For several years, I’ve loved the idea that through our writing we connect to our unconscious, and through the stories that writing produces, we connect to the reader’s unconscious. I found the notion beautiful and sought to more freely tap into those layers, but attempts to study deeper on the subject failed. The Jungian approach ruined the attraction, and for the last couple of years, I’ve let the idea slip into the background, seeing it as something present that was best to allow to let happen naturally.
Recently, I’ve come to understand that doing so was the absolute right path, and more importantly, I now understand why.
As I considered the issue again, it occurred to me that I’ve been chasing the wrong rabbit. If we take the Jungian approach at face value, the unconscious is about archetypes. This brings to mind the famous quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, The Rich Boy:
Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want any one to know or than we know ourselves. When I hear a man proclaiming himself an "average, honest, open fellow," I feel pretty sure that he has some definite and perhaps terrible abnormality which he has agreed to conceal—and his protestation of being average and honest and open is his way of reminding himself of his misprision.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
The first sentence is the actual famous bit, but I wanted to share the greater context because it speaks to my error. It’s time for me to let go of this literary mysticism I held onto, seeing the unconscious as some wellspring of creativity. To the extent that the unconscious and conscious differ in that one focuses on types and the other on what makes us unique as individuals, if we focus on the former the latter will take care of itself.
The power of story comes first through what distinguishes us, and then the romance of the unconscious is that we find commonality on the most foundational level in the types buried there. If we write the individual, the connections between character and reader will forge themselves.
— Thaddeus Thomas