There's Never Enough!  The Scarcity complex is the idea that there are limited resources and everyone is grabbing at the same piece of the pie. If someone acquires something of value, it's seen as taking away from everybody else because there's only so much to go around. The idea of sharing equally is not conceivable to a scarcity mindset since the belief that there will never be enough produces feelings of anxiety and fear. On the extreme end this involves actions of ‘self-preservation’ such as unlawfully taking from other persons (or institutions) – whether their belongings, money (by way of theft or fraud), or opportunities. The scarcity complex may be rooted in some form of deprivation, either as an individual experience or passed on through ancestral wounding and intergenerational trauma. Though it may be born from a genuine lack, it may remain long after impoverished conditions are left behind.
 
The Netflix series “100” (The Hundred) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction drama portraying the scarcity complex. A nuclear conflict has decimated civilization. A century later, forced by a lack of oxygen, a spaceship with the only surviving humans dispatches 100 youths back to the Earth to determine its habitability. Once on earth an ongoing fight for survival ensues as the Earth was not uninhabited.  Various factions of the human race compete for resources, taking from each other what they need, even lifeblood when it proved to be a needed resource for ongoing survival… Appalling actions are justified by “doing what is necessary to save their people”. This theme is repeated over and over - destroying others in the process of getting what is needed for themselves.
 
At some point the various factions come together out of necessity, having to hide in a bunker as radioactive levels rise again. Food becomes scarce and unthinkable choices have to be made. By the time it was safe to leave the bunker, the whole Earth had been decimated, except for a lush green valley that somehow escaped the radiation… the race was on again… with everyone going for the ‘Garden of Eden’ and no-one willing to share. In the process all was destroyed.

Image credit: https://www.vulture.com/

I post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica

#jung #carljung #jungpsychology #jungianpsychology #depthpsychology 
#analyticalpsychology #consciousness #unconscious #archetypes #shadow #symbolism 
#complexes #complextheory #childhoodwounds #trauma #Scarcity #scarcitycomplex #The100 #neverenough #fraud #theft #deprivation #capetownliving #capetownlife #southernafrica

​Awareness of how mother and father images live inside us is vital in being conscious of how they influence our current relationships.  Being cognizant of your parental complexes allows you to take back what you unconsciously project onto an intimate partner, a boss or other important relationships.
 
The parental complex is cluster of emotionally charged images, ideas, thoughts, feelings and behavior patterns originally associated with the parents. The activation of a complex is always marked by the presence of an intense emotion… like when your buttons were pushed!  We all have mother and father complexes, but they differ from person to person. The internalized imago of the parents comprises the individual’s experience of the personal parents as well as the culture and historical era in which we live.  James Hillman (2) reminds us not to confuse the mother complex with our real flesh-and-blood mother. It rather refers to the way in which our psyche has integrated the personal mother within the structure of the archetypal mother.  
 
At the core of any parental complex there is an archetypal image of the primordial parents residing in every psyche. “For instance, behind emotional associations with the personal mother (that is, the mother complex), there is the archetype of the mother— an age-old collective image spanning humanity’s experience of mothering, from nourishment and security (“positive” mother) to devouring possessiveness (“negative” mother). Similarly, behind the father complex there is the father archetype—all the experienced diversity of fathering down through the ages, from authoritarian to permissive and all shades between.” (3)
 
A parental complex can have enlivening and deadening features. A negative father or mother complex, for instance, may have been formed due to a father and/or mother who was physically or emotionally absent, self-absorbed, detached, disengaged from and disinterested in the child. A negative parental complex can manifest in self-doubt and/or idealization of others but may also include profound self-alienation which may manifest in self-hatred and/or dissociation.  

References:

1. Carl Jung, “Mind and Earth,” CW 10, par. 74.
2. https://thefeministwire.com/2011/08/resurrecting-the-great-mother/
3.  Sharp, D. (2001). Digesting Jung: Food for the journey. Toronto: Inner City Books. Chicago

 
Image Credit:

1.  'My Parents', David Hockney, 1977 / Tate
2. Cartoon by NICO ARMENTI. IllustrazioneAccademiaBARI.
3. Katie M. Berggren https://shop.kmberggren.com/
   

 
A post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica

#jung #carljung #jungpsychology #jungianpsychology #depthpsychology 
#analyticalpsychology #consciousness #unconscious #archetypes #shadow #symbolism 
#complexes #complextheory #childhoodwounds #trauma #parentalcomplexes #parents #mothercomplex #fathercomplex #mother #father #relationships #projection
#capetownliving #capetownlife #southernafrica