“The psyche is not of today; its ancestry goes back many millions of years. Individual consciousness is only a flower and fruit of a season, sprung from the perennial rhizome beneath the earth.”
– C.G Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 5
Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) viewed the unconscious psyche as a rhizome, millions of years old. The subterranean rhizome has extensive underground networks. Jung regarded the rhizome as a matrix of the unconscious, the ‘root’ of the matter so to speak, to which all psyche’s ailments may be traced.
The image of a root structure embedded in soil first appeared to me in a dream. In it, a solitary root body and its rootlets lay embedded in a patch of soil. The root looked rich and vibrant but it had no manifestation on the ground above. Instead, it illumined the soil in which it was formed revealing a rich, loamy earth matrix. Although the surface and the ground below were linked, the two layers were starkly contrasted. The surface was visible and barren while the soil beneath was hidden and held an emergent form. The dream suggested a vital life process underground, the contrasting soil layers mirroring the duality of the psyche and revealing the distinctness of the underground layer.
Jung’s description of the psyche as a perennial rhizome from which all consciousness springs resonates with the image of this root that is hidden from above but is deeply animated. Contemporary visual artist Michel Alexis’ impression of the rhizome as a living entity with fluid and interwoven lines reaffirms the fact that the root is profoundly alive and connected in spite of its apparent invisibility.
The rhizome draws our attention to the buried or hidden elements of our psyche and to the particulars of its environment – the soil in which it is fostered. Rhizomatic structures form extended underground networks in soil. Jung’s relation with India was also shaped from a maze of underlying links and interconnected histories. They reveal the cultural and historical climate in which Jung’s ideas were incepted in India. Jung-India platform takes into account this environment, delving into the rudiments of the psyche in its lived context, viewing Jung’s ideas critically and using trans-disciplinary approaches in understanding the unconscious.
Contact: sulagna@jung-india.org