Jungian archetypes
Encyclopedia
Carl Jung created the archetypes which “are ancient or archaic
images that derive from the collective unconscious
” Also known as innate universal psychic
dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic symbols or representations of unconscious
experience emerge. These are different from instinct as Jung saw an instinct
as “an unconscious
physical impulse toward actions and the archetype as the psychic counterpart” There are many different archetypes and Jung has stated they are limitless in amount, but to simplify many have broken it down into a few main ones. These include the persona, the shadow, the anima, the animus, the great mother, the wise old man, the hero, and the self. . The great mother, wise old man and the hero tend to be considered add on from the basic as in Jung’s map of the soul everything is covered, but those. The archetypes can be used for a sense of understanding as well as for a state of treatment "The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif - representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern ... They are indeed an instinctive trend". Thus for example "the archetype of initiation is strongly activated to provide a meaningful transition ... with a 'rite of passage
' from one stage of life to the next": such stages may include being parented, initiation, courtship, marriage and preparation for death.
theory of human psychological development, believing instead that evolutionary pressures have individual predestinations manifested in archetypes. For Jung, "the archetype is the introspectively recognizable form of a priori psychic orderedness". These images must be thought of as lacking in solid content, hence as unconscious. They only acquire solidity, influence, and eventual consciousness in the encounter with empirical facts."
The archetypes form a dynamic substratum common to all humanity, upon the foundation of which each individual builds his own experience of life, developing a unique array of psychological characteristics. Thus, while archetypes themselves may be conceived as a relative few innate nebulous forms, from these may arise innumerable images, symbols and patterns of behavior. While the emerging images and forms are apprehended consciously, the archetypes which inform them are elementary structures which are unconscious and impossible to apprehend. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, and religions etc. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world.
The archetype is a crucial Jungian concept. Its significance to analytical psychology
has been likened to that of gravity for Newtonian physics.
. His researches in schizophrenia
later supported his early intuition that universal psychic structures exist which underlie all human experience and behavior. Jung first referred to these as "primordial images" — a term he borrowed from Jacob Burckhardt. Later in 1917 Jung called them "dominants of the collective unconscious." It was not until 1919 that he first used the term "archetypes" in an essay titled "Instinct
and the Unconscious
". A main part of the chronology of Jung's discovery of the archetypes is found in the Redbook which documented Jung being in touch with the archetypes and collective unconsciousness which was released much after his death. Throughout ]Jung's life examination into the archetypes increased, and this was noticeable throughout the changes within his style of writing in his books.
. Jung himself compared archetypes to Platonic εἶδος (eidos)
. Plato's ideas were pure mental forms, that were imprinted in the soul before it was born into the world. They were collective in the sense that they embodied the fundamental characteristics of a thing rather than its specific peculiarities.
In fact many of Jung's Ideas were prevalent in Athenian philosophy. The archetype theory can be seen as a psychological equivalent to the philosophical idea of forms and particulars
Strictly speaking, archetypal figures such as the hero, the goddess and the wise man are not archetypes, but archetypal images which have crystallized out of the archetypes-as-such: as Jung put it, "definite mythological images of motifs ... are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited", as opposed to their deeper, instinctual sources - "the 'archaic remnants', which I call 'archetypes' or 'primordial images'".
Jung described archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the union of opposites etc.; archetypal figures: great mother
, father, child
, devil
, God, wise old man
, wise old woman
, Apollo
, trickster
, hero
- not to mention "Oedipus
... the first archetype Freud discovered" or "number ... an archetype of order"; and archetypal motifs: the Apocalypse, the Deluge, the Creation, etc. Although the number of archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images, "the chief among them being" (according to Jung) "the shadow, the Wise Old Man, the child (including the child hero), the mother ... and her counterpart, the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman". Alternately he would speak of "the emergence of certain definite archetypes ... the shadow, the animal, the wise old man, the anima, the animus, the mother, the child". There were five main archetypes that were discussed in Jung's writing, though there are many others. The following are the five most common archetypes.
Five main archetypes are sometimes enumerated:
However the precise relationships between images such as, for example, "the fish" and its archetype were not adequately explained by Jung. Here the image of the fish is not strictly speaking an archetype. However the "archetype of the fish" points to the ubiquitous existence of an innate "fish archetype" which gives rise to the fish image. In clarifying the contentious statement that fish archetypes are universal, Anthony Stevens
explains that the archetype-as-such is at once an innate predisposition to form such an image and a preparation to encounter and respond appropriately to the creature per se. This would explain the existence of snake and spider phobias, for example, in people living in urban environments where they have never encountered either creature. There are many examples such as the fish covered in Man and His Symbols and how they tend to relate to people through measures such as dreams and little life instances. These archetypal figures can also be represented from the main archetypes such as the anima and the animus or archetypal thoughts such as the resurrection of a savior. figures For example almost every culture has a savior that has came back from heaven or the dead, or reincarnation being a main point of the belief. Jesus for example in the Christian texts and Buddhists and Hindu have reincarnation as a principle part of their religion. These being principle parts of the religion, in which many religions
. Jung also used the terms "evocation" and "constellation" to explain the process of actualization. Thus for example, the mother archetype is actualized in the mind of the child by the evoking of innate anticipations of the maternal archetype when the child is in the proximity of a maternal figure who corresponds closely enough to its archetypal template. This mother archetype is built into the personal unconscious of the child as a mother complex. Complexes are functional units of the personal unconscious, in the same way that archetypes are units for the collective unconscious.
. The part of the spectrum which is visible to us corresponds to the conscious aspects of the archetype. The invisible infra-red end of the spectrum corresponds to the unconscious biological aspects of the archetype that merges with its chemical and physical conditions. He suggested that not only do the archetypal structures govern the behavior of all living organisms, but that they were contiguous with structures controlling the behavior of inorganic matter as well. The archetype was not merely a psychic entity, but more fundamentally, a bridge to matter in general. Jung used the term unus mundus
to describe the unitary reality which he believed underlay all manifest phenomena
. He conceived archetypes to be the mediators of the unus mundus, organizing not only ideas in the psyche, but also the fundamental principles of matter and energy in the physical world.
It was this psychoid aspect of the archetype that so impressed Nobel laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli
. Embracing Jung's concept, Pauli believed that the archetype provided a link between physical events and the mind of the scientist who studied them. In doing so he echoed the position adopted by German astronomer Johannes Kepler
. Thus the archetypes which ordered our perceptions and ideas are themselves the product of an objective order which transcends both the human mind and the external world.
, an advocate of structuralism in anthropology
, the concept of "social instincts" proposed by Charles Darwin
, the "faculties" of Henri Bergson
and the isomorph
s of gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler
. In 1965 Noam Chomsky
's ideas of human language
acquisition being based on an "innate acquisition device" became known to the world.
Melanie Klein
's idea of unconscious phantasy is closely related to Jung's archetype, as both are composed of image and affect and are a-priori patternings of psyche
whose contents are built from experience.
was developed by Clifford Mayes
. Mayes' work also aims at promoting what he calls archetypal reflectivity in teachers; this is a means of encouraging teachers to examine and work with psychodynamic issues, images, and assumptions as those factors affect their pedagogical practices.
was developed by James Hillman
in the second half of the 20th century. Hillman trained at the Jung Institute and was its Director after graduation. Archetypal psychology is in the Jungian tradition and most directly related to analytical psychology
and psychodynamic theory, yet departs radically. Archetypal psychology
relativizes and deliteralizes the ego
and focuses on the psyche
, or soul
, itself and the archai, the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, "the fundamental fantasies that animate all life" . Archetypal psychology is a polytheistic psychology
, in that it attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies and myths gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals—that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives. The ego is but one psychological fantasy
within an assemblage of fantasies.
The main influence on the development of archetypal psychology is Carl Jung's analytical psychology. It is strongly influenced by Classical Greek
, Renaissance
, and Romantic ideas and thought. Influential artists, poets, philosophers, alchemists, and psychologists include: Nietzsche, Henry Corbin, Keats, Shelley, Petrarch, and Paracelsus. Though all different in their theories and psychologies, they appear to be unified by their common concern for the psyche—the soul.
Many archetypes have been used in treatment of psychological illnesses. Jung's first research was done with schizophrenics. A current example is teaching young men or boys archetypes through using picture books to help with the development. In addition nurses treat patients through the use of archetypes. Archetype therapy offers a wide range of uses if applied correctly, and it is still being expanded in Jungian schools today. With the list of archetypes being endless the healing possibilities are vast.
[For the alchemists] they were seeds of light broadcast in the chaos…the seed plot of a world to come…One would have to conclude from these alchemical visions that the archetypes have about them a certain effulgence or quasi-consciousness, and that numinosity entails luminosity (CW8:388).
All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us (CW8, 342). This could be taken to mean that the archetypes are what makes us, us. All of the beliefs and myths we have are all just part of the archetypes and that nothing is new in the universe and everything has already existed and will continue to texist.
In his last text, Man and His Symbols, Jung stressed that "since so many people have chosen to treat archetypes as if they were part of a mechanical system that can be learned by rote, it is essential to insist that they are not mere names or even philosophical concepts. They are pieces of life itself - images that are integrally connected to the individual by the bridge of the emotions".[20] Jung states that they are not individual concepts of the world or individual pieces of the world we must come to know as separate things, but we must come to know the machine (archetypes) as a whole not just as individuals.
As a result, it was the importance of the experiential encounter with the archetype which Jung emphasized: "in psychology, where we speak of archetypes like the anima and animus, the wise man, the great mother, and so on ... if they are mere images whose numinosity you have never experienced, it will be as if you were talking in a dream, for you will not know what you are talking about ... their names mean very little, whereas the way they are related to you is all-important".[21] This means that one when first encounters a new archetype they do not always know what it means or how it will help them in their life, but they must come to learn to accept it and understand it. In time the answers will reveal themselves.
, in his "return to Freud", took issue with that aspect of "the thought of Jung, where the relation between the psychical world of the subject and reality are embodied under the term archetype". He argued that "Jungianism - in so far as it makes of the primitive modes of articulating the world something that survives, the kernel, he says, of the psyche itself - is necessarily accompanied by a repudiation of the term libido
". Freud himself however had been well prepared to accept the existence of "a primitive kind of mental activity ... [on] the single analogy - and it is an excellent one - of the far-reaching instinctive knowledge of animals"; and it was indeed on the basis of "what Freud called 'archaic remnants' - mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life ... inherited shapes of the human mind" that Jung had explicitly built his theory of archetypes. His specific and contrasting claim was that they were "not in any sense lifeless or meaningless 'remnants'. They still function, and they are especially valuable ... just because of their 'historical' nature".
More general criticism of the concept of archetypes can perhaps be placed in two broad categories. There are those who deny any possibility of inherited ideas as unscientific - a point met (at least to some degree) by Jung when he insisted that it was instead the inherited propensity to generate representations that made the archetypes "the unconscious organizers of our ideas" (see above).
But those who could accept such inherited propensities still found "a basic ambiguity in Jung's various descriptions of the collective unconscious
. Sometimes he seems to regard the predisposition to experience certain images as understandable in terms of some genetic model ... about the way human beings experience the world. But he is also at pains to emphasize the numinous quality of these experience and there can be no doubt that he was attracted to the idea that the archetypes afford evidence of communion with some divine or world mind". Jung's last statements on that subject remained however firmly agnostic
. "Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are probably illusions ... [but] the denial is as impossible to 'prove' as the assertion".
A more technical objection derives from therapeutic practice, with the possibility arising that "an explanation of the archetypal situation ... may lead to inflation, if it is not linked to specific and personal emotional experiences". Some would go further, arguing that because "in Jungian theory, the psychologist's task is to lead others to see the timeless archetypal reality behind their personal psychological experiences ... using abstract, archetypal forces to explain human psychology", the result must inevitably be "a psychology which downplays the significance of human relationships". The patient is thus brought to realise that "what I did then, what I felt then, is only the reflection of that great archetypal dream, or epic story ... free of the individual pain of it", but at the price of individuality and human relationship, sacrificed for an unwillingness to "leave the safety of myth".
Archaic
Archaic may refer to a period of time preceding a "classical period":*List of archaeological periods**Archaic Greece**Archaic period in the Americas**Early Dynastic Period of Egypt*Archaic Homo sapiens, people who lived about 300,000 to 30,000 B.P...
images that derive from the collective unconscious
Collective unconscious
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience...
” Also known as innate universal psychic
Psychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic symbols or representations of unconscious
Unconscious
Unconscious might refer to:In physiology:* unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuliIn psychology:...
experience emerge. These are different from instinct as Jung saw an instinct
Instinct
Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...
as “an unconscious
Unconscious
Unconscious might refer to:In physiology:* unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuliIn psychology:...
physical impulse toward actions and the archetype as the psychic counterpart” There are many different archetypes and Jung has stated they are limitless in amount, but to simplify many have broken it down into a few main ones. These include the persona, the shadow, the anima, the animus, the great mother, the wise old man, the hero, and the self. . The great mother, wise old man and the hero tend to be considered add on from the basic as in Jung’s map of the soul everything is covered, but those. The archetypes can be used for a sense of understanding as well as for a state of treatment "The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif - representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern ... They are indeed an instinctive trend". Thus for example "the archetype of initiation is strongly activated to provide a meaningful transition ... with a 'rite of passage
Rite of passage
A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. It is a universal phenomenon which can show anthropologists what social hierarchies, values and beliefs are important in specific cultures....
' from one stage of life to the next": such stages may include being parented, initiation, courtship, marriage and preparation for death.
Introduction
Virtually alone among the depth psychologists of the twentieth century, Jung rejected the tabula rasaTabula rasa
Tabula rasa is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects...
theory of human psychological development, believing instead that evolutionary pressures have individual predestinations manifested in archetypes. For Jung, "the archetype is the introspectively recognizable form of a priori psychic orderedness". These images must be thought of as lacking in solid content, hence as unconscious. They only acquire solidity, influence, and eventual consciousness in the encounter with empirical facts."
The archetypes form a dynamic substratum common to all humanity, upon the foundation of which each individual builds his own experience of life, developing a unique array of psychological characteristics. Thus, while archetypes themselves may be conceived as a relative few innate nebulous forms, from these may arise innumerable images, symbols and patterns of behavior. While the emerging images and forms are apprehended consciously, the archetypes which inform them are elementary structures which are unconscious and impossible to apprehend. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, and religions etc. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world.
The archetype is a crucial Jungian concept. Its significance to analytical psychology
Analytical psychology
Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theoretical orientation has been advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. Though they share similarities, analytical psychology is distinct from...
has been likened to that of gravity for Newtonian physics.
Chronology
The intuition that there was more to the psyche than individual experience possibly began in Jung's childhood. The very first dream he could remember was that of an underground phallic godGod
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
. His researches in schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
later supported his early intuition that universal psychic structures exist which underlie all human experience and behavior. Jung first referred to these as "primordial images" — a term he borrowed from Jacob Burckhardt. Later in 1917 Jung called them "dominants of the collective unconscious." It was not until 1919 that he first used the term "archetypes" in an essay titled "Instinct
Instinct
Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...
and the Unconscious
Unconscious
Unconscious might refer to:In physiology:* unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuliIn psychology:...
". A main part of the chronology of Jung's discovery of the archetypes is found in the Redbook which documented Jung being in touch with the archetypes and collective unconsciousness which was released much after his death. Throughout ]Jung's life examination into the archetypes increased, and this was noticeable throughout the changes within his style of writing in his books.
Origins
Jung being in touch with his unconscious during his middle age and discovered the archetypes when he became to see the figures in his dreams and see the figures within his daily life. It wasn't until his later life though when he became to understand these actually meant and begin to piece them together through archetypes. These times were covered within the Red Book, and thesymbols that the archetypes represented and their origins in detail could be found within a Man and His Symbols. In here he stated that the achetypes have always existed and will always exist and part of the collective unconscious It is sometimes assumed that people are creating new archetypes, but they are not actually being created but discovered, and the number of archetypes in the world are limitless. Archetypes are found within dreams, and it is found within life itself. Finding new archetypes is a matter of searching deep within one's self to discover them. The origins of the archetypal hypothesis date back as far as PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
. Jung himself compared archetypes to Platonic εἶδος (eidos)
Theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...
. Plato's ideas were pure mental forms, that were imprinted in the soul before it was born into the world. They were collective in the sense that they embodied the fundamental characteristics of a thing rather than its specific peculiarities.
In fact many of Jung's Ideas were prevalent in Athenian philosophy. The archetype theory can be seen as a psychological equivalent to the philosophical idea of forms and particulars
Examples and conceptual difficulties
An archetype is a well recognized idea in psychology and many outside of psychology know the term was well, but many people find the topic or the idea behind the archetypes very confusing . The confusion about the archetypes can partly be attributed to Jung's own evolving ideas about them in his writings and his interchangeable use of the term "archetype" and "primordial image"; it may also be attributed to the fact that, given his belief that "archetypal symbols ... are spontaneous and autonomous products of the unconscious", Jung was always intent "not to weaken the specific individual and cultural values of archetypes by leveling them out - i.e., by giving them a stereotyped, intellectually formulated meaning".Strictly speaking, archetypal figures such as the hero, the goddess and the wise man are not archetypes, but archetypal images which have crystallized out of the archetypes-as-such: as Jung put it, "definite mythological images of motifs ... are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited", as opposed to their deeper, instinctual sources - "the 'archaic remnants', which I call 'archetypes' or 'primordial images'".
Jung described archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the union of opposites etc.; archetypal figures: great mother
Great Mother
The Great Mother refers to the concept of the mother goddess, including:*Great Mother, in the Mahayana and Vajrayana refers to Prajnaparamita, and the wisdom of the Madhyamaka...
, father, child
Child (archetype)
The Child archetype, is an important Jungian archetype in Jungian psychology, first suggested by Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Recently, author Caroline Myss suggested Child, amongst four the Survival Archetypes , present in all of us...
, devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
, God, wise old man
Wise old man
The wise old man is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character...
, wise old woman
Wise Old Woman/Man
The Wise Old Woman and the Wise Old Man are archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. 'The "wise old woman"...[or] helpful "old woman" is a well-known symbol in myths and fairy tales for the wisdom of the eternal female nature'...
, Apollo
Apollo archetype
The Apollo archetype personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony, and prefers to look at the surface, as opposed to beneath appearances...
, trickster
Trickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
, hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
- not to mention "Oedipus
Oedipus complex
In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
... the first archetype Freud discovered" or "number ... an archetype of order"; and archetypal motifs: the Apocalypse, the Deluge, the Creation, etc. Although the number of archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images, "the chief among them being" (according to Jung) "the shadow, the Wise Old Man, the child (including the child hero), the mother ... and her counterpart, the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman". Alternately he would speak of "the emergence of certain definite archetypes ... the shadow, the animal, the wise old man, the anima, the animus, the mother, the child". There were five main archetypes that were discussed in Jung's writing, though there are many others. The following are the five most common archetypes.
Five main archetypes are sometimes enumerated:
- The SelfSelf (Jung)The Self in Jungian theory is one of the archetypes. It signifies the coherent whole, unified consciousness and unconscious of a person - 'the totality of the psyche'. The Self, according to Jung, is realised as the product of individuation, which in Jungian view is the process of integrating one's...
, the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuationIndividuationIndividuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...
- the representative of "that wholeness which the introspective philosophy of all times and climes has characterized with an inexhaustible variety of symbols, names and concepts". It represents all that is unique within a human being. Although a person is a collection of all the archetypes and what they learn from the collective unconscious, the self is what makes that person an I. The self can not exist without the other archetypes and the other archetypes can not exist without the self; Jung makes this very clear. The self is also the part that heavily grows and changes as a person goes throughout life. The self can be simply summed up as the ideal form a person wishes to be. - The ShadowShadow (psychology)In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. It is one of the three most recognizable archetypes, the others being the anima and animus and the persona...
, This represents the traits that lie deep within ourselves. The traits that are hidden from day to day life and are in some cases the opposite of the self is a simple way to state these traits. The shadow is a very important trait because for one to truly know themselves the must know all, including what lies beneath the common, the shadow. If one chooses to know the shadow there is a chance they give into its motivation. - The AnimaAnima (Jung)The anima and animus, in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, as opposed to both the theriomorphic and inferior-function of the shadow archetypes, as well as the abstract symbol sets that formulate the archetype of the...
, Some see the anima is the feminine side or form of a man, but Jung did not fully intend this to be viewed in this way. The Anima is beyond generalization of society's views and stereotypes. Anima represents what femininity truly represents it in all it's mysteries. It is what allows a man to be in touch with a woman. The anima is commonly represented within dreams as a method to communicate with a person. It contains all of female encounters with men to help the relationship between the to improve better. - The Animus]] Animus, is similar to the anima except for the fact the the animus allows a female to understand and communicate with a man. Just like the anima it is commonly represented in dreams of a female to help them understand themselves and relationships with men It can be known as part of the collective unconscious connection with all of the encounters of males with females, like the anima, to improve relationship with males and females.
- The PersonaPersona (psychology)The Persona, for Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world - 'a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual'....
The Persona, to Jung is a mere "functional complex ... by no means identical to the individuality",[15] the way we present to the world - a mask which protects the Ego from negative images, and which by post-Jungians is sometimes considered an "archetype ... as a dynamic/structural component of the psyche".[16] Some view this is as the opposite of the shadow which is not entirely true this is just the face that is put on for the world not our deepest internal secrets and desires, that is the self.
However the precise relationships between images such as, for example, "the fish" and its archetype were not adequately explained by Jung. Here the image of the fish is not strictly speaking an archetype. However the "archetype of the fish" points to the ubiquitous existence of an innate "fish archetype" which gives rise to the fish image. In clarifying the contentious statement that fish archetypes are universal, Anthony Stevens
Anthony Stevens (Jungian analyst)
Anthony Stevens is a well-known Jungian analyst and psychiatrist who has written extensively on psychotherapy and psychology....
explains that the archetype-as-such is at once an innate predisposition to form such an image and a preparation to encounter and respond appropriately to the creature per se. This would explain the existence of snake and spider phobias, for example, in people living in urban environments where they have never encountered either creature. There are many examples such as the fish covered in Man and His Symbols and how they tend to relate to people through measures such as dreams and little life instances. These archetypal figures can also be represented from the main archetypes such as the anima and the animus or archetypal thoughts such as the resurrection of a savior. figures For example almost every culture has a savior that has came back from heaven or the dead, or reincarnation being a main point of the belief. Jesus for example in the Christian texts and Buddhists and Hindu have reincarnation as a principle part of their religion. These being principle parts of the religion, in which many religions
Actualization and complexes
Archetypes seek actualization within the context of an individual's environment and determine the degree of individuationIndividuation
Individuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...
. Jung also used the terms "evocation" and "constellation" to explain the process of actualization. Thus for example, the mother archetype is actualized in the mind of the child by the evoking of innate anticipations of the maternal archetype when the child is in the proximity of a maternal figure who corresponds closely enough to its archetypal template. This mother archetype is built into the personal unconscious of the child as a mother complex. Complexes are functional units of the personal unconscious, in the same way that archetypes are units for the collective unconscious.
Psychoid archetype
Jung proposed that the archetype had a dual nature: it exists both in the psyche and in the world at large. He called this non-psychic aspect of the archetype the "psychoid" archetype. He illustrated this by drawing on the analogy of the electromagnetic spectrumElectromagnetic spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object is the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object....
. The part of the spectrum which is visible to us corresponds to the conscious aspects of the archetype. The invisible infra-red end of the spectrum corresponds to the unconscious biological aspects of the archetype that merges with its chemical and physical conditions. He suggested that not only do the archetypal structures govern the behavior of all living organisms, but that they were contiguous with structures controlling the behavior of inorganic matter as well. The archetype was not merely a psychic entity, but more fundamentally, a bridge to matter in general. Jung used the term unus mundus
Unus mundus
Unus mundus, Latin for "One world," is a term which refers to the concept of an underlying unified reality from which everything emerges and returns to...
to describe the unitary reality which he believed underlay all manifest phenomena
Phenomenon
A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...
. He conceived archetypes to be the mediators of the unus mundus, organizing not only ideas in the psyche, but also the fundamental principles of matter and energy in the physical world.
It was this psychoid aspect of the archetype that so impressed Nobel laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli
Wolfgang Pauli
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after being nominated by Albert Einstein, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or...
. Embracing Jung's concept, Pauli believed that the archetype provided a link between physical events and the mind of the scientist who studied them. In doing so he echoed the position adopted by German astronomer Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican...
. Thus the archetypes which ordered our perceptions and ideas are themselves the product of an objective order which transcends both the human mind and the external world.
Parallels and developments
Although the term "archetype" did not originate with Jung, its current use has largely been influenced by his conception of it. The idea of innate psychic structures, at one time a relative novelty in the humanities and sciences has now been widely adopted.General developments
Related concepts arguably include the work of Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
, an advocate of structuralism in anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, the concept of "social instincts" proposed by Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, the "faculties" of Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
and the isomorph
Isomorph
An isomorph is an organism that does not change in shape during growth. The implication is that its volume is proportional to its cubed length, and its surface area to its squared length...
s of gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler
Wolfgang Köhler
Wolfgang Köhler was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.-Early life:...
. In 1965 Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
's ideas of human language
Human language
A human language is a language primarily intended for communication among humans. The two major categories of human languages are natural languages and constructed languages...
acquisition being based on an "innate acquisition device" became known to the world.
Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein
Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...
's idea of unconscious phantasy is closely related to Jung's archetype, as both are composed of image and affect and are a-priori patternings of psyche
Psyche
- Psychology :* Psyche , a concept of intangible self* Psyche , a periodical on the study of consciousness* Soul in the Bible, or psyche , spirit or soul in philosophy and theology- Art :...
whose contents are built from experience.
Archetypal pedagogy
Archetypal pedagogyArchetypal pedagogy
Archetypal pedagogy is a theory of education which was developed Clifford Mayes. It is in the Jungian tradition and directly related to analytical psychology.- History :...
was developed by Clifford Mayes
Clifford Mayes
Clifford Mayes is an American professor in the Brigham Young University McKay School of Education.A Jungian scholar, Mayes has produced the first book-length studies in English on the pedagogical applications of Jungian and neo-Jungian psychology, which is based on the work of Carl Gustav Jung ....
. Mayes' work also aims at promoting what he calls archetypal reflectivity in teachers; this is a means of encouraging teachers to examine and work with psychodynamic issues, images, and assumptions as those factors affect their pedagogical practices.
Archetypes and psychology
Archetypal psychologyPsychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
was developed by James Hillman
James Hillman
James Hillman was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut on October 27,...
in the second half of the 20th century. Hillman trained at the Jung Institute and was its Director after graduation. Archetypal psychology is in the Jungian tradition and most directly related to analytical psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and psychodynamic theory, yet departs radically. Archetypal psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
relativizes and deliteralizes the ego
EGO
See also Egoism Ego is a Latin word meaning "I", cognate with the Greek "Εγώ " meaning "I", often used in English to mean the "self", "identity" or other related concepts.It may also refer to:...
and focuses on the psyche
Psyche
- Psychology :* Psyche , a concept of intangible self* Psyche , a periodical on the study of consciousness* Soul in the Bible, or psyche , spirit or soul in philosophy and theology- Art :...
, or soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
, itself and the archai, the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, "the fundamental fantasies that animate all life" . Archetypal psychology is a polytheistic psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, in that it attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies and myths gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals—that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives. The ego is but one psychological fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
within an assemblage of fantasies.
The main influence on the development of archetypal psychology is Carl Jung's analytical psychology. It is strongly influenced by Classical Greek
Greek
Greek may refer to anything related to:*Greece, a country in south-eastern Europe*Greeks, an ethnic group*Greek language, or more specifically:**Mycenaean Greek, **Ancient Greek,...
, Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, and Romantic ideas and thought. Influential artists, poets, philosophers, alchemists, and psychologists include: Nietzsche, Henry Corbin, Keats, Shelley, Petrarch, and Paracelsus. Though all different in their theories and psychologies, they appear to be unified by their common concern for the psyche—the soul.
Many archetypes have been used in treatment of psychological illnesses. Jung's first research was done with schizophrenics. A current example is teaching young men or boys archetypes through using picture books to help with the development. In addition nurses treat patients through the use of archetypes. Archetype therapy offers a wide range of uses if applied correctly, and it is still being expanded in Jungian schools today. With the list of archetypes being endless the healing possibilities are vast.
Jung on the value of the archetype
It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them (CW8:794). To this it can be taken to mean that when a person is able to come to peace with the archetypes the lay within in them they are able to begin to live a more peaceful life.[For the alchemists] they were seeds of light broadcast in the chaos…the seed plot of a world to come…One would have to conclude from these alchemical visions that the archetypes have about them a certain effulgence or quasi-consciousness, and that numinosity entails luminosity (CW8:388).
All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us (CW8, 342). This could be taken to mean that the archetypes are what makes us, us. All of the beliefs and myths we have are all just part of the archetypes and that nothing is new in the universe and everything has already existed and will continue to texist.
In his last text, Man and His Symbols, Jung stressed that "since so many people have chosen to treat archetypes as if they were part of a mechanical system that can be learned by rote, it is essential to insist that they are not mere names or even philosophical concepts. They are pieces of life itself - images that are integrally connected to the individual by the bridge of the emotions".[20] Jung states that they are not individual concepts of the world or individual pieces of the world we must come to know as separate things, but we must come to know the machine (archetypes) as a whole not just as individuals.
As a result, it was the importance of the experiential encounter with the archetype which Jung emphasized: "in psychology, where we speak of archetypes like the anima and animus, the wise man, the great mother, and so on ... if they are mere images whose numinosity you have never experienced, it will be as if you were talking in a dream, for you will not know what you are talking about ... their names mean very little, whereas the way they are related to you is all-important".[21] This means that one when first encounters a new archetype they do not always know what it means or how it will help them in their life, but they must come to learn to accept it and understand it. In time the answers will reveal themselves.
Criticism of Jungian understandings
LacanJacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, in his "return to Freud", took issue with that aspect of "the thought of Jung, where the relation between the psychical world of the subject and reality are embodied under the term archetype". He argued that "Jungianism - in so far as it makes of the primitive modes of articulating the world something that survives, the kernel, he says, of the psyche itself - is necessarily accompanied by a repudiation of the term libido
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
". Freud himself however had been well prepared to accept the existence of "a primitive kind of mental activity ... [on] the single analogy - and it is an excellent one - of the far-reaching instinctive knowledge of animals"; and it was indeed on the basis of "what Freud called 'archaic remnants' - mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life ... inherited shapes of the human mind" that Jung had explicitly built his theory of archetypes. His specific and contrasting claim was that they were "not in any sense lifeless or meaningless 'remnants'. They still function, and they are especially valuable ... just because of their 'historical' nature".
More general criticism of the concept of archetypes can perhaps be placed in two broad categories. There are those who deny any possibility of inherited ideas as unscientific - a point met (at least to some degree) by Jung when he insisted that it was instead the inherited propensity to generate representations that made the archetypes "the unconscious organizers of our ideas" (see above).
But those who could accept such inherited propensities still found "a basic ambiguity in Jung's various descriptions of the collective unconscious
Collective unconscious
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience...
. Sometimes he seems to regard the predisposition to experience certain images as understandable in terms of some genetic model ... about the way human beings experience the world. But he is also at pains to emphasize the numinous quality of these experience and there can be no doubt that he was attracted to the idea that the archetypes afford evidence of communion with some divine or world mind". Jung's last statements on that subject remained however firmly agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....
. "Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are probably illusions ... [but] the denial is as impossible to 'prove' as the assertion".
A more technical objection derives from therapeutic practice, with the possibility arising that "an explanation of the archetypal situation ... may lead to inflation, if it is not linked to specific and personal emotional experiences". Some would go further, arguing that because "in Jungian theory, the psychologist's task is to lead others to see the timeless archetypal reality behind their personal psychological experiences ... using abstract, archetypal forces to explain human psychology", the result must inevitably be "a psychology which downplays the significance of human relationships". The patient is thus brought to realise that "what I did then, what I felt then, is only the reflection of that great archetypal dream, or epic story ... free of the individual pain of it", but at the price of individuality and human relationship, sacrificed for an unwillingness to "leave the safety of myth".
See also
- Archetypal psychologyArchetypal psychologyArchetypal psychology is a vein of inquiry into the psyche inaugurated in the early 1900s by Carl Gustav Jung. Jung and his followers, as well as Mircea Eliade, imagined the psychology of the archetypes from studying anthropology and archeology reports of their times and weaving it into their...
- ArchetypeArchetypeAn archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
- Archive for Research in Archetypal SymbolismArchive for Research in Archetypal SymbolismFor the Ascending reticular activating system, see Reticular activating systemThe Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism is an encyclopedic collection of archetypal images consisting of photographs of works of art, ritual images, and artifacts of sacred traditions and contemporary art from...
- Evolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...