In the uroboric situation, however, the ego is still germinal and consciousness
In these circumstances, when consciousness is insufficiently differentiated from the unconscious, and the ego from the the group member finds himself as much at the mercy of group reactions as of unconscious constellations.
The fact that he is preconscious and preindividual leads him to experience and react to the world in a way that is more collective than individual, and more mythological than rational.
A mythological apperception of the world and an archetypal, instinctive mode of reaction are accordingly characteristic of the dawn man.
The collective and the group members do not experience the world objectively, but mythologically, in archetypal images and symbols; and their reaction to it is archetypal, instinctive, and unconscious, not individual and conscious.
The unconscious reactions of group members when contained in their group invariably lead to the hypostatization of a group soul, a collective consciousness, or some such thing.
This is justifiable enough, if we begin with the experience of the part who perceives the whole as a totality; in fact, we still speak of the nation, the people, etc., in exactly the same way.
And although this “nation” is an hypostasis, it is psychologically true and necessary to make such an hypostasis.
For, as an effective whole, the nation is psychologically something more and other than the sum of its parts, and is always experienced as such by each part of the group.
The more unconscious the whole of a man’s personality is and the more germinal his ego, the more his experience of the whole will be projected upon the group.
The ego germ and the group self are directly related, just as, conversely, individualization, ego development, and finally self-experience through individuation bring about the withdrawal of this projection.
The more unindividualized people are, the stronger the projection of the self upon the group, and the stronger, too, the unconscious participations of group members among themselves.
But, as the group becomes more individualized and the significance of the ego and of the individual increases, the more these interhuman relations must be made conscious and the unconscious participations broken down.
In the uroboric situation, however, the ego is still germinal and consciousness has not yet developed into a system. ― Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, Page 274-275
