The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

by William Strauss

In Jung's view, certain symbols, aspirations, and behavioral modes (archetypes) are biologically hard wired into mankind. In all eras and cultures, he said, these archetypes have become so deeply embedded in mankind's “collective unconscious” that no degree of progress, real or imagined, could weaken their grip. Identifying these archetypes by probing dreams and myths, Jung fashioned his theory after the ancient quaternities, best represented visually by the quadrisected Hindu mandala. His four archetypal functions draw energy from the dynamic antagonism between two sets of opposites: thinking versus feeling, sensing versus intuiting. When one function dominates the psyche, its opposite is necessarily suppressed as the psyche's “shadow.” Past midlife, people become conscious of the limits of their dominant archetype and draw energy (constructively or destructively) from its shadow. Jung called this quest for life-cycle self-correction “individuation.”