Fantasy, reality and psychology

In previous articles, the difference between fantasy and reality was introduced but always from the perspective of specific psychological concerns. This article introduces the deeper psychological level that influences fantasies and reality.

Clearly, we all live with a unique sense of reality. These realities originate in everyone's personal psychologies, their families of origin and early conditionings, their cultures, their peers, from social collective groups and media, and from archetypes.

Common, repetitive human experiences throughout time produce elements in our psychologies known as archetypes, which are represented as symbols in myths, dreams, fantasies, imagination, religions and daily life. As examples, consider how people from centuries ago lived with fears and threats of being killed by animal predators, starvation, diseases and so forth. These common fears and threats were eventually defended against by superstitions, behaviors and religions, which were formed from symbols representing archetypes in the human psyche (human psychology). These and all other archetypal developments throughout time soon became part of everyone's unconscious (hidden) psychologies-both yours and mine.

Although we all share the same archetypes in our psyches, the active archetypes in one person often differ from those in another person. This resembles the fact that everyone shares the human genome but that active genes are different in each person. Given that there are thousands of archetypes in each person, some active and many others inactive and the fact that archetypes are expressed in symbols within our psychologies and in life, we can begin to understand how archetypes influence fantasy and reality and that fantasy and reality are the same.

Previous articles described how a group or collective can be taken over by an active archetype; that is, how everyone in the group experiences the same collective reality in their lives. One need only think of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust as examples. An individual can also be taken over by one or several active archetypes, producing images, emotions and symbols that influence a person's thinking, beliefs, experiences in life and their inner sense of ego (identity, beliefs and values). As a result, if you and I are taken over by different active archetypes, our realities will be different, and I would consider you to be living a fantasy-a false reality-and vice-versa.

So, if your fantasy and reality are not aligned with the best-known facts in life, then attempting to alter your fantasy/reality to form a different reality would benefit you and everyone else.