Collective

1. Etymology

Collective names psychic contents that belong not to one individual but to a society, a people, or the human race in general. Related: collective-unconscious; individuation; persona; the many vs the one.

2. Plain summary

What is collective is shared—contents, and sometimes whole functions, that carry general validity rather than private stamp. The conscious personality is often only an arbitrary segment of the collective psyche; persona sits in that segment.

Identification with the collective and voluntary segregation from it are alike disease-risk. Thinking can be collective when it accords with general logic; feeling when it matches general moral expectation; sensation and intuition when they characterize a large group.

Samuels stresses the many vs the one: individuation differentiates from collective norms while still partaking of society and culture—and warns that treating the collective as a reservoir of psychic possibility can foster grandiosity and mass psychosis when individuality collapses into collective ideal (inflation).

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common collective motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
society/people/human race contents; vs individual; persona as segment of collective psyche; identification with collective = disease risk; voluntary segregation = disease risk; collective quality of whole functions; general validity / moral consciousness; many vs one; individuation differentiates from norms; reservoir of possibilities; mass psychosis / inflation caution; distinct from collective-unconscious.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology collective names shared psychic belonging—content and function—kept distinct from the structural lemma collective-unconscious. Descent Press keeps Sharp and Samuels in §4. §5 holds sample CW stamps at CW 7 / CW 6.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Collective. Psychic contents that belong not to one individual but to a society, a people or the human race in general. … The conscious personality is a more or less arbitrary segment of the collective psyche. … Identification with the collective and voluntary segregation from it are alike synonymous with disease. … A collective quality adheres not only to particular psychic elements or contents but to whole psychological functions…

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 7 ¶¶244, 485; CW 6 ¶692 in Sharp’s lemma.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — collective p. 31

collective The many in contrast to the one. … He viewed the collective as the opposite of the individual, that from which the individual must differentiate himself… The more a person becomes him or herself… the more distinctly he will vary from collective norms… When the collective is regarded as a reservoir of psychic possibilities, it is a gargantuan force capable of fostering grandiose delusions and mass psychoses…

(Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986, p. 31)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

From this point of view the conscious personality is a more or less arbitrary segment of the collective psyche. It consists in a sum of psychic facts that are felt to be personal. … This arbitrary segment of collective psyche—often fashioned with considerable pains—I have called the persona.
(Jung, 1928/1966, CW 7, p. 215, ¶244)

His psychology is as much individual as collective, but not in the sense that the individual ought to merge himself in the collective, nor the collective in the individual. … That is why identification with the collective and voluntary segregation from it are alike synonymous with disease.
(Jung, 1928/1966, CW 7, p. 388, ¶485)

COLLECTIVE. I term collective all psychic contents that belong not to one individual but to many, i.e., to a society, a people, or to mankind in general. … This collective quality adheres not only to particular psychic elements or contents but to whole functions… The antithesis of collective is individual.
(Jung, 1921/1971, CW 6, pp. 581–582, ¶692)

See also: collective-unconscious; individuation; persona; inflation; function; unconscious; ego.

References

Jung, C. G. (1966). The relations between the ego and the unconscious. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 7, pp. 215, 388, ¶¶244, 485). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1928)

Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types [Definitions]. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 6, pp. 581–582, ¶692). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.