I was amused to see a TV advert for financial services (in the UK) make use of a little-known Jungian principle this week, and it serves as a good introduction to the topic for the next series of blogs.

The advert, for a Mint credit card and directed by the Perlorian Brothers, starts out by describing the principle of the 'clever-dumb balance': for every clever thing that happens in the world something dumb happens in another part of the world.  This is illustrated using a globe with a symbol showing a clever thing happening in the UK and another one showing something dumb happening in another (unknown) part of the world.  The advert continues by showing one person getting a Mint credit card (supposedly the clever action) whilst another person, in some unknown place, tries to clean an open window and thereby falls through it (which restores the clever-dumb balance).

Although the principle of balance is age-old, eg: Yin and Yang, the advert is also a parody of one of the central facets of Carl Jung's theory: the principle of compensation, hitch occurs in the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious.

One part of Jung's theory, psychological types from which the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® questionnaire was developed, focuses on the conscious mind: how we perceive information and make decisions.  But the greater part of Jung's theory is the unconscious, the unknown part of our personality, ie: the part of ourselves of which we are unaware and over which we have no control.  In Jung's theory, underpinning the relationship between conscious and unconscious is the principle of compensation: for everything that happens in the conscious mind, something arises in the unconscious that is opposite, inferior and compensatory. This principle is illustrated in the advert because if we do something clever in consciousness (the known part of our world) then something dumb will happen in the unconscious (an unknown part of our world).

I'll be writing more about the relationship between the conscious and unconscious realms in my upcoming blogs, particularly looking at how it affects individuals and relationships in teamwork.

[Postscript: Incidentally, I don't know if the Perlorian Brothers were aware of the relationship of their advert to Jung's principle of compensation in the relationship between the conscious and unconscious.  It wouldn't surprise me if they weren't.

For most of us there is a strong barrier between the two realms of the conscious and unconscious. In Jung's theory, for those with a particular artistic, creative, and natural talent there does not seem to be such a barrier.  This means that these creative individuals are often fed their ideas from the unconscious: they are not only full of lots of creative, unusual images and ideas, but, according to Jung's theory, the art/ideas they produce often reflect the structure of the unconscious itself. 

Therefore, the fact that the advert reflects a principle that governs how the unconscious works could be an indication that the Perlorian Brothers have a high degree of natural creativity.  That is, they have uncommon access to the unconscious.]