Unconscious

1. Etymology

Unconscious names both contents inaccessible to the ego and a psychic place with its own character and laws. Latin in- + conscius (knowing with). Related: personal unconscious; collective unconscious; ego as center of consciousness.

2. Plain summary

The unconscious is everything psychic that is not presently related to the “I”—not a metaphysical cellar only, and not merely forgotten scraps. Jung treats it as a psychological borderline concept justified by experience: instincts and archetypes rise from it; repressed personal material rests in it; future contents may become conscious from it.

He distinguishes a personal layer (once-conscious, forgotten or repressed) from a collective layer (never personally acquired, shared structural forms). Images, dreams, and symptoms are its languages. Consciousness without it is a fiction; compensation and opposites describe how the two poles relate.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common unconscious-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
totality of psychic phenomena lacking consciousness; source of instinctual forces and archetypal forms; exclusively psychological (not metaphysical) concept; borderline concept covering contents/processes not related to the ego; vast and inexhaustible; not only repressed repository; fluid state (known-but-not-thinking; forgotten; repressed; subliminal; future conscious); personal vs collective layers; phylogenetic/instinctual bases; language of images/symbols/fantasies; independent operation of collective layer; relation to ego; complexes as unconscious actors; shadow / anima/animus as personifications; libido as energy of unconscious processes; compensation from below; projection of unconscious contents; active imagination as dialogue; individuation as relation to the unconscious.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology the unconscious is both a descriptive class of contents and a topographic region with personal and collective strata. Lexica stress Jung’s break with a purely repressive model and his insistence on an empirical, non-metaphysical justification. Descent Press keeps Sharp and Samuels in §4 so lexicon paraphrase never silently becomes Jung’s voice House collective unconscious already carries the shared-substratum lemma; this entry holds the general concept.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Unconscious. The totality of all psychic phenomena that lack the quality of consciousness. … The unconscious … is the source of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms or categories that regulate them, namely the archetypes. … an exclusively psychological concept… a psychological borderline concept, which covers all psychic contents or processes that are not conscious, i.e., not related to the ego in any perceptible way. … The unconscious is both vast and inexhaustible.

(Sharp, 1991)

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986)

Unconscious … Jung uses the term… both to describe mental contents which are inaccessible to the ego and to delimit a psychic place with its own character, laws and functions. … not solely as a repository of repressed, infantile, personal experience but also as a locus of psychological activity… phylogenetic, instinctual bases… The former, the personal unconscious… resting upon the latter, the collective unconscious.

(Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986, pp. 155–157)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

The concept of the unconscious is for me an exclusively psychological concept, and not a philosophical concept of a metaphysical nature. In my view the unconscious is a psychological borderline concept, which covers all psychic contents or processes that are not conscious, i.e., not related to the ego in any perceptible way. My justification for speaking of the existence of unconscious processes at all is derived simply and solely from experience…
(Jung, 1921/1971, CW 6, pp. 664–665, ¶837)

The unconscious, on the other hand, is the source of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms or categories that regulate them, namely the archetypes.
(Jung, 1931/1969, CW 8, pp. 212–213, ¶342)

The unconscious is not simply the unknown, it is rather the unknown psychic… So defined, the unconscious depicts an extremely fluid state of affairs: everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious.
(Jung, 1947/1969, CW 8, pp. 243–244, ¶382)

See also: unconsciousness; type; collective unconscious; ego; libido; archetype; complex; compensation; opposites; shadow; projection; active imagination; individuation; self. quaternity.

References

Jung, C. G. (1969). On the nature of the psyche. 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. 8, pp. 243–244, ¶382). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1947)

Jung, C. G. (1969). The structure of the psyche. 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. 8, pp. 212–213, ¶342). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1931)

Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types. 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. 664–665, ¶837). 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.