Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the worldwide success “The Matrix” (Part I) using the theoretical framework of Analytical Psychology. Its guiding concept is the “process of individuation,” one of Jung’s central concepts. This is a long psychic process to which we are all subject, individually and globally, whose aim is to establish a connection between ego and self, attaining the dynamic equilibrium of the psyche. There are reasons to believe that the stages of individuation can be recognized in the journey of the film’s hero. An initial examination of the archetypes in the film, based on MOORE & GILLETTE’s classification, reveals a predominance of “boy psychology,” indicating a need for maturation. In the process of individuation, as conceptualized by Analytical Psychology, this occurs through confronting the “persona,” the “shadow,” and the “anima,” and through the development of the “self.” An analysis of the film’s symbolic elements revealed a strong correspondence between these stages and the symbols it presents. Certain scenes also showed a striking resemblance to the relationship established between client and psychologist, fundamental to initiating and developing the process of individuation. These findings were related to the crisis the world is undergoing today, recognizing within it the problem of how masculinity is shaped in modern society. The paper concludes by interpreting the film as a metaphor for the planet’s individuation process, in which greater access to the archetypes of mature masculinity offers one possible way through the crisis of postmodernity.

Oral presentation given at the National Congress of Psychology Students (Aracaju, 2003). Academic supervisor: Paulo José Baeta Pereira, master’s degree.

Introduction

The screenwriters of “The Matrix” participated in an online discussion on November 6, 1999 (1), answering a few brief questions from fans. One participant asked:

This enigmatic film, which has engaged and continues to intrigue thousands around the world, is also made of mystery and irreverence. The official American website contains twelve articles by scholars, each examining the film from a different perspective: Buddhism, computer technology, phenomenology, classical philosophy, and others. Beyond these, discussion chats and articles in various parts of the world have taken up the saga, while thousands eagerly await the release of the third installment.

The possibilities for interpreting this cultural production are endless, given the richness of its symbols, plot, and dialogue. Continuing the work of a mythological analysis of the first film in this trilogy, this study aims to examine it using the conceptual tools of Jungian Psychology. This choice is believed to offer valuable contributions toward understanding the psyche of an audience swept up in a collective, multimillion-dollar phenomenon. The aim is to discover how the process of individuation is present in the film.

As we see in FADIMAN & FRAGER (2), “individuation” is one of Jung’s central concepts. He uses this term to designate the process of human development that involves establishing a connection between the ego, the center of consciousness, and the self, the center of the whole psyche, which includes both consciousness and the unconscious. The aim is “dynamic equilibrium,” unifying and reconciling polarities. It is a difficult, lengthy journey involving the acceptance of unconscious processes and a movement of the ego away from its position as the center of the personality. This path is made up of successive, interwoven steps, each accompanied by its particular difficulties. There are reasons to believe that these stages of individuation can be recognized in the heroic journey studied here. This is the aspect of the film we will seek to elucidate.

The film

“The Matrix” is a 1999 American production, a worldwide box-office record, and the winner of four Academy Awards. As presented in the first paper on the film, a mythological analysis, it was chosen because of its enormous worldwide success. Believing that the identification between audience and art occurs largely for unconscious reasons, enabling its influence on the masses, it seemed possible to examine the collective psyche in the contemporary world through the film’s structural elements. In support of this perspective, Jung’s writings tell us:

“One could say that the whole world, with its confusion and misery, is undergoing a process of individualization. People do not know it, however; that is the only difference. Individuation is by no means a rare thing or a luxury for the few, but those who know they are undergoing the process are considered fortunate. If sufficiently conscious, they derive some benefit from it” (FADIMAN & FRAGER 2, p. 58).

The intention is to see how this process of identification may tell us about the process of individuation in which the world is engaged. The symbolism and mythology evoked by the film will be of considerable help.

A brief synopsis follows.

Synopsis

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is a young programmer in 1999. He works for a large technology company, lives in a small, dark apartment, and would lead an entirely ordinary life were it not for his virtual identity, Neo, and his spare-time activities as a hacker. His life has been troubled by doubts about reality, and hackers who contact him through his computer promise to answer his questions. Through his encounter with the mysterious Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), Thomas discovers that, like everyone else in the world, he is a victim of the Matrix: a computer system that manipulates people’s minds, creating the illusion of a real world while using their brains and bodies to produce energy. This fictitious reality was created by machines that, possessing AI (artificial intelligence), turned against humans and took control of the planet. Faced with this conflict, Morpheus is convinced that Thomas is Neo, the prophesied messiah capable of confronting the Matrix and leading people back to reality and freedom. Adapted from the “Adoro Cinema” website (3).

Analysis

In chapter five of JUNG’s “Fundamentos da Psicologia Analítica” (4), we find:

“What the unconscious actually contains are the great collective facts of the time. In the individual’s collective unconscious, history itself is being prepared, and when certain archetypes are activated in a number of individuals and reach the surface, we find ourselves in the middle of the historical current (…). The archetypal image needed by the moment comes to life, and everyone is taken by it (…) …our individual psychology is nothing more than a very thin skin, a small wave on an ocean of collective psychology. (…) Archetypes are the great decisive force and produce events, not our personal reasoning and practical intelligence” (pp. 206–207).

Seen in this way, it becomes necessary to identify the “primordial images” that have represented our time. To do so, we will examine the principal archetypes presented by the film.

The masculine archetypes

As the synopsis indicates, the film revolves around Neo. The other characters are defined within the plot by their relationships with him. Four others share its principal focus: Morpheus, Cypher, Trinity, and Agent Smith. Leaving the last two for later analysis, we will consider the leading masculine archetypes here, using their basic configurations as described by MOORE (5).

Initially, there is no doubt that Neo represents the story’s Hero. As established in the first paper, he bears the identifying characteristics of the hero myth, together with messianic traits, clearly defining the archetype of the Hero, the film’s principal archetype and the one that shapes its plot.

Beside Neo stands Morpheus, who initiates him and accompanies him faithfully through the saga. Morpheus represents the King archetype. He commands the ship, named Nebuchadnezzar after an Old Testament king, and can integrate and lead its crew. Representing the “good king,” he is altruistic enough to give his life for Neo, around one hour and twenty minutes into the film. Like kings of old, he was about to be killed because he could no longer represent the archetype: Tank was going to unplug him to prevent him from revealing Zion’s access codes to the agents interrogating him, Zion being the kingdom he should protect (1:33). He fulfills the King’s two archetypal tasks. The first is to “order.” He therefore signifies the organizing center, the supreme symbol of the light of consciousness among the masculine archetypes. From minute 29 onward, we see him bringing consciousness to Neo, freeing him from a “dream world.” The second task is to “provide fertility and blessing.” What happens to the King affects his kingdom: “When the king became ill, weak, or impotent, the kingdom withered” (p. 59). While Morpheus is captured and tortured by the agents, his ship is collapsing, three crew members—Dozen, Apoc, and Switch—have been lost, and the mission is about to be destroyed by Cypher. As king, he reassures others (57:02) and gives hope. He is also a good Warrior, invested with this second archetype as well.

We might consider that Neo also bears the Warrior, like Morpheus. Yet his age, uncertainty about his identity and mission, and cycle of initiation, separation, and return, together with the other mythological factors, make it clear that the hero is his most distinct archetype.

Cypher, as “Judas,” and therefore a shadowy, betraying masculine figure, is the “Precocious Child” in its shadow aspect: the Trickster. Skilled at creating appearances, he seduces people and then pulls the rug out from under them. He makes cruel jokes and is manipulative. This is readily apparent in his conversation with Trinity (1:27), when his jokes announce his unsuspected betrayal and the deaths he will cause. In his childishness, he has problems with authority: Cypher was “tired of the bullshit” from Morpheus. As with this archetype, when he brings down authority, he has no intention of replacing it. He wants neither responsibility nor anything honestly earned. To the agents he says: “Ignorance is bliss (…) I want to remember nothing (…) And I want to be rich. Someone important. Like an actor” (1:03).

These comparisons suggest that the film’s masculine archetypes predominantly belong to “boy psychology,” indicating immaturity in the process of individuation, with the King as the sole exception. However noble the Hero may be, MOORE & GILLETTE remind us (5, p. 37) that he “is only an advanced variety of boy psychology (…), the highest point of adolescence. But he is immature.” Being immature, he requires a process of maturation, of individuation. This is what we see unfold in his journey, shaping the course of the film as a whole.

The process of individuation

As already noted, Jung’s process of individuation has stages (2, pp. 57–60). In these stages, consciousness comes into relationship with each important part of the personality, needing to integrate and harmonize them. The first concerns the persona.

The persona

This stage involves stripping away the persona. We witness it in Neo’s dialogue with Agent Smith at the police station, around minute 16. Smith confronts him with information about his respectable programming career and his contradictory life as a hacker: “One of these lives has a future, the other has not” (18:12). The protagonist must choose between his mask—the collectively grounded appearance he presents to society—and his more authentic identity. His response: “What do you think if I show you the finger?” After his rebirth with Morpheus, the old clothes and the name Thomas Anderson will be left behind for good. Only the Hero’s name will remain.

The shadow

The next step is confronting the shadow. In FADIMAN & FRAGER (2, p. 57), we read: “To the extent that we accept the reality of the shadow and distinguish ourselves from it, we can become free of its influence.” Here the analysis becomes more complex. Individually, this happens literally when Neo enters the “real world.” His conversation with Morpheus illustrates this well, from minute 40 onward. The dark world presented to him horrifies him so much that he does not want to believe it. Yet only through this awakening could the hero be born for his battle. The shadow has not been fully overcome, however: Neo must still confront the agents, the men in black who control the Matrix. This grows more complex when we consider that shadow elements are present throughout the planet: “We burned the sky”—the Sun was destroyed. The “real world” scenes are lit darkly throughout, especially the “endless fields where human beings are no longer born. We are grown” (42:15). Broadly speaking, then, the whole film takes place in this second stage of individuation, the confrontation with the planetary shadow.

When considering the dangerous splitting of the personality caused by an increasing distance between conscious and unconscious—by setting aside “the incomprehensible, irrational portion of the personality” (JUNG 6, p. 426)—the concept of the complex becomes useful. According to JUNG (4), complexes arise from the shadowy sphere, becoming “partial personalities” with their own “tension and energy.” In “the condition of schizophrenia, they become emancipated from conscious control, to the point of becoming visible and audible” (p. 101). This passage invites us to consider that the film’s “machines” might be humanity’s own complex. Created by humans, or “conscious control,” they become emancipated and take control of the planet, allowing the shadow to reign completely. They represent humanity’s schizophrenia, with unconscious impulses wholly split off from consciousness. A new ego: “AI,” which stands for “Artificial Intelligence” in the film but may also suggest “one (a) ego (I),” another “I,” contesting the body-planet Earth. Or, as Morpheus says at minute 41, “a singular consciousness,” which gave rise to all the other machines.

Such a broad and intricate issue might discourage further reflection on the film’s individuation process, since it is resolved only at the end. Yet because Jung’s stages of individuation overlap in a “spiral” (FADIMAN & FRAGER), we can move on to the next.

The anima

We now encounter the confrontation with the anima. This archetype should be regarded as a real person with whom consciousness can communicate, learn, and be influenced. It “represents the opposite sexual part of each individual,” is “the fundamental mediator between conscious and unconscious processes,” and “the doorway of creativity in the psyche” (p. 55). Trinity’s role may be glimpsed from this perspective. Representing the archetype oriented predominantly toward inner processes, she makes the Resistance’s first contact with Neo, prompting him to reflect and decide to meet Morpheus so he can discover what the Matrix is:

She later takes the hero in and saves him, preventing him from leaving the car after he encounters Switch’s aggressiveness:

After his entry into the “real world,” she feeds him. When Neo decides to save Morpheus alone, she reprimands him, asserts her position as his superior aboard the ship, and obliges him to take her along; otherwise, the mission would be suicidal. Finally, with a kiss following a declaration of love, she sets off the hero’s resurrection.

In these reflective words and interventions with critical effects, we can see Trinity representing the Anima in its confrontation with the hero: bringing him good sense, prompting him to perceive deeper aspects of his being, and helping him find his inner power at the most difficult moment.

The self

The final stage is the development of the self. According to FURLETTI (7):

“If an individual has struggled effectively and at length with his anima, the unconscious changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form, represented by the Self—the deepest nucleus of the psyche (…) represented by (…) a priestess, a sorceress, (…), a guardian, a wise old man, (…)” (p. 3).

At this stage, the self becomes the psyche’s new central point. The ego, still the center of consciousness, ceases to be the nucleus of the personality. Equidistant between conscious and unconscious, the self connects the individual with the sacred, with their uniqueness. In the film, the symbol that most clearly personifies the self is the Oracle. Initially, Neo is very resistant to seeing her, demonstrating the insecurity of an infantile ego afraid of losing control. The Oracle satirizes this: “You have your own life, remember? You don’t believe in fate.” Yet as the development of the self guides the individual toward their most authentic vocation, her provocations help Neo, without his realizing it, discover his true messianic identity, “The One.” This wordplay also means “the unique one,” pointing toward what is authentic in the individual, the vocation of every human being.

Since the film also presents a splitting of the planetary personality through the uprising of the shadow, we may look for a symbol of the self of the individual-planet. The discussions of Zion in the first paper may help. This is the last human city, the origin of the Resistance, the source of the adult archetype of the King and the promise of the messiah, the Sacred. It lies near the Earth’s center, where it is still warm, and its access codes are guarded with people’s lives. These signs suggest the city as a symbol of the planet’s self, from which new strength can arise to overcome the complex, “AI,” and restore consciousness, the Sun, to the individual, the planet.

These four steps illustrate a strong resemblance between Jungian individuation and the journey of “The Matrix.” In the modern world, however, this process is very difficult to undergo naturally. It generally requires therapy. This is what we shall examine, as necessary to finding inner power at the most difficult moment.

The analyst and the therapy office

The well-known “pill scene,” beginning at 25:55, depicts Neo’s crucial encounter with Morpheus, who points toward a way out of the Matrix. It takes place in an old room in a building, with two armchairs. Morpheus offers to free Neo from “a prison that you cannot smell or touch. A prison for your mind” (27:30). But he warns that Neo must see it for himself; once he has, there will be no turning back. Before Neo decides, Morpheus adds: “All I offer is the truth, nothing more.” Neo accepts, and his sense of what is real is transformed. He then undergoes a new, painful birth, awakening from the electronic “womb” that held him in the digital illusion of the Matrix. Drawn aboard the ship, his eyes hurt: “Why do my eyes hurt?” Morpheus replies: “You’ve never used them before” (35:34). He had never seen the world through his own eyes because his “uterine” life had not allowed it.

In a second dialogue, now in the “real world,” Morpheus asks questions and challenges Neo about reality and illusion, telling him: “You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo.” The setting changes completely several times, yet they continue talking in the same two chairs from the first scene. Through these conversations, Morpheus helps Neo become aware of what happened in Earth’s past and of humanity’s enslavement. Neo enters a crisis and briefly refuses to accept the truth. The conversation ends with Morpheus placing his hope in the emergence of “The One,” who will bring the illusion, the Matrix, to an end.

The resemblance between these scenes and the analytic process speaks for itself. The analyst warns and points toward a path but cannot decide for the patient. Once treatment begins, it becomes a search for the individual’s personal truth, allowing them to see the world anew, through their own eyes, free of family bonds, the “womb,” or social bonds, “slavery.” Crises often occur in this process, but what keeps the patient on the path is the search for authenticity, “the one.”

Morpheus also says: “I’m trying to free your mind. But I can only show you the door. You are the one who has to walk through it” (52:40). He will also lead Neo to meet the Oracle. Before this, a resistant Neo talks with him:

As in a Jungian analytic situation, Morpheus, connected with Neo, points him toward the self, represented by the Oracle’s message. The patient’s ego shows resistance. Morpheus reassures him, speaking of the path as one he himself has traveled. Like many patients, Neo wants to know the other person’s answer, seeking truth through the other’s discourse. Morpheus responds by speaking of a singular truth found within each person, “The One.”

In a self–analyst connection, the Oracle makes an intervention consistent with Morpheus’s work up to that point. She gives Neo many questions and few answers, pointing to a plaque: “know thyself.” At the end, Morpheus, who has been waiting outside and had told Neo about his own answer from the Oracle, says:

“What was said was for you, and you alone.”

Conclusion

As we can all see, humanity’s entry into the third millennium has been a difficult and surprising journey. With old certainties shaken, the path has become unpredictable, rendering the gurus’ pronouncements merely pretentious and imaginative reveries. Rather than motivating the construction of a new world, this new path seems first to condemn civilization to a state of bewilderment and hopelessness. We are clearly facing a crisis, and the future of our planet will depend on its resolution.

As some studies of postmodernity tell us, the future of civilization was once believed to be secured by the efforts of science. Continuing the struggle begun in the Renaissance against “negative,” religious forms of knowledge, science made the world relativistic and secular, removing the Sacred from its established place. Yet, frustrating the expectations placed upon it, science did not build the happier world it promised. Although we have advanced so far in knowledge and comfort, access to these advances has clearly remained restricted to a small portion of the world’s peoples, increasing global frustration, now deprived even of faith in the scientific progress being announced.

The future also seemed to lie in the advances of capitalism and democracy. Promising a “place in the sun” to all who worked persistently and a better world to all nations that helped these systems conquer the planet, they generated great frustration as they approached hegemony. Democracy, in its official model, has not proved sufficient to produce a more just and equal world. Inequality appears in both “barbarian” and democratic countries. Capitalism’s victory over socialism, the “enemy of the world,” was achieved years ago, but this did not make the world better. On the contrary, poverty and ecological problems spread, the exhaustion of some natural resources approaches, and in a world where production has never been so fast and efficient, jobs and buyers are lacking.

It is in this setting of hopelessness and crisis that the contemporary world takes shape. Such an environment is especially conducive to illusion. Cheap entertainment—which can sometimes prove costly—uses these circumstances to foster identification, offering audiences the denial of reality they long for, rather than helping them creatively confront the conflicts awaiting them when the film ends. We have known the expression “bread and circuses” for centuries…

Yet, whether seen or not, the crisis continues to afflict us. We face a schizophrenic postmodernity that oscillates between extremes in a desperate search for certain solutions. We have new “messiahs,” promised and embodied in neo-Pentecostal movements. We have science promising to say everything about human beings through their genome. In short, a world in which conscious and unconscious grow further apart, as do bodily and intellectual work, images—the persona—and essence—the self, with the Sacred understood within it—and the masculine and feminine.

MOORE & GILLETE (5), discussing the global crisis, relate it to the construction of masculinity in modern society. Deprived of carefully elaborated initiation rituals that could help them make the transition into the human condition, men remain confined to “boy psychology,” oscillating between aggression and weakness. From this perspective, this is one cause of patriarchy, male chauvinism, and the exploitation of one person by another.

“In our view, patriarchy is not the expression of a deep, rooted masculinity, for such masculinity is not aggressive. Patriarchy is the expression of immature masculinity. It is the expression of Boy psychology and, in part, the shadow—or mad—side of masculinity. It expresses the stunted man, fixed at immature levels. (…) …it is an assault on masculinity in its fullness, as well as on femininity as a whole. Those who cling to the structures and dynamics of this system seek to dominate men and women alike. (…) Boys fear women. And they fear real men as well. (…) The patriarch does not accept the full masculine development of his sons or subordinates, just as (…) the (…) development of his daughters or female employees” (introduction).

To move beyond this desolate situation, so familiar in our gender and professional relationships, these authors propose, contrary to what we might expect, a curious way forward:

“What is missing is not, in general, what many depth psychologists suppose: an adequate connection with the inner feminine side. In many cases, the men who seek help have been, and continue to be, overwhelmed by the feminine. What they lacked was an adequate connection with deep, instinctual masculine energies, with the potential of mature masculinity. This connection was blocked by patriarchy itself and by feminist criticism of what little masculinity remained to them. And they were being blocked by the absence (…) of any transformative and meaningful initiation process through which they could attain a sense of masculinity” (introduction).

These authors warn that the “pseudo-rituals” of initiation in our society are insufficient to activate mature masculine potentials. The space of the sacred is necessary for this passage, as is symbolic and psychological “death,” which moves the ego from the center of the personality. Unfortunately, our society offers few ways to address this psychological problem, so crucial to our current planetary crisis. Each person must seek, alone or with the help of a few others, the deep sources of their psyche’s potentials.

Symbols are enormously important along this difficult path. Through their relationship with archetypes, present in everyone through the collective unconscious, they help connect us with these primordial images and their transformative potentials, even when we are unaware of this. Here Jung’s concepts of the “process of individuation” and his reflections on the collective unconscious (4) come to our aid. Knowing that individual psychologies are merely a “very thin skin, a small wave upon the ocean of collective psychology” (pp. 206–207), and that individual solutions will not help the planet face its crisis, archetypes offer a way forward. By analyzing symbols of an archetypal nature that have become prominent worldwide, we may better understand how the collective psyche has been undergoing individuation, helping it locate itself within the “historical current” (p. 206). It was with this aim that the present study developed its research.

If, rather than remaining immersed in the models of identification presented by archetypes, we can use them to inspire the transformations our world needs (BRANDÃO 8), solutions to the global crisis will emerge much more readily. For this to happen, however, we must move beyond allegory and simple entertainment and use works of art such as “The Matrix,” among other tools, as occasions for society’s self-reflection, enabling it to become aware of its individuation process and benefit from this understanding. By overcoming the shadow aspect that seems to dominate masculinity in our society, investing in spaces where the transition from boy to adult psychology is possible, the “hero” can become “warrior” and “king,” and contact with authenticity and the Sacred can take place, the world will have a better chance of overcoming its postmodern “schizophrenia” and rediscovering realistic hope, moving toward a world more fully lived and enjoyed by all.

Bibliographic references

  1. Web site: www.whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com
  2. FADIMAN, James & FRAGER, Robert. Teorias da Personalidade. Cap.: C. G. Jung e a Psicologia Analítica. São Paulo: Ed. Harbra ltda., 1986.
  3. Web site “Adoro Cinema”: www.adorocinema.com/filmes/matrix/matrix.htm
  4. JUNG, C. G.. Fundamentos da Psicologia Analítica — As conferências de Tavistock. Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes, 1972.
  5. MOORE, Robert & GILLETTE, Douglas. Rei, Guerreiro, Mago, Amante: a redescoberta dos arquétipos do masculino. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Campus, 1993.
  6. JUNG, C. G.. Símbolos da Transformação. Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes, 1973.
  7. FURLETTI, Italo J.. Análise dos Sonhos — a estrutura psíquica. Apostila do curso: Análise dos Sonhos. Belo Horizonte: edição própria, 2001.
  8. BRANDÃO, Junito de Souza. Mitologia Grega.Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes, 1984. Vol. III (pp. 9-11).

Paper presented at the National Congress of Psychology Students in Aracaju in 2003, during undergraduate studies at UFMG. Academic supervisor: Paulo José Baeta Pereira, master’s degree.