Morality and Its Function in the Collective
Christina Becker, MBA, Diplomate Jungian Analyst

“A Community is like a ship. Everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.” (Henrik Ibsen)

“ Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” (Martin Luther King)

This paper is a continuation of the work that I started with my thesis for the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich called “The Heart of the Matter: Individuation as an Ethical Process” and it arose from Jung’s paper in Vol. 10 on “A Psychological View of Conscience.” In Jung’s paper, he talks about true and authentic conscience that rises above moral code. (CW10 para 838) For Jung the moral code was the collective “Ten Commandments,” the common stock of thoughts and beliefs, and true conscience possessed a higher authority than collective morality, or in Freud’s terminology, the superego. True conscience for Jung was ‘the voice of God’ and the individual’s expression of psychic truth.

I had originally looked at Jung’s paper on conscience from the point of ethics and boundary violations in analytical psychology. It has also captured my attention because of my interest in groups because it highlights the tension between the individual and the group/organization /collective with which he or she interacts, and the nature of that interaction in light of individuation. Before I went into training, I was an organizational consultant working with various kinds of groups, and organizations trying to help them to achieve their goals and to become more effective. So I am interested in this because of the question of can and how does the individual individuate in groups and organizations. The other dimension of this topic comes from my observation of our community as Jungian Analysts and the conflict that analysts seem to have when entering into group or organizational processes. It seems that in our attempt to become more professional and the need to adapt to collective pressures, we are looking at these issues as a community.

So in my thinking to date these interests all seem to fall into a broad topic which I have titled “Morality and its relationship to the collective” and is summed up in Jung’s notion of a “conflict of duty.” Morality, conscience and ethical values reflect by their very nature a tension of the opposites, a dialectic between self-interest and some “Other.” This other usually reflects something that is higher or superior to ego-self interest. This dialectic is experienced as a dilemma, a neurosis or some kind of psychological distress arising from the collision of two opposing forces. The third therefore must be constellated through the activation of the transcendent function.

Jung writes in the forward to Neumann’s Depth Psychology and the New Ethic. :

“the chief causes of neurosis are conflicts of conscience and difficult moral problems; these conflicts constitute conflicts of duty usually arising from a clash between the individual and some outside force. Such moral issues cannot be answered by the collective and therefore must come from somewhere within the individual to find a solution. In such cases, the treatment of a neurosis is a moral one. It is possible that such conflicts of duty arise when there is a strong established moral order within a society and when the individual is particularly sensitive to ethical matters. “

As a Canadian, I live within 30 km from the border of the United States. Canadians have a strange and ambivalent relationship to the United States. We are deeply affected by many of their actions while we attempt to maintain our uniqueness and detachment. The closeness to the border means that we have access to the American media and so in the wake of 9/11, I watched as collectively Americans projected their dark shadow onto al-Qaida and the Muslims. As American government focussed a large amount of energy battling terrorism in the middle east, two interesting phenomenon were happening inside the country. Corporate leaders left their own worst impulses lost sight of their societal responsibility, lined their own pockets, and sold false promises to the public and to their shareholders. The Washington Sniper was wrecking havoc within the countries own borders. There seemed to be a deep tragedy with the projection of the terrorist shadow onto the middle east, the same energies were being acted out inside the country.

And then in December 2002, Time Magazine proclaimed that Persons of the Year as “The Whistleblowers” - Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom, Colleen Rowley of the FBI and Sherron Watkings of Enron Corporation. In Time’s announcement the editors said the choice was based on “for believing - really believing - that the truth is one thing that must not be moved off the books, and for stepping in to make sure that it wasn’t. “ It was a reflection of a critical struggle how to restore trust in many disgraced institutions.

We seem to have a certain fascination with people who are able to stand out and tackle large organizations or collectives -the whistle blower - such as Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and others. They are the social activists and dissents that challenge the status quo and facilitate change. One newspaper columnist asked whether the fascination was “partly because we wonder whether we would do that same thing. We want to know whether whistle blowers have a higher ethical calling than we do, or whether they are just a little sharper and braver.” Globe and Mail -April 16, 2003.

As a cultural and as a psychological phenomenon I am quite fascinated by the motivation of the three women who spoke out against the unethical and immoral practices of their companies, and about the Time Magazine announcement to name them as “Persons of the Year”. This may be a unique North American phenomenon. This pick was noted as unusual for the magazine and indeed in an informal survey done by Time 65% of more than four million votes cast did not agree with the choice.

The entire paper is available as a pdf file.