← Work

A Second Psychic System

Five concepts from Jung, as a scroll essay with a score. Sixty-nine kilobytes, no framework, and every quote carries its citation.

Year
2026
Track
built
Category
experiment

Tools

  • Vite
  • WebGL 2
  • Web Audio
  • Lenis

Six sections on the psychology of C.G. Jung: the collective unconscious, archetypes and what they actually contain, the shadow, the persona, anima and animus, then the sources.

It argues rather than summarises. The section on anima and animus opens by saying it is the part of Jung that has aged worst and the part worth arguing with. The archetypes section leads with the qualification most retellings drop, that an archetype has no content and is a capacity for an image rather than an image. You do not inherit the picture of the mother, you inherit the readiness to form one.

Every quotation carries its citation, down to the volume and paragraph. And where a citation could not be verified, the page says so on the opening screen: the paragraph number is given variously in secondary sources and has not been checked against a printed copy. Stating that costs nothing and is the difference between an essay and a wall of confident quotes.

The build is the other half. No framework at all. One module of sixty-nine kilobytes, built with Vite, doing a WebGL 2 canvas, smooth scroll through Lenis, and a score generated in Web Audio rather than loaded as a file. For comparison, everything else on this site is a Next.js app.

Recommended with sound, which the page tells you itself.

Screens

  1. The opening screen. A pale moon hangs over a still lake at dusk with a small figure on the near shore, and the title A Second Psychic System is set across it in a high-contrast serif. A six-part index runs down the right edge, Approach through Sources, and a Play the Score control sits in the corner.
    The opening screen, which prints the one citation that was never checked against a printed copy.
  2. Section one, The Collective Unconscious, under the standfirst A floor below the one you furnished. Faint human figures stand in dark water receding into the distance, lit from somewhere above. The body text argues that what passes down is disposition rather than content: you do not inherit the image of the mother, you inherit the readiness to form one.
    Each section is a full-bleed image with the argument set over it in one column.
  3. Section two, Archetypes. A glass tumbler with a snowflake etched into it stands on a stone block in a derelict conservatory, tall windows behind it. The text sets out that an archetype has no content and is a capacity for an image, and the pull quote below carries its volume and paragraph number, CW 9i 155.
    The qualification most retellings drop, and under it the citation down to the paragraph.
  4. Section five, Anima and Animus. Two coated figures in hats stand far apart on a frozen plain under a pale band of light. The standfirst reads that this is the part of Jung that has aged worst, and the part worth arguing with, and the section then lays out his account of the pair.
    The section that says outright which part of Jung has aged worst.
See it running

More work

See all 27