Up: [[Jungian Glossary]] Created: 2023-07-27 Updated: 2025-11-02 The first thing to understand about a complex is this statement from Carl Jung — **We don’t have them, they have us.** Our personal unconscious is populated by complexes. They are the building blocks of the psyche, our personal psychological landscape, and we are always going to have them. A complex has, at its core, an archetypal energy. Surrounding that energy is a whole web of related images, ideas, experiences and memories. Think of it as material from your outer world that got thrown into your personal unconscious and claimed by an archetype. A complex is always connected to a very strong emotion, which can be positive or negative. You can develop a complex about almost anything. Just think of some area of your life in which you predictably struggle emotionally and you’ve hit on a complex. ### Examples of the Mother Complex The [[archetype]] of the mother is at the core of both examples. Mother and father complexes are especially powerful, determining how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world. | Surrounding the Core | Positive Mother | Negative Mother | | -------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | | Emotions | acceptance, connection | rejection, longing | | Images | a mother cradling a baby | a child left alone in the dark | | Thoughts | I am loved, I am cared for | I am unloved, I am unworthy | | Memories | A mothering figure (personal mother, grandma, kind teacher) providing a safe space to connect | needing mother but she was emotionally absent | | Sensations | warmth in chest | hollowness throughout body | | Archetypal Image | Virgin Mary | Medea - kills own children in grief and rage | Note: Language in chart is from analyst Kathleen Wiley ### How to Know When You are Gripped by a Complex The way to know if a complex has been what Jungians call activated or constellated is that the strong emotion is present and takes us over. We feel possessed by an active complex. We may experience: - Out of proportion emotional reactions - Loss of focus or attention - Loss of ego-consciousness or self-awareness - Memory loss - Inability to think (Jungian analyst, Kathleen Wiley) Again, we’re always going to have complexes. They are only considered neurotic when they prevent our normal everyday functioning. But there are a lot of times when complexes do just that and we want to lessen their control over us. How do we achieve this? ### What Doesn’t Work First, what doesn’t work. You cannot intellectualize your way out of a complex. You may understand perfectly that you are caught by something that is not true, but the feeling will persist. > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] >They (complexes) cannot be attacked by the intellect because they have no intellectual or rational basis. They are rooted in an unconscious, irrational fantasy-life which is not amenable to conscious criticism. In these cases the unconscious must be given an opportunity to produce its fantasies. ### And What Does #### Being in Analysis As we age, there are spontaneous forces in our psyche that will try to dissolve our most neurotic complexes in service of our [[individuation]]. But we can speed up the process if we are in a Jungian analysis where we learn to understand the meaning of the complex and can experience it with emotion in the safety of the analytic [[Temenos]]. #### Working with the Issue It’s through looking at what experiences in day-to-day life have constellated in you that you get to know your complexes. You have to bring that issue to consciousness and work with it. > [!orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] in *Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype CW 9i* > A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full. In other words, if we are to develop further we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have held at a distance. (para. 184) #### Writing > [!Orbit] [[Marion Woodman]] in *Addiction to Perfection* > When the mood grips us, that is the time to write — let it pour out of the unconscious. Journal writing fulfills the need to pour out the heart…. Unconsciousness needs the eyes of consciousness; consciousness needs the energy of the unconscious. Writing allows that interchange to take place. (p. 104) [[Freewriting]] can be a particularly powerful process here. #### Going to the Body Jung’s theory of the complex grew out of doing the word association test. He measured heart rate, respiration, skin temperature and reaction time as he gave people words and asked for the first word that came to mind. The more you can be aware of what different emotions feel like in your body, the faster you will catch the shift as a complex starts to take hold. #### Dreaming Significant events of the day often play out in dreams which is why [[Dream Context Matters]]. But it’s really difficult to look at our own dreams because our complexes hijack our perception so we see what we want and expect to see, not what is. This is where analysis is really helpful. But if that’s not an option working carefully with [[Dreams]] can be productive.