Tracing the Song of the Universe: A Jungian Investigation of the Archetypal Aspects of Sound

Abstract

This hermeneutic study investigates the psychological impact and meaning of sound and considers what it may reveal about our relationship to the nature of reality. Sound’s influence on the psyche and its recurring characteristics are relatively unexplored in depth psychology. The new sciences, musicology, and cosmology help us better understand sound’s role in personal and collective psychology, as understood by Swiss analytical psychologist C.G. Jung. Several perspectives are explored. A Jungian view of misophonia (reactions to unwanted sounds or noise) has the potential to expand our understanding of the role of the instincts in relation to sound and its negative influences within the psyche. Music preferences and aesthetics point to archetypal aspects of sound frequency as it relates to the collective unconscious and instincts. Cymatics (the science of vibrational phenomena) suggests sound has potential to create geometric shapes similar to mandala formations. It is argued, consequently, that these formations suggest a secret language or underlying order of the universe, implying that sound has an archetypal basis. This supposition is supported by exploring alternative scientific theories of the nature of reality within the new sciences, such as physicist David Bohm’s concept of the holomovement morphic field theory and the notion of a holographic universe as set out by Michael Talbot, which point to sound’s ontological basis and the deep connections between the collective unconscious, the cosmos, and the unitary reality described by Jung as the unus mundus.