Tobias

I have not been able to get on BL through my main computer for a week or two, so while I had some free time I have had a chance to put together some thoughts I have had about the Nasuverse and some of its formative thoughts something I have been curious ever since I learned Nasu had referenced anima and animus during an interview. I am going to "try" not to interpret to many of my own ideas here, because I feel like if I extrapolate to much I will ruin the purpose of this blog, which is to talk about Carl Jung's theories and give people some ideas on where Nasu could well have been coming from.

Now, a brief background on Mr. Jung is that he was born to an oddly mixed back ground, his mother was an occultist, a word which did not have the same negative connotations it would have to day. She was very spiritual, held seances and nature observances of various forms and is described by observers as having a theology that was almost animist in nature, she also believed she was surrounded by spirits who would commune with her regularly. Jung's father was a very conservative pastoral minister. Jung himself would grow up as a christian, but as a universalist. As carl grew up, he became acquainted with and later followed the teachings of Sigmund Freud, who would color many of his later theories. Freud actually considered Jung to be his successor, he played a somewhat older brother/father figure to Jung.

As a matter of fact, there is a certain sentiment that Jung never quite...got out of Freud's shadow, there is always a certain sense of stifled expression Jung expressed. as an example, Jung often became indignant if people talked about when Freud took him to America. Jung always would assert that Freud did not "take" him, Jung had an invitation and would have gone regardless, another example as Jung would always refer to when he left Freud's psychoanalytical association it was by his own choice, but a series of letters between the two shows how when Jung, who, though speaking quite flatteringly, almost subserviently to Freud told him frankly he could accept all Freud's ideas save the psycho-sexual development theory, and...Freud kicked him out of the association and proclaimed publicly that Carl Gustov Jung's name was never again to be uttered in his presence.

Now, lets go over some of Jung's basic principles. Jung's mother likely played a great role in his theories, of all of the beginning psychologists Jung was very spiritual, very occult. This actually made him beloved by fantasy writers and game creators, if Nasu did borrow heavily from Jungian concepts, he was far from the only one. Star wars and the Persona series are basically homages to Jungian Archetypes. Jung believed in several things which were connected, the collective unconscious, the personal unconscious, and the energy that people use. Later some people and even Jung would take to calling this Psychic energy, but the word has been coopted by other ideas so lets stick with energy here.

Jung would tell you that the use of energy was how people related to both the physical and the internal world, he called movements along those to path regression and progression. Neither is better or worse then the other, these were things that took one's personal energy. Later he would rebrand them extroversion and introversion because regression had a negative connotation. To Jung, when one tried to learn about the internal self, one regressed, which effectively meant spent "energy" to understand oneself. if one wanted to relate to other people, they progressed, or became extroverted. Jung would begin here by expressing a core tenant of his idea system when he talked about the best possible situation being balance. I.E., the same energy that was spent on regression was spent on progression, he called this term Synchronicity. Another way of putting it was to become synchronized. Jung believed that a synchronized person had the perfect flow of energy going in and out, and thus achieved balance.

Synchroncity was important in all Jungian concepts, the archetype of the persona had to accept the shadow archetype in order to move closer to the self. I feel like I probably dont need to talk to much about these because you have all played persona and the concepts you found in the game are dead on. the persona is the outward shell that while true, represses the underlying shadow. the shadow is a dark set of feelings that is Freudian in nature, the ID, essentially. while not unmoral, the shadow archetype is amoral, it expresses nothing but the feelings and desires unchecked by conscience or society. Jung said that one must truly understand and accept one's shadow in order to achieve synchronicity between the persona and the shadow, again, the act of synchronization is achieving the best possible result with one's psyche.

Now, since I am sure a few people playing along on their home games have perked up at the word, lets talk about archetypes. The first thing which you need to understand is that archetype is a Jungian definition in its own right, it is not, as some have theorized, a better version of a type, these people mistake words like archbishop, or, I dunno, archmage for archetype. Carl Jung actually is very clear and not ambiguous on what an archetype is, an archetype, otherwise known as a primordial image, is a vision of the collective unconscious of X. We have inherited ideas from collective unconscious from our ancestors of different t6hings, and these things are effectively limitless. The archetype hero and the archetype shadow, for example.

Its important to note these are not the "best" version of the image, they are merely the oldest. For example the archetype hero must by definition be flawed. he must possess the achilles heel, usually this flaw must be both physical and psychological, like hubris. in a pinch, just psychological must do. Han Solo, the hero archetype from starwars was a scoundrel and a thief. These flaws defined his status as the hero as much as his virtues did. If one later went back and created a new epic with a more virtuous, strong or perfect hero, that image would be flawed.

Now, getting into the nasuverse a bit more, Archetype earth, is actually a very specific definition. A vision from the collective unconscious of earth. That is the literal definition of AE, another way of saying it would be Primordial Image of Earth. however the ancestral image we inherited looked, that would be archetype. if you ever wondered why archetype sounds better then type when AE is supposed to be kind of a knock off type, its because you are making the mistake I mentioned earlier. archetype is not an enhanced type, its a singular definition.

Interesting note, though these images are things we recieve through our understanding of the collective unconscious, while JUng is noticeably silent on how we inherit them, he was clear on one example, they are NOT inherited via DNA or genetics. we dont receive them as a result of our ancestors because we are of their bloodline, we receive them because they are those who came before us. Another concept is that these images of the collective that filter through to our personal unconcious through the medium of dreams. you can see Freud's hand prints all over this. Jung believed that you could examine your personal image by seeing the symbolism in dreams. As a child he was haunted by images of catholic priests in dark robes, especially monks, which he later defined as being haunted by images of his shadow archetype making itself known.

Interesting food for thought, if you remember how tatari and Sion were similar, that has Jungian symbolism all over it. because they were both in their own fashion, Sion with etherlight as the spirit hacker, and Tatari via his use of rumors, suppressing themselves almost completely in order to maximize their reliance on outside people, one could say they were both on the extreme outer edge of progression. they nearly destroyed their self by focusing on the outside world, Tatari chiding Sion for thinking they were similar because of the fact that they were related is also interesting due to the Jungian belief that the concept of an ancestor was not based in blood relations.


...Wow this went for a while, and I am not done either, hmmm...nah, this is good enough for now. Next time, anima and animus, what you think they mean and why you are wrong. stay tuned!