Imprintings & THE Levels of Unconscious

What Are “Imprintings of Our Unconscious”?

What are “imprintings”?  How do they get into our unconscious?  And how do they impact our behavior decades later?

Think of your unconscious as being a tough little baby that doesn't take on just any impression.  A good way to imagine it is like a slab of marble that’s tough enough so most experiences slide off and don't leave much of a mark.  But when an experience comes along with enough emotional energy – it uses the power of that emotional energy to engrave itself in the marble.  In engineering we call this making a template; in psychology we say this engraving forms an “archetype" in the unconscious.  Once an “archetype” is formed, it then shapes how we will experience events with similar characteristics in the future.

Konrad Lorenz, the famous biologist, demonstrated the phenomenon of imprinting in an ingenious way:

In 1935 Lorenz described learning behaviour in young ducklings and goslings. He observed that at a certain critical stage soon after hatching, they learn to follow real or foster parents. The process, which is called imprinting, involves visual and auditory stimuli from the parent object; these elicit a following response in the young that affects their subsequent adult behaviour. Lorenz demonstrated the phenomenon by appearing before newly hatched mallard ducklings and imitating a mother duck's quacking sounds, upon which the young birds regarded him as their mother and followed him accordingly.  (Thanks to David B. Johnson, MD)

For these little ducklings, Lorenz became their “archetype” of mother.  Our unconscious is full of such archetypes, and they drive our behavior throughout our lives – sometimes helpfully, but often foolishly, too.

What Are the Levels of the Unconscious?

Here's a simple explanation of how our unconscious is formed.  Imagine the conscious and unconscious are like an iceberg.  The tip that shows above the ocean surface is the conscious part of us, the "I”.  This is the part of us we often think is all of us.  This is a big mistake.  Most of the psyche (the unconscious) is below our surface just as nine-tenths of an iceberg is below the surface of the ocean.  And of course, as the arrogant designers of the Titanic learned, that is where the real danger (and power) lies.

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In our psyches, there are three levels of the unconscious that are distinct from one another: the Personal, the Cultural and the Species.  The Personal Unconscious means just what its name implies; it’s unique to each person because it is formed by uniquely individual experiences that we alone have had, and therefore are not shared or “imprinted” by others.

The Personal Unconscious:  Individually Unique

Here’s an example of how imprinting of the Personal Unconscious happens.  Imagine you're three years old and out in the backyard just having a wonderful time playing by yourself.  The neighbors arrive home with a new black Labrador puppy that stands just about as tall as you, and when they open the back door of the station wagon, it bounds out, sees you and, in its eagerness to play, dashes toward you.  Your back is turned so you don't see it coming, but suddenly you hear something akin to an approaching stampede.  The next thing you know you are knocked flat on your back, there's a mass of black fur over you, frightening warm breath, a moist tongue going slurp, slurp, slurp across your face – and TERROR!  The energy of the terror is what imprints this experience in your unconscious.

Now, let's say you're about seven years old playing in the living room, and Aunt Elizabeth comes to visit wearing a black fur coat.  She enters the living room quietly (you don't see or hear her coming), swoops you up from behind against the black fur coat, breathes in your face and gives you a big moist kiss – and you go bonkers!  Why?  Because you're not with Aunt Elizabeth; you're re-experiencing the terror that came from the imprinting of the constellation of black fur, warm breath and moist tongue years ago.  Mom, who's the on-site manager in this situation, says, "You be nice and give your Aunt Elizabeth a hug."  Mom can't manage because she doesn't understand you are in a totally separate and uniquely personal reality at that moment.

This is the difficulty of the Personal Unconscious.  Because it is so unique and personal, we don't know when another’s behavior is being directed from that level of the unconscious.  The best we can do is become close enough to those we care about so we can gain some understanding of what archetypes live in them and when those archetypes get triggered.  This requires an investment in intimacy and connection, of which psychotherapy is a commercial example and helpful to many.  Sadly, in patriarchal cultures, women have developed far greater skills of intimacy than men, and so understand and work with the Personal Unconscious far more effectively than their male counterparts (thank God mothers do most of the raising of our children!).  This massive macho liability is what Matthew Fox was referring to organizationally in early 2003 when he asked and answered:

Q:   “What do Enron, the Roman Catholic Church and the Bush Administration have in common? 

 A:    “They suffer from an excess of patriarchy.”

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The Cultural Unconscious:  Shared Conditioning

The Cultural Unconscious, as might be expected by its name, is culturally conditioned and shared.  This is because people who grow up in shared locations, religions and schools also share similar values and the imprintings that lodge these archetypes deep in the unconscious.  The "excess of patriarchy" mentioned above is such a conditioned value and imprinted archetype in most, but not all, cultures.

The "Protestant Work Ethic" is another well-known example.  Bascially, it values work for itself - even when the results produced are dubious and even destructive.  For a humorous, and true, story about this, see Performance Appraisal & Unconscious Imprinting.

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