"[We] have ... to describe and to explain a building the upper story of which was erected in the nineteenth century; the ground floor dates from the sixteenth century, and a careful examination of the masonry discloses the fact that it was reconstructed from a dwelling-tower of the eleventh century. In the cellar, we discover Roman foundation walls, and under the cellar a filled-in cave, in the floor of which stone tools are found, and remnants of glacial fauna in the layers below. That would be a sort of picture of our mental structure. We live in the upper story, and are only dimly aware that our lower story is somewhat old-fashioned. As to what lies beneath the superficial crust of the earth we remain quite unconscious." (Jung, 1928)
Following this metaphor, Jung goes on to explain that human mind is divided in three levels: consciousness, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is characterized as "more or less superficial"(1959) and
" made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness having been forgotten or repressed."The collective unconscious is the most interesting, for Jung as well as for me. Indeed it contains informations and ideas that "have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity" (1959). These ideas and informations are then known as "archetypes", are shared by all individuals and are then similar to instincts.
Jung suggests (1959): " there is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves, in other words, that they are patterns of instinctual behaviour."
According to Bourassa (1988), the collective unconscious thus described by Jung would be the locus of archetypes "which are images of the instincts coming into play in man's experience of landscape."
This vision is particularly interesting as it encompasses the evolutionnary assumptions (according to which we prefer organic environments for their potential resources and shelter that would satisfy our instinctive needs and therefore promote our survival), as well as the recognition that a part of our mental structure is strictly human, with our own activities and tastes and our ability to enjoy art.
BOURASSA S.C, 1988 - Toward a Theory of Landscape Aesthetics. Landscape and Urban Planning: Vol.15 (pp 241-252).
JUNG C.G., 1928 - Contributions to Analytical Psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace.
JUNG C.G., 1959 - The Archetypes and the Collecitive Unconscious. New York: Pantheon..
