Temenos refers to a growing kind of space. There is no accurate word for any specific individual's understanding of that space, but the word serves as a template for the idea in most people.

Jung and others deduced that there are certain common patterns in this kind of space which are common across human cultures.

For example Jung described both some of those specific patterns in specific cultures as well as describing the commonalities which defined the broader pattern, in his view.

Temenos can be called a 'super archetype' because from it any disease can be caused or cured, in other words aside from being a concept or definition of something academic it also is a 'field of study' which is much more broadly influential than most fields of study.

The definition of Temenos on Wikipedia is definitely not the idea Jung had for the psychological concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temenos 

Wikipedia uses a colonialist perception of the 'space' described to make temenos subordinate to a controlling political entity which is very unhealthy, then gives a brief description of his view after that. A good example of the disease caused by lack of temenos being propagated in such a way, by Wikipedia in this case, to further empower those promoting the disease.

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A useful example and a way to understand how temenos influences both individual psychology and colonization of tribes is found in the NetFlix series on Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/keep-sweet-warren-jeffs-documentary .

The FLDS provided 'specific land and multiple wives' to those who 'join the party', which is the same initial prize offered to colonizers.

The 'land and wives' which are 'given' by the group that 'claims authority' over them provide a space which people perceive in a certain way. A sort of false wilderness in which hidden aspects of the psyche can grow.

This 'lots of land, and lots of wives' is seen from a certain younger, ambitious, viewpoint as being superior to 'a land and a wife'. The next step for the FLDS would have been offering derivatives of the initial prize once it became impossible to give the original prize to everybody. Derivatives would be things like cash prizes, political power, etc. Not as immediately valuable, but tradeable for things that might let a person get the original prize.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/keep-sweet-pray-and-obey-on-netflix-what-happened-next-to-warren-jeffs-and-the-flds/ 

In the long term males and females are in a symbiotic relationship, the result of two original microbial lineages which create a third 'animal' or 'element' i.e., the human.

But in the short term there is often predatory colonization of one side by the other at a local level. In this case a group of males has found a way to 'colonize' females the way one tribal group colonizes another or farmers colonize cattle. A farmer will 'promise' some benefit to cattle in exchange for their cooperation, but a cow watching the whole process from afar would not be enticed. So the initial step is to overpower and physically control them then limit their space and view.

The FLDS cult starts with the basic male motive of getting women. The 'leader' is at an adolescent level and uses his control of other males to build a social structure which will provide him with more and more women, at the expense of yielding some of the supply to those that support his project. In other words a corporate structure. The 'adolescent signature' is the involvement of a group of males in helping one male 'conquer' a wife, a sort of 'hunting party' which is highly effective but reduces the quality of the quarry or prey.

The problem that would short circuit everything is simply the realization by the women that they are being forced into a bubble that is not sustainable for their interests i.e., for their descendants. This is solved by preventing access to privacy, in the sense of 'temenos'. The group of men simply has to prevent the women access to natural space outside the bubble, and control can be maintained indefinitely.

Exactly the same as the dynamic in a melting pot trying to control a tribe. As long as the United States, for example, can prevent conquered tribes from having a medicinal space outside the control of the United States, the United States can slowly consume those tribes, or quickly do it if needed. First the tribes are prevented access to any temenos, in the sense of 'true wilderness', then the space that the population is obliged to use as 'wilderness' is slowly contracted or polluted to remove anything which contradicts the colonizers.

The net effect, a necessary part of the process, involves a growing projection onto part of the 'conquered wilderness' which causes exterminations. The FLDS would expel some young men in order to fix the math in their 'plural wives' world and a colonizing society does the same thing on a grander scale across species. A person interested in analytical psychology can unravel some of this as a process to observe.

Those places where this type of bubble does not exist allow natural senses to develop, while those who create or live in these 'colonizer bubbles, both colonizer and victim, are prevented from even perceiving the existence of senses which are not compatible with their bubbles. Similarly, as long as a person is living in FLDS territory, whether they are colonizer or colonized, they are not able to perceive certain things i.e., they are 'missing senses'. If a person within the FLDS bubble were able to approach a true wilderness they would eventually have to reconcile new information incompatible with their bubble. Their 'new information' could be tested and verified anywhere, while their 'bubble data' would not withstand a natural test.

This dynamic, as mentioned on other pages, worked well as long as there was space to expand. But once 'East met West' several thousand years ago i.e., once the east moving Asian population and the west moving European populations intersected physically then a new type of process started.

The entirety of 'melting pot culture' across the globe has this exact same problem though. In the case of Warren Jeffs being arrested by the United States, it was, on a grander scale, like the United States harvesting one of its 'cattle'. The FLDS prosecution legitimizes, for some people, the United States doing the same thing the FLDS does. The difference though between FLDS and 'conquered tribes' is that 'conquered tribes' within the U.S. have a bigger worldview than their conqueror. So Europeans create a bubble in North America in which they use force to control the tribes and slowly eliminate them, just as the FLDS created a bubble that gave power to one of its parts by slowly consuming another part.

Five thousand years ago the United States, or the FLDS, would have succeeded for a long time and probably consolidated.

If the subject of temenos, as obscurely referred to by Jung and others, were made into a separate branch of psychology it would be bigger than all the rest of psychology studies. But as long as that is prevented by corporate interests, bureaucrats and cultists, it remains invisible to most people.

A related specific example, similar to the "temenos / FLDS", is the "white van / dollhouse / Gabby Petito" story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Gabby_Petito 

The FLDS appears at first glance to be men controlling women, and a person isn't obliged to look further.

Gabby Petito sought a safe space by buying a white van, which is usually a female symbol which is then used by men drawn into the 'dollhouse' of the initiator who is, herself, a product...on and on in circles. Brian Laundrie met her and would have recognized her unhealthy space, but also her attractiveness, which was partially a result of her desperation.

If Ms Petito had access to any healthy space of course she would have chosen that over the white van, but she did not. People in the United States are strongly conditioned to see 'wilderness' as a space under control of an authority they can see i.e. government. Mr Laundrie was in a similar situation but more conscious that the space was unhealthy.

Another aspect of the FLDS and U.S. colonization of indigenous tribes has to do with analytical psychology's concept of 'Self'.

'Self' is something that is projected outward as 'god', so in a patriarchal society, like FLDS or the U.S. mainstream, men are not too challenged in projecting onto a 'god', there is no contradiction. But if a woman is taught or trained that 'god' is male, as FLDS people are taught, then that woman has some additional step in order to cross the line between what is projected and what is real.

Ultimately facts trump any confusion, but if a person is actively prevented from facts, from a 'bigger' natural space or temenos, then confusion can grow until it hits a natural boundary, something bigger than any stupidity that people can come up with.

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In Surveillance States, like the U.S. and China, people are reduced to pawns of whichever clique controls the state apparatus at the moment. Privacy, personal space, becomes taboo. As healthy personal space declines, the population becomes more and more robotic, uniform, which sometimes allows the melting pot to consolidate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpGThhWTW2E 

This is put in the 'archetypes' section because it is closely related to other archetypes and is useful in order to understand the practical application of understanding archetypes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temenos 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_circle 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yantra 

For example, people with eating disorders often have a lack of healthy space which leads to a variation of the 'suicide bomber' archetype. In animals the same phenomenon can be observed happening in certain species which don't take well to captivity, and stop eating after captured, until death. To solve the specific issue in cases like that e.g. an eating disorder, a person would first notice the outer similarity to the 'suicide bomber' type destructiveness, but could not resolve it in a specific case until the healthy space or 'temenos' aspect was resolved by that specific individual. An obvious relevant side issue is that in industrial society the focus is on resolving things in the 'professional's' mind which is not where the issue needs to be resolved. That poisonous hierarchy is a separate issue though.

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Temenos. "A Greek word meaning a sacred, protected space; psychologically, descriptive of both a personal container and the sense of privacy that surrounds an analytical relationship."

"Jung believed that the need to establish or preserve a temenos is often indicated by drawings or dream images of a quaternary nature, such as mandalas."

"The symbol of the mandala has exactly this meaning of a holy place, a temenos, to protect the centre. And it is a symbol which is one of the most important motifs in the objectivation of unconscious images. It is a means of protecting the centre of the personality from being drawn out and from being influenced from outside.["The Tavistock Lectures," CW 18, par. 410."

https://www.psychceu.com/Jung/sharplexicon.html 

Note The reference to 'an analytical relationship' above is unfortunate, but is left in. One downfall of professional analytical psychology was the attempt to subordinate it to a corporate transactional framework, make it the property of a certain type of 'medical' business expert. While Jung tried to encourage the importance of an individual understanding their own mind, his 'followers' sometimes promote the notion of a 'superior' analyst who shares proprietary secrets i.e., a person who 'had the knowledge first' and must be compensated, respected, etc. for that.

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This is a concept elaborated on by Jung. Not usually considered an archetype, but the archetypal concept of 'space' can be seen as being on a continuum, with Temenos at one extreme.

An individual whose lineage is completely homogenous i.e., an indigenous person, and whose environment is 'indigenous', will have a naturally very strong internal space from which their perceptions can seek patterns.

In the melting pot, personal space is sacrificed in favor of a cauldron that is meant to eliminate whatever contradicts the 'conquering' aspect. The melting pot has 'a driver and a passenger' who are rivals.

The most common visible substitutes for indigenous Temenos in the melting pot are disciplinary/educational physical spaces like jails, mass schools, and political or religious ideologies.

 So if you wanted to draw a continuum of physical symbols of 'space', a jail or school would be at one end, representing melting pot space, and a Mandala, or 'Temenos' would be at the other end, representing an unpolluted indigenous mind with unlimited space to resolve questions.

While the global trend is toward consolidation of melting pots, very few melting pot people will ever catch more than a glimpse of the far end of their continuum or spectrum i.e. toward Temenos. Likewise, an indigenous person in an unlimited environment will not understand 'deliberately created jails, mass schools, etc'. They will perceive limiters like illness etc, but those things will be challenges to avoid, rather than disciplines.

The subject generally is important to expansion into outer space because there are certain psychological phenomena which people do not become aware of unless they are in a place with adequate space, i.e., things which will be important in that environment but which are unknown to most industrialized people.

 

~In Progress