How The Words Get On The Screen/Page ~ Part One

Even though my theories of word creation and transmission are my own conceptions, they are based on years of study–with Carl Jung, my Muse, other psychologists, various spiritual mentors, arguments with myself, and conversations with other writers.

I find Jung’s ideas of the Mind the most useful because they’ve proven their practical value.

Let’s start with a word-symbol formula of the full process, from word-creation to word use, by showing the various areas of mind/body involved, in the order they’re activated:

Collective Unconscious–>Personal Unconscious–>Shadow–>Conscious Mind–>Brain–>Body–>Screen/Paper

Collective Unconscious: This is where all the Archetypes hang out and have sex with each other. The CU is full of Psychological Energy Patterns like Mother, Father, Child, Lover, Murder, Transmutation, Hero, Wise Old Person, and tons more. For more background knowledge check out this entry in Wikipedia.

These metaphysical entities are called Psychological Energy Patterns because they have no specific conscious form. For instance, the Mother Archetype is no ones’ particular mother and has no particular traits or personality–She belongs to all of us since this is the Collective Unconscious. In a way, she contains all the possible traits and powers of all possible mothers. She’s also the source of the word, “mother”.

All these Energy Patterns are always blending and interacting–having “Sex”. This constant creative activity, deep within us, is the ultimate source of all our thoughts since it’s believed the Collective Unconscious gives birth to the Conscious Mind.

The qualities of the main, person-like Archetypes are what give birth to the characters of a story; their interactions are what produces the plot.

But, we don’t just peer into the CU with our ego-mind and snatch plot, character, and word.

By the way, it’s the intense, creative interactions of all the Archetypes that produce what I’ve been calling Real Words. The Words that hold the complete Meanings. For example, not the mere word-symbol, “tree”, or the various forms of the personal word, “Tree”, that each of us has packed with slightly different Meanings, but the Real Word, “TREE”, that contains all of whatever can be considered Tree-ness…

Personal Unconscious:

This is where the broad, ultra-creative, endlessly active Words produced by the Interactions of the Archetypes become more like what most people call “words”.

The PU is where we can get a first glimpse of an image of a mother or a tree or a murderer.

The PU also has a lively interaction with the Conscious Mind and stores memories and concepts and words that the Conscious Mind has labored over. But it uses the infusion of creativity from the Collective Unconscious to massage the memories/concepts/words so that, even though the word “tree” is there in the Personal Unconscious all the time, it’s being “worked-on” by both the Collective and Conscious Mind–it’s evolving…

Also, the words in the Personal Unconscious are the ones that have the normal “word-histories” that an etymology dictionary contains.

This mutual interaction of Collective Unconscious with Personal Unconscious and Personal Unconscious with Conscious Mind aren’t the only instances of creative “loops” in that schematic, straight-line formula I proposed earlier:

Collective Unconscious–>Personal Unconscious–>Shadow–>Conscious Mind–>Brain–>Body–>Screen/Paper

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