"Using a Jungian model of the psyche to explain traditional Aboriginal approaches to mental health"

Abstract

When we use the term "psychology," we are using a Euro­ westem term about how the mind works that has no equivalency in Aboriginal understandings concerning healing. However, there are areas in both Aboriginal and Euro-western practices of healing where we may draw some parallels concerning mental health. This paper will attempt to address some of the similarities and differences between the two with an emphasis on Aboriginal understandings of healing in mental health using a model of the psyche developed by Dr. Carl Jung.

According to Jungian psychology as espoused by Dr. Carl Jung, there are three levels to the psyche; in other words, there are three levels on which the mind works. These are the ego conscious, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. Jung (1989) believed that a person's ancestral past was locked up in the collective unconscious. Like Jung, Dr. A.C. Ross, a Lacota educator and psychologist, in his book Mitakuye Oyasin: "We are all related," relates his understanding of Jungian psychology.

Dr. Jung declared that the mind could be divided into three levels... The top part of the psyche, or the mind, Dr. Jung called the conscious, also known as the ego. This is the active thinking part of the mind, the part you use when you are awake. Below that level he called the personal unconscious where all the memories since birth are...This area of the mind is repressed or suppressed. The lower level of the mind Dr. Jung called the collective unconscious. He felt that latent memory traces from your ancestral past are stored in this area (Ross 1989, p.12)