The Problem of Culture and Nature in Carl Gustav Jung’s Psychoanalytical Concept

According to the classical approach, culture is the opposite of nature, and mankind, as a world-transforming being, is the engine of civilization development. C.G. Jung’s writings contain a non-classical concept of culture, according to which the collective unconscious determines the way of interpreting and understanding reality, and thus the development of culture. The psychiatrist considers mankind as a symbol-forming creature. He wrote about the “symbol drive” which causes the creation of symbols to happen spontaneously. There is a connection between the action of instincts, which have a biological basis, and the archetypal source of symbols. There are forces of nature in the unconscious – in particular, the libido and instincts. Culture arises between the unconscious and consciousness, and at the same time, the process of its development has a species-specific aspect.

concept. Although in the interpretation of symbols of alchemy he emphasized the element of "opus contra naturam" as a kind of principle guiding the process of striving for the self, in his other statements nature and culture are mutually pervasive.
Jung made analogies between symbolic motifs represented in his psychiatric patients' dreams, and those appearing in myths -a myth being understood as humanity's collective dream (Jung, 2012, p. 21). His interest concentrated on collective creativity constituting a space for expressing the collective unconscious. To seize the connection between the human psyche and culture, without considering the concept of the symbol -inspired by Schelling's philosophy and at the basis of Jung's thought -is impossible. It is in that philosophy where one should look for a direct influence on this vital compound of Jung's concept -the symbol as an intermediary between consciousness and unconsciousness (Barentsen, 2015, pp. 67-79).
According to Jung, the symbol constitutes a sort of visualization, or imagination, of that which surpasses it. It points to something more than that which can be contained in its external form alone. As a carrier of meaning, it emanates an undisclosed sense, which completes it. The symbol carries out the function of bringing to reality that which derives from the unconscious, and it is through the symbol that one can receive content of what is unknowable by and of itself (Jung, 1953b, p. 276). The Holy Mass, a ritual activity, is a sort of symbol, of which Jung said: Now a symbol is not an arbitrary or intentional sign standing for a known and conceivable fact, but an admittedly anthropomorphic -hence limited and only partly valid -expression for something suprahuman and only partly conceivable. It may be the best expression possible, yet it ranks below the level of the mystery it seeks to describe. (Jung, 1975, p. 207) In Schelling's identity system, the symbol carries out a similar, unifying function. It is something primal, underlying art (Krzemieniowa, 1983, p. 26); in this system, it is related to a theory of art, and not of the psyche, as it is in Jung's concept. One can, however, find significant similarities between the two. Schelling's works constituted the intellectual foundation for Jung, although we do not find any reference to the former in the bibliography of Jung's works. Schelling states that the symbol derives from an eternal principle of coexistence of finiteness (or boundedness) and infinity (Schelling, 1983, p. 66). It constitutes a synthesis of the general and of the specific; and within it, the general becomes the specific. The philoso pher called the symbol the most sophisticated kind of synthesis (i.e., a unification of opposites). Its purpose is to externalize and render objective that which is internal and subjective (Krzemieniowa, 1983, p. 27). Thus, the symbol not only becomes a carrier of some content, but also carries out the task of unifying opposites -such is one of the elementary ideas of Jung's analytical psychology.
In addition, in The Philosophy of Art, we read that in the symbol, the general becomes the specific and vice-versa. The symbol, Sinnbild in German, is a conjunction of the words "meaning" and "picture". Schelling points to the way this word perfectly reflects the nature of the thing it designates, since the symbol is precisely a pictorial (figurative) expression of the meaning (sense) of what it points to (Schelling, 1983, p. 78). In order to express meaning, a certain kind of global grasp of the matter is necessary. Such an understanding of the symbol is also present in Jung's thinking, and closely connected to the notion of wholeness, which, at the same time, refers to the question of mental unity. As is the case with Schelling's idealist philosophy, Jung does not tie the symbol to the absolute. In the psychoanalytical concept, the symbol expresses the archetypal; but even in this case, it is a carrier of that which surpasses it, referring to the collective unconscious. Both authors demonstrate a similar thinking about the symbol, and both attributed extraordinary importance to it. The function of the symbol in Jung's concept is best explained by the metaphor of the bridge, as found on the border of the conscious and the unconscious, enabling a conscious reception of what mankind is not aware of. The symbol makes these contents gain a form that may be seized through consciousness, and that emanates a certain meaning seized by the intellect. Since the symbol refers to understanding and interpreting lived experiences, it enables mankind's discovery of the impression of meaningful life. Arguably, the symbol serves also as a bridge between nature and culture. The mental function that engenders the creation of symbols is related to the biological basis of human life. However, the symbol, as a form that is figurative, global, that carries meaning, that creates a world of values, and that opens the path to the emergence of culture, could not exist without a creative imagination's actions. The object of Jung's research defined as "culture" means, above all, various mythical and symbolic forms, stemming from the collective unconscious and from archetypes. The latter derive from the domain of the collective unconscious. They constitute universal and innate forms of meaning -as defined by R. Brook (2015, p. 138), consolidated within culture, and especially within myths, religious symbolism, works of art and literature, as well as philosophical treatises, that is, in all creations of the domain of the "human spirit" (Jung, 1953b, p. 70). What is more, Jung would sometimes speak of culture in a broad sense, including civilizational transformations; in fact, he named one of his volumes Civilization in Transition (Jung, 1970a). This involves understanding the myth as a symbolic expression of the processes of the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is also the source of processes on a social level, similar to the process of individuation in the individual psyche. The modifications happening on collective and unconscious ground, and conditioned by archetypes, are reflected in the territory of the selfexpressing of the society as a whole. This means that modifications are perceptible on the level of the worldview, emotions, in the world of values as well as anti-values; archetypes are expressed in symbols within religion, art, and politics. One can look for the influence of Hegel's philosophy in this dialectic of Jung's thought. The question of the relationship between psychoanalytical theory and Hegel's philosophy will be discussed further on.
The Biological Basis for Spiritual Life "Nature", in relation to Jung's psychological theory, should be understood as the biological and specific basis for mental life and human life in general. The concept of the collective unconscious itself derives from the assumption that there are mental conditions connecting all of humanity by way of belonging to the same species Homo sapiens. In the sphere of the collective unconscious, one finds, besides archetypes, instincts and the libido drive which interact with human mental -thus, also cultural and sociallife. At the biological level, instincts, as well as archetypes, find a common source in the collective unconscious, which makes them not opposites, but instead two aspects of the same, i.e., "the rule governing reality", as Jung states in his later works, when his concept gained a Neoplatonic and metaphysical dimension (Jung, 1967, p. 184). Even if the collective unconscious was believed to be a spiritual principle preceding the material level of existence, it is within mankind that it gains its universal dimensionon the mental level, set upon biology and common to all humanity; it is the foundation of mental life. The unconscious is where the instincts, the libido and the archetypes dwell -the level of biological life (evolutional) as well as of culture (deriving from the symbolic and spiritual level) are set upon it. According to Jung, even though all manifestations of human creativity (i.e., religion, art, politics) are founded upon the impact of the collective unconscious on the psyche, they are not merely reducible to the level of the latter. It is a primal source from which impulses aiding survival, reproduction, and the creation of symbolic images flow. A given work of art can be created through conscious decision-making, which does not equal the creative process being free from the influence of the contents of the collective unconscious. If one considers the compilations of conscious and unconscious contents within creative processes, one can find that culture is created on their frontier. One of Jung's early works, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Jung, 1925), contains a concept of the transformation of mental libido energy into manifestations of spirituality. It is a concept deriving the spiritual, and at the same time symbolic, level of life directly from the libido drive. Being the entirety of mental energy, it effectively constitutes a sort of physical energy; therefore, there exists a very tight relationship between nature and culture. It can be argued that culture derives from nature, being not its negation, but instead its transformation. Jung would even consider the process of the transformation of the libido, driving individual inner life, as analogical to the process of cultural development. He wrote: "There is no doubt that this transformation of libido moves in the same direction as, broadly speaking, the cultural modification, conversion, or displacement of natural drives" (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1558 and "The secret of cultural development is the mobility and disposability of psychic energy" (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1516. This is the result of the fact that the libido, which is form-creating and possesses the capacity to personify, influences culture via mythological images whose spontaneous emergence it influences. Jung would even maintain that cultural modifications tend in the same direction as libido transformations: they are coupled (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1558). The libido does not have form, but it is capable of creating form. It transforms not only into mental images consolidated in culture -entering the domain of "human spirit" -but also into the form of instincts, affects. Jung pointed to two possible ways of transforming mental energy: a lower and a higher one, i.e., a sexual drive and a "spiritual fertility", e.g., mysticism (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1550. He considered myth the most common carrier of mental images, defined as archetypes. The unconscious consists, among other things, of remnants of the undifferentiated archaic psyche, including its animal stages. The reactions and products of the animal psyche have a uniformity and constancy of which we seem able to discover only sporadic traces in man. (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1676 This excerpt points to the relationship of the modern human's psyche not only with that of his or her proto-ancestors, but also representatives of the species preceding Homo sapiens in evolution -animals. Jung speaks here of the unconscious, not the libido, yet the sphere of the unconscious constitutes a primal source of unconscious images -even if Jung appropriates the form-creating property to drive, it comes into effect in an unconscious way. This does not mean that the libido and the unconscious are one and the same; the unconscious also contains archetypes and instincts. Moreover, the libido constitutes a sort of energy in itself, and though described by Jung as mental energy, it is, in fact, an energy with physical potential, which cannot be said of the unconscious. These views indicate clearly that Jung treated mankind as a psychophysical unity from the very start, one in which what pertains to drives, or even that which is animal in humans, pervades -mutually -the mental, and even the spiritual. Especially in the early stages of his scientific work, Jung sought the source of mental images in the libido. It is then that he developed his concept of the collective unconscious. In the 1920s, he started to describe it as containing archetypal forms at the source of symbolically expressed mental contents. Yet Jung noted from the very beginning that the human psyche is endowed with a tendency to create images, which he first called imago, Urbild (protoimage), and Bild (image). Jung considered the images he examined as originating from a stream of unformed drive, constituting a sort of vital force. Thus, they were based in a dimension of life that is biological: set in nature and the process of evolution. Not until 1919 did he postulate the existence of so-called unknowable archetypal forms, whose (spiritual or biological) basis is impossible to determine (Jung, 2011b, p. 150). This is an opportunity to discuss the relationship between the libido drive and the symbol, and therefore the process in which drive-related content is transformed into spiritual, figurative and semantic content. Many important statements pertaining to this relationship are found in Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido. Above all, the libido has the capacity to create symbols, or is susceptible to transformations into a symbolic form. Jung describes them as unformed, but form-creating. Symbols, on the other hand, transform them from a "lower energy", drive-related form, into a "higher", spiritual one (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1731). Jung maintained that his theory was of psychological, and not metaphysical, relevance. Though it was pointed out to him that he had created a theory exceeding the paradigm of psychological sciences, the early period saw him describe the "spiritual world" as a domain of human culturalmythological, religious, artistic, and at that, political and social -activity.
How does physical energy get transformed into a symbolic form? Already at that time, Jung did not exclude that a certain spiritual principle is behind the process; he did, however, find it impossible to accept such a hypothesis from a psychological sciences' standpoint. It occurs spontaneously, unconsciously, and involves fantasies. The nature of unconscious processes is unexaminable. Only its manifestations in the form of symbols carrying an energetic charge and acting upon the psyche are epistemologically available. That is the reason why Jung linked imaginations (mostly religious ones, initially) to the mental libido energy -the former are its carrier, as it were, though the libido assumes a symbolic form. The impulse releasing the libido's form-creating process is consciousness and its confrontation with it. Jung described the libido drive as "the symbol's flywheel" (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1728) that grants the symbol energy thanks to which it can interact and permeate into the conscious psyche.
It is not possible to discuss the problem of symbol-formation without reference to the instinctual processes, because it is from them that the symbol derives its motive power. It has no meaning whatever unless it strives against the resistance of instinct, just as undisciplined instincts would bring nothing but ruin to man if the symbol did not give them form. Hence a discussion of one of the strongest instincts, sexuality, is unavoidable, since perhaps the majority of symbols are more or less close analogies of this instinct. To interpret symbol-formation in terms of instinctual processes is a legitimate scientific attitude, which does not, however, claim to be the only possible one. I readily admit that the creation of symbols could also be explained from the spiritual side, but in order to do so, one would need the hypothesis that the "spirit" is an autonomous reality which commands a specific energy powerful enough to bend the instincts round and constrain them into spiritual forms. This hypothesis has its disadvantages for the scientific mind, even though, in the end, we still know so little about the nature of the psyche that we can think of no decisive reason against such an assumption. In accordance with my empirical attitude I nevertheless prefer to describe and explain symbol-formation as a natural process, though I am fully conscious of the probable one-sidedness of this point of view. (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1728 The symbol and drive coexist, creating an opposition, and the drive's symbolic outlet stops it from being potentially dangerous to humans and their mental health. Jung considered the transformation of drives into symbols to lead them to unscramble, deprive them of the capacity to "spoil man[kind]", to protect them from getting lost in a multiplicity of drives heading towards various needs with uninhibited force. The psyche constitutes a dynamic, self-regulating system, and the "symbol's drive" leading to the emergence of figurative and culture-forming contents fulfils an important role in maintaining it in equilibrium (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1760. The fantasy partakes in creating imaginations analogous to libido pursuits; therefore, what Jung called mental images gets realized through the creation of the possibility to indulge drive and accord it the form of a symbol. Fantasy has archaic qualities, that is, it constitutes a repertory of images created through experiences lived in distant times. Thus, it is not removed from the influence of human experiences or specific -biological, psychological and cultural -evolution. Although it has stored certain important images since primal times and gives them a contemporary character by activating them in the modern human's mind, this treasury of imaginations undergoes gradual change (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1641. Fantasy itself influences the creation of images, being at the same time formed by them; it influences the human psyche, being influenced by the psyche, which leads to the fantasy's evolution. This shows the strict link between the psyche and the imagination. According to Jung, despite the fact that the libido is form-and symbol-creating by nature, it shows a tendency for wildness, unbridledness, quite like the primal condition -nature (Jung, 2014(Jung, , p. 1828. This conception shows resolutions of a double nature: on the one hand, the libido partakes in the emergence of culture, and on the other hand, resists it, and can hardly be restrained. In Jung's later works (1950)(1951)(1952)(1953)(1954)(1955)(1956)(1957)(1958)(1959)(1960) we see a similar problem -archetypal forms are the source of culture, and the human psyche is under their direct influence; but it is the "overcoming of the archetype", escaping its influence that constitutes the main impulse for the process of individuation and is -not without influence on the process of cultural development -best for mankind's development.
What we have described above are the main tenets of Jung's concept, concerning the relationship between the biological basis for the psyche and the process of cultural emergence. Without defining the symbol-libido relationship, we could not begin to describe the connection between the worlds of nature and culture, which interpenetrate on a psychological, individual level. Jung found symbolic proto-images to become autonomous in regard to the libido drive. Since those images carry meaning and sense, they contribute to creating an order, naturally opposed to the unorderly drive. However, the libido is primal relative to them. It is what conditions spiritual processes; one can then say that even if the act of creating symbolic imago contests and serves the inhibition of the libido, it cannot exist independently of it. The libido releases primal impulses, acting as a medium between the psychological and the biological level. Culture cannot exist without the mental energy-derived level, that energy being created on a biological basis (Jung, 1961, p. 134).
The Jungian perception of culture also comprises the category of instinct. Instincts, innate reactions of the human body and forces that move humans on a biological level do in fact have an indirect influence on cultural processes, but one cannot overlook their relevance to the question. According to the original definition, archetypes are psychological equivalents of instincts (Jung, 2011, p. 150). Archetypes themselves are the source of a typically human grasp of the world, aprioric forms of meaning; they serve to experience and understand reality. Thus, as instincts' analogons, they constitute a certain psychological and hence spiritual order, corresponding to that which acts on the biological level. As as innate proto-images and potential forms of meaning, they are a source for symbolic forms filling in the space of human life, that is, the space of the world of culture.
Jung stated that instincts have both a physiological and a psychological aspect. This apprehension of instinct comes from P. Janet's concept expressed in Les Nervoses 1909 (Piróg, 1999, p. 40). In reference to the process of cultural emergence, the most interesting one is found among those singled out by Jung -creative instinct. The psychological aspect of the performance of instinct is connected to the will to act, and the physiological one makes it akin to the forces of nature. This reasoning points once more to the fact that the capacity to create is not by itself detached from the physiological and biological basis. Although it transfers to the spiritual level, the psychologically-conditioned need of the typically human understanding of reality connected to the act of conferring and experiencing meaning does not exist independently of its roots in the world of nature. In Instinct and the Unconscious (Jung, 1919), archetypes were described as typical forms of perception, in contrast to instincts, described as typical forms of action. The instinctual basis for creativitya kind of human activity conditioned by physiology -constitutes the most primal impulse to create culture. Indeed, it would not be possible without archetypes that give direction to the understanding and interpretation of reality. Jung considered instincts as forces more primal compared to archetypesthe latter that correspond to instincts; the opposite is not true. There is no mental and spiritual without a physical basis in the form of a body. Jung's psychological concept has been accused of having a metaphysical undertone that we find especially in his later works. The outline of his views concerning the function of instincts and the whole biological basis that we have presented here introduces us into aspects of his ideas that have always remained important and which he would not renounce even when the ideas contained in his later works took on a Neoplatonic inclination. The concept of the unconscious started gaining an ontological dimension in the 1930s, and archetypes as a priori forms became a kind of rules conditioning all of reality (Jung, 1975). This Neoplatonic undertone of the theory of archetypes and the concept of Unus Mundus, stating that spiritual reality precedes the material one, is related to the concept of the psychoid -a proto-particle of spirituality, a near-mental quality; something between a material and a spiritual entity. In later works, Jung describes archetypes as part of the psychoid; however, they do not lose their basis in mankind's biological life and its evolutionary character (Cambray, 2014, p. 90).

Jung's Dialectic Concept of Culture
The dialectic character of the process of cultural development in Jung's concept has been remarked on by Ewa Kwiatkowska in her article Poszukiwanie kultury. O jungizmie od strony kulturologicznej (Kwiatkowska, 2003). This perspective clarifies the question of the relationship between the biological and the spiritual level at the basis of cultural processes and mankind's culture-forming activity, especially in reference to Jung's later writings. According to Kwiatkowska, culture happens on the border between the conscious and the unconscious. Culture forms on mythical and symbolic imaginations; it rests on the repertory of unconscious contents derived from archetypes, whereas the force of creative impulses is caused by instincts and libido.
For Jung, the goal of a human's mental life is the process of individuation -the integration of opposites represented by archetypal schemas. A collective equivalent of this process is human striving for the archetype of the self -the most important of archetypes, representing mental completeness, i.e., the integration of all opposites. These postulates, distinctive of the late stage in development of Jung's psychological concept, are relevant to the question of culture.
Kwiatkowska suggests that, at first glance, Jung's writings draw an apparent image of culture as the self of humanity (self-perfecting); however, in reality, the self is only a direction in which it has developed alongside humanity since the dawn of time, and embedded at the specific level. One should note that from the very start, Jung considered cultural development as non-accidental, flowing in the same direction as the actions of the libido, while culture itself is organized; not only by the archetype of the self, acting as its guide, but through compensation, similar to the human psyche (Kwiatkowska, 2003, p. 210). That being so, the tensions emerging between archetypal opposites are balanced by different cultural, ideological, and aesthetic trends appearing through the ages. Some examples of these are alchemy or Gnosticism, as movements antagonistic to Christianity (Kwiatkowska, 2003, p. 210). The processes of cultural formation are complex and layered. Apart from the layer of compensation, there exists a dialectic one.The process of cultural development advances thanks to collective movement towards the archetype of the self and the evolution of consciousness, gradually autonomizing itself from the unconscious. The autonomation of consciousness is visible within cultural and civilizational development, against the backdrop of evolution running from our archaic ancestors, primitive people, to modern humans. Similarly to Lévy-Bruhl, Jung thought the primal human psyche was to act in accordance with participation mystique -a feeling of oneness with the world -whereas a gradually increasing subject-object opposition (the result of an increase in consciousness, i.e., of the ego archetype) led to modern individualism. Significantly, Jung did not have an idealistic approach to the process of the development of consciousness. His idea is far from the idealism represented by Hegel, for instance, whom Kwiatkowska evokes in this context, seeking an analogy between his and Jungian thought. Certainly one ought to agree with Kwiatkowska that the vision of culture derives from nature (libido, instincts) and, at the same time, negates it in a way (the archetype, the symbol, the world of values), which brings to mind Hegelian dialectics synthesizing thesis and antithesis. The archetype acting upon a particular psyche striving for its growth is also overcome, and in this process of rendering conscious, by escaping from under its influence, one can perceive an image of the synthesis of opposites.
Yet one should instead look for the philosophical sources of Jung's outlook in J. Böhme's mysticism which speaks of the coexistence of exclusive principles. When their conflict is annihilated, a third principle -a new quality that unites the two preceding ones -emerges (Böhme, 2013, p. 30). Note that this idea inspired and helped create Hegel's philosophical system. More over, Jung himself referred to Böhme's writings, and in particular to their Gnostic dimension; but he was critical of Hegel. If Böhme's ideas clearly influenced Jung's outlook, Jung himself never described his cultural vision as a dialectic one. Culture was not even the direct object of his research.
His texts contain a number of takes on culture: as a result of archetypes being the overcoming of instincts -which is the motor for cultural development. In this case, culture is also a negation of nature. A different way it emerges is through mankind overcoming the archetype, understood as the act of acquiring self-awareness. This act, being part of the individuation process, takes place on the consciousness-unconsciousness axis. Under way of integrating further mental contents, there is release from under the unconscious influence of archetypes. One of the later ways Jung understood culture is by seeking the expression of a collective dimension of individuation in the process of cultural development (Jung, 1959, pp. 184-187). On a collective level, culture becomes an expression of the self, or rather striving for it. Another level from which to apprehend culture according to Jung is where its compensational character is seen. This compensational purpose emerges through mutual interaction from archetypal opposites (the polarity of archetypes and coexistence of opposites as the main rule underlying the functioning of the psyche, but also of all nature). On the level of culture, this equilibrating rule is manifested when opposite trends in art, religion, politics etc. emerge. We touch upon the question of the multilayeredness of the concept of culture as found in Jung's writings: the impulse for its emergence can be a negation of instinct, or the archetype, a transformation of the libido, compared to Schopenhauer's uninhibited will into a symbolic, orderly form that gains meaning, despite still carrying an emotional charge. Each one is a potential impulse for the creation of culture -first symbols, and with them meanings, interpretations. Those which are universal and concern the collective level, common for all humanity, are consolidated within in, subsequently creating cultural motifs. The multiple ways that Jung apprehends culture imply various research problems, i.e., the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness, the archetype and instinct, the question of determinism. From our point of view, it was interesting to insist on the symbol's biological basis, and then to show how culture complements nature, in the process of individuation, striving for the archetype of the self on a collective level.
When examining Jung's concept of culture we notice that it is difficult to discern a limit between the biological, and the psychological and spiritual levels. Even if the libido constitutes the entirety of mental energy, it derives from the physiological level -it is also vital energy, and at the same time a creative one in and of itself. One could say that the biological and the cultural level are mutually pervasive; the limits between them get blurred. This can be observed in the case of the symbol -a carrier of meaning endowed with an energetic charge that lets it act upon the human psyche. Above all, from the perspective of Jung's psychoanalytic concept, the biological basis for human existence and mankind's spiritual life are unified. Jung assumes the perspective of the psychophysical unity of humanity. Archetypes, instincts and the libido drive have a common source in the collective unconscious.