I remain fascinated by Jung’s ideas on archetypes and the collective unconscious—thoughts from our primal ancestors that still influence us today. Listening to old songs like “Crazy Horses” and reading Jung’s Man and His Symbols made me reflect on how little has changed. Are we repeating history, or do we simply ignore what we’ve always known?
As you will all understand by now, I am a huge fan of the old wise psychologists, the men who have also pushed psychiatry so far that we all now have access to better and better psychological care. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) were at the forefront of that battle, in my opinion. Jung still intrigues me today because of his books about the archetypes. His thoughts about all our collective subconscious, which, according to him, is still nestled under our actual subconscious.
Do we as humans still use the thoughts of our primal grandparents?
The thoughts from that time when a person could not yet think about his or her own thoughts, could not yet speak, but could only make sounds and chalk drawings on rock walls. The primitive man who already understood that not every content or text was suitable for everyone. After all, in the millennia BC, they already made rock paintings in caves in places that were only accessible to predetermined people. According to Jung, these thoughts still possessed us, and if they found it necessary, they could possess us again immediately.
Do you ever think it was all very different in the past? Wasn’t it?
I have now passed the age of sixty, and I also have the thought that it used to be much neater and more cultured. That people in those days had much more respect for each other, did you? Do you ever watch television in horror when the news reports environmental crimes, or when you are overtaken by an idiot in the Netherlands at one hundred kilometres per hour on the highway, where one hundred is allowed? Yes, it still happens to me too, but after having read again in the book “Man and His Symbols” (1964) by Carl Gustav Jung did it. Listening to some older hits “from my time” starts to change my thoughts.
Pictures: Dire Straits-Last Dodo-Owlcation
Did the “Osmond Brothers” from Utah see disaster coming?
Listening to my old favourites, I suddenly discovered a causal connection between my present and past. In the seventies of the last century, as a young boy, I often watched television with my parents, and one of our favourites at that time was the game show: “one of the Eight” , (with Mies Bouwman), a show in which people
with a good memory could win many prizes. Often large foreign artists made their debut on Dutch television in this program. On the night in question, the American Mormon boy group the “Osmond Brothers” from the American state of Utah made their appearance in the television program in question (18-11-1972). They were already “world famous” in America. They sang songs like “Crazy Horses” and “Down by the Lazy River.”
Did you immediately see fast monster cars in front of you?
Already in the seventies, the song “Crazy Horses” was about all those fast, cumbersome, and polluting cars that drove way too fast on all roads. Bob Dylan, according to my information at that time “fairly unknown” artist in Europe at that time, already wrote ballads about the meaning and nonsense of our lives and the abuse of Mother Earth by us as humans. A little later in time (1977), a new band from England (Scotland) suddenly blasted out of the speakers of our television. It was a band that has never let me go until now (2025) with their first hit, “The Sultans of Swing.” The song was written and composed by their frontman, the then unknown Mark Knopfler. Knopfler composed more songs for his band, including the song “Once upon a time in the west” on their second album. (1979)
Did you also watch the movie “Once Upon a Time in the West?”
No, the song was not about the above-mentioned film with the famous music of the Italian composer Ennico Morricone (1969), but about the degradation of the world in general. Did you feel addressed at that time? With sentences like “Mothers, let them slaughter your daughters” and “Leaving just enough room to pass” and Sunday drivers never took a chance,” and yes, you always said you didn’t know anything! It is also a statement known to me! We all know nothing about it again! A funny side effect is perhaps the fact that a young Mark Knopfler helped Bob Dylan breakthrough in Europe. Yes, even then there were the sounds that are heard again. Is it a repetition of moves, or do we as humans not want to know better, or perhaps our collective memory keeps letting us down? Again, even now in 2025 AD, the same things are at play again. Am I getting old? I hope so. Can you? Are you doing enough about it, or had you already forgotten about it? Is it a game that starts repeatedly? is someone in charge, I don’t know, you?
