Editing Collective unconscious (section)

=== Archetype research ===

A more common experimental approach investigates the unique effects of archetypal images. An influential study of this type, by Rosen, Smith, Huston, & Gonzalez in 1991, found that people could better remember symbols paired with words representing their archetypal meaning. Using data from the [[Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism]] and a jury of evaluators, Rosen et al. developed an "Archetypal Symbol Inventory" listing symbols and one-word connotations. Many of these connotations were obscure to laypeople. For example, a picture of a diamond represented "self"; a square represented "Earth". They found that even when subjects did not consciously associate the word with the symbol, they were better able to remember the pairing of the symbol with its chosen word.<ref>D. H. Rosen, S. M. Smith, H. L. Huston, & G. Gonzalez, "Empirical Study of Associations Between Symbols and Their Meanings: Evidence of Collective Unconscious (Archetypal) Memory"; ''Journal of Analytical Psychology'' 28, 1991.</ref> Brown & Hannigan replicated this result in 2013, and expanded the study slightly to include tests in English and in Spanish of people who spoke both languages.<ref>Jeffrey M. Brown & Terence P. Hannigan, "[https://jber-ojs-tamiu.tdl.org/jber/index.php/jber/article/viewFile/7116/6384 An Empirical Test of Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious (Archetypal) Memory] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826105336/https://jber-ojs-tamiu.tdl.org/jber/index.php/jber/article/viewFile/7116/6384 |date=2016-08-26 }}"; ''Journal of Border Educational Research'' 5, Fall 2008.</ref>

Maloney (1999) asked people questions about their feelings to variations on images featuring the same archetype: some positive, some negative, and some non-anthropomorphic. He found that although the images did not elicit significantly different responses to questions about whether they were "interesting" or "pleasant", but did provoke highly significant differences in response to the statement: "If I were to keep this image with me forever, I would be". Maloney suggested that this question led the respondents to process the archetypal images on a deeper level, which strongly reflected their positive or negative valence.<ref>Alan Maloney, "Preference ratings of images representing archetypal themes: an empirical study of the concept of archetypes"; ''Journal of Analytical Psychology'' 44, 1999.</ref>

Ultimately, although Jung referred to the collective unconscious as an ''empirical'' concept, based on evidence, its elusive nature does create a barrier to traditional experimental research. June Singer writes: 
{{blockquote|But the collective unconscious lies beyond the conceptual limitations of individual human consciousness, and thus cannot possibly be encompassed by them. We cannot, therefore, make controlled experiments to prove the existence of the collective unconscious, for the psyche of man, holistically conceived, cannot be brought under laboratory conditions without doing violence to its nature. ... In this respect, psychology may be compared to astronomy, the phenomena of which also cannot be enclosed within a controlled setting. The heavenly bodies must be observed where they exist in the natural universe, under their own conditions, rather than under conditions we might propose to set for them.<ref>Singer, ''Culture and the Collective Unconscious'' (1968), pp. 85–86.</ref>}}