Understanding & Transforming Complexes: A Jungian Beginner’s Guide
Unconscious complexes shape your behaviour more than you realise.
Learn how to understand, work with, and transform them in this beginner’s guide.
What is a complex?
I’ll attempt to give two definitions: a general definition and a more typically Jungian definition.
General definition
A complex is an unconscious cluster of our psychological history around a common human theme that’s held together by an emotional tone.
Complexes are mainly formed by your experience of your parents and formative emotional encounters.
Shaped by emotionally charged personal experiences, they’re detached from the ego, and resemble mini-personalities below our conscious identity.
Jungian definition
In The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego, Jungian analyst Erel Shalit offers an insightful Jungian definition.
For Shalit, a complex is a:
'...network of associations, images, ideas, memories, or the like, clustered around a nuclear, archetypal core of meaning, and characterised and held together by a common emotional tone'.
Shalit notes the three components, or layers, of a complex:
An archetypal core…
Around which personal experiences cluster…
And an emotional tone that serves as the gravitational force that holds this microcosm together – this manifests as the surface symptoms
In Jungian discourse, an archetype is a core psychic structure shared by all humans. Jungian analyst Bud Harris describes them as ‘the psychological blueprints in our makeup for how our experiences and emotions can be channelled’.
Archetypes are inherited systems shaped by millions of years of human development, and relate to universal experiences, situations, and relationships.
For Jung, an archetype is the nuclear centre of any complex. He wrote about complexes like:
Mother complex: The early, often formative, experiences with one's mother and the archetype of the mother figure
Father complex: The early, often formative, experiences with one's father and the archetype of the father figure
Anima: The totality of the unconscious feminine qualities in a man
Animus: The totality of the unconscious masculine qualities in a woman
The layered structure of complexes
Shalit's definition highlights the layered structure of a complex.
On the outer layer, there's an emotional tone that manifests as surface symptoms. A layer deeper, there's a constellation of associated personal experiences. At the core is the archetype.
Recognising this is instructive in how to approach complexes. Put simply:
Identify the surface symptoms and emotional tone
Identify the associated personal experiences
Encounter the archetype
For Jung, an encounter with an archetype is a powerful psychic experience that can shift consciousness and aid understanding of oneself and the world.
How complexes are formed
Shalit’s definition also helps us understand how complexes emerge.
Complexes are formed when you have personal, emotionally charged experiences around a universal human theme or archetype that aren’t fully processed or resolved by the conscious mind.
This is important, so let’s explore it in more detail.
Most complexes form in childhood. Children aren’t equipped to process intense emotional experiences, and even seemingly innocuous experiences can represent a perceived threat to a child’s sense of self.
To protect itself, the conscious mind often buries these experiences and emotions in the unconscious. This is an autonomous psychic process, not something a child performs consciously.
As a result, the unconscious becomes a repository of unprocessed or unresolved emotions, conflicts, and experiences. When these unprocessed psychic contents cluster around a common theme, they form complexes.
The psychic reality of complexes is widely accepted in depth psychology – a branch of psychology which maintains that the vast majority of the personality is determined and shaped by unconscious processes.
We all have complexes – both positive and negative – because we all have emotional experiences. While negative complexes are completely normal, they’re painful, and can significantly impact our lives and our ability to change.
Jung recognised that examining and resolving complexes is key in the journey towards individuation.
How the ego deals with complexes
Jungian analyst Jolande Jacobi described four ways that your ego deals with complexes:
Remaining totally unconscious of their existence
Identifying with them, so that when they’re triggered, they become the 'I'
Projecting them
Confronting them (realising that they exist and awakening to the journey of transformation)
The ego often builds defences to avoid triggering complexes, such as denial, perfectionism, addiction, avoidance, and so on. This is an important point – even when complexes aren’t activated, they can still exert a strong influence over how we act, using up energy and dividing us.
This will likely remain the case until the ego faces the complex (and this doesn’t mean battling it).
What do complexes do?
Remember, complexes are formed when emotionally charged experiences cluster in the unconscious because they weren’t properly resolved or processed.
But repressing emotions and experiences doesn’t reduce their impact on our lives.
These clusters of psychic experience are like sub-personalities with their own autonomy; when unresolved, they can exert unconscious and maladaptive influence on how we think, feel, and act.
Complexes lead to patterns as to how you conduct yourself in life. When complexes awaken under the right conditions, these splinter personalities can take over the conscious ego, effectively possessing us and causing us to act in ways at odds with our values.
When a complex is touched, intense emotions surge. It's common to react angrily, defensively, untruthfully, or by projecting emotions onto something external. They dominate your attention, override natural thought and cloud your better judgment.
Earlier, I referenced Jacobi's four ways that the ego deals with a complex:
Remaining totally unconscious of their existence
Identifying with them, so that when they’re triggered, they become the 'I'
Projecting them
Confronting them (realising that they exist and awakening to the journey of transformation)
Identifying with them and projecting them are both potentially destructive, as they involve the literal superimposition of the complex onto the conscious mind. Even remaining unconscious of their existence is potentially harmful when we consider the influence the unconscious has over the conscious personality.
The basic mechanics of a complex
While there’s no uniform way complexes play out, the points below may be helpful in understanding their basic mechanics:
A present-day event that resembles the original wound (even subtly) activates the complex
The triggering event 'touches' the complex and releases its emotional charge
The complex overrides the conscious ego so we identify with all the complex's thoughts and emotions
We start to see the world through the emotional lens of the complex
We react habitually in ways that likely aren't conducive to our psychological health, further reinforcing the strength of the complex
Conflicts become infectious when they're unconscious. If the ego isn't sufficient to face a complex, it can resemble a sickness within the psyche. They’re dangerous and draining, and you can spend much of your life defending against them as if they were physical illnesses.
How do you spot a complex?
You can often spot when a complex has been triggered by the proportion of your response.
As we’ve discussed, complexes are autonomous, so when they’re activated we can feel as though we’ve been possessed.
Shalit’s framework I’ve referenced is helpful in spotting and investigating them:
Identify the surface symptoms and emotional tone
Identify the associated personal experiences
Look for an archetypal core or universal human theme
Complexes as a call to transformation
Despite the pain they cause, Jungian discourse argues that complexes can become a source of meaning, fulfilment, and authenticity. Even your most infuriating and deep-rooted complexes offer the potential for expanding and transforming your life.
Awakening to complexes initiates a journey of growth, and confronting and integrating them reflects Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey.
Borrowing ideas from Jung and Campbell, wounds are like calls to adventure – acknowledge them, and you set in motion a process that will bring about a symbolic death of an old self as a new one is born.
How to transform a complex
In Becoming Whole: A Guide to Jungian Individuation, Jungian analyst Bud Harris outlines seven steps for transforming a complex.
Accept it: Battling or repressing complexes empowers them – they have to first be accepted.
Amplify it: Write down everything you feel without holding back.
Write a history of it: Consider where it originated – go back as far as you can and write a complete history of it, its associated thoughts, and emotions.
Give it a name or image: Churchill famously called his depression his ‘black dog’. Naming complexes makes them recognisable and differentiates them from yourself.
Examine how it impacts your everyday life: Keep a daily journal reflecting on the actions, thoughts, emotions, and images that arise from a complex each day.
Dialogue with it using active imagination: Give it form and voice so you can understand what it has to say. Learn more about active imagination.
Bring awareness to it each day: Similar to step 5, Harris suggests writing the complex in a journal so you’ll be reminded of it each day.
The idea is that, gradually, your ego softens and opens up to these unconscious elements so they’re no longer in conflict.
The conflict is what drains and depresses you, so Harris’s method resembles an alchemical process in that it aims to transform something draining into a new source of energy.
I talk more about conflicts in a previous post on transforming life-draining inner conflicts.
Why it's difficult
Complexes hold wounds, so facing them is painful. It may involve accepting shame, embarrassment, or feelings of isolation and separation.
Acceptance is the key point – something Jungian teachings emphasise. Individuation is about wholeness – unifying the splintered off parts of our psyche.
As long as the ego remains in conflict or battle with repressed psychic material, the personality remains divided.
You have to accept and relate to those wounded, inferior, and painful parts of yourself because you have to integrate them.
Learn how poet Allen Ginsberg was able to change the face of his shame by engaging with it.
What’s to gain?
Jung’s teachings around suffering as a potential source of renewal capture the optimistic and life-affirming qualities that make his ideas so appealing.
Complexes are often energy-draining and detrimental, but are loaded with the potential for transformation. Unlocking that energy through the processes outlined and professional support can trigger a shift in consciousness that improves our lives.
Earlier, I compared the process of integrating complexes to Campbell’s hero’s journey. It may read as flowery or overblown (as writing on these types of topics often does), but this passage from Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces captures what’s to gain:
‘We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. And where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.’
How does this relate to individuation?
Individuation is the process of becoming more whole by integrating repressed or unconscious elements of our psyche and living more fulfilling and authentic lives as a result.
It refers to a lifelong practice of developing self-knowledge, facing buried or undiscovered parts of ourselves, and living the lessons they have to teach us.
As discussed, complexes represent splinter-personalities in the unconscious that drain psychic energy and threaten the stability of the conscious self.
As long as they remain divided from and in conflict with the conscious ego, they can have a stifling and potentially destructive impact on our lives.
Recognising, accepting, and integrating complexes represents a distinct but interconnected component of a wider individuation practice.
Really enjoyed this article. Thank you!