axiology, teleology and phenomenology of the inner man. Since Socrates, philosophy of mind as a rational psychology has unfolded in the quest for self- knowledge, and has placed the soul at the heart of its research. But hasn't this quest for the human interior, confined to the realm of consciousness, proved too inadequate to understand the deep-rooted reasons for man's fluctuating states and actions? The first theses on the unconscious originated in philosophy and were first systematised by Sigmund Freud. But if authors such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Von Harmann and Bergson can be criticised for their lack of conceptualisation of the unconscious, the Freudian thesis that makes up for it remains wedded to individuality and sexuality, and bases the being of the unconscious on its having, in such a way that to empty its contents would be to liquidate itself. Hence the recourse to Jung, who delved deeper into the exploration of the soul in order to grasp it, both in its globality and in the dynamism of the plural structures that clash for compensatory and developmental purposes within it. For him, the unconscious, the original region of the psyche from which consciousness belatedly emerges, contains a collective, primitive layer, charged with instincts and archetypes that are imbued in the ego with images and symbols invested with a numinous energy, and a personal layer charged with repressed material and subliminal perceptions. The incessantly active hold of the unconscious on the ego, whose orientation in the world tends towards unilaterality, expresses the need for the total fulfilment of the soul. What are the philosophical implications of this? An analytical and interpretative method highlights, by the way, the persistence of primitive, inner humanity, which imposes itself on every human being and determines its frameworks, the acceptance and assumption of which is our responsibility, grasping the identity conflict of the collective and the personal, the temporal conflict of the past, present and future, of which the soul is the focus; the anthropomorphic, religious and energetic essence of the soul; a conception of reality based on the subjective experience of phenomena, i.e. on their energetic charge, thus affirming the reality of illusions, fantasies, hallucinations and any other phenomenon deemed unreal, yet having a strong impact on the soul that experiences it; the symbolic essence of man's original language. However, the lèse-majesté done to the ego can often take on questionable proportions in Jung's work. Beyond the impact of the soul on the soul that he was able to emphasis, and of the world on the world that the natural sciences were able to highlight, can we not think of the direct impact of the soul on the world and vice versa? This is an avenue opened up by parapsychology, and it would be worth pursuing.