Jungian archetypes

Archetypes are, according to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of human life emerge. Being universal and innate, their influence can be detected in the form of myths, symbols, rituals and instincts of human beings. Archetypes are components of the collective unconscious and serve to organize, direct and inform human thought and behaviour.

According to Jung, archetypes heavily influence the human life cycle, propelling a neurologically hard-wired sequence which he called the stages of life. Each stage is mediated through a new set of archetypal imperatives which seek fulfillment in action. These 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 rasa theory of human psychological development, believing instead that evolutionary pressures had dictated the basic structures and functions of the psyche. He believed that human experience was directed by a priori aptitudes. He wrote:

"The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world into which he is already inborn in him as a virtual image. Likewise, parents, wife, children, birth and death are inborn in him as virtual images, as psychic aptitudes. These [categories] have individual predestinations. We must therefore, think of these images 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 more difficult to apprehend. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behaviour, images, art, myths, etc. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behaviour 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.

Chronology

The intuition that there was more to the psyche than individual experience could put there began in Jung's childhood. The very first dream he could remember was that of an underground phallic god. His researches in schizophrenia later confirmed his early intuition that universal psychic structures exist which underlie all human experience and behaviour. Jung first referred to these as "primordial images" - a term he borrowed from Jacob Burckhardt. Later in 1917 he 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.

Origins

The origins of the archetypal hypothesis date back as far as Plato. Jung himself compared archetypes to Platonic ideas. Plato's ideas were pure mental forms un-originated and eternal, existing in a world of such ideas that was inherently perfect and 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.

Examples and conceptual difficulties

Although the general idea of an archetype is well recognized, there is considerable confusion as regards their exact nature and the way they result in universal experiences. 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". Strictly speaking, archetypal figures such as the hero, the goddess and the wise man are not archetypes, but archetypal images which have crystallised out of the archetypes-as-such.

Jung described: archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the union of opposites etc., archetypal figures: mother, father, child, God, trickster, hero, wise old man, etc., and archetypal motifs: the Apocalypse, the Deluge, the Creation, etc.

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.

Jung also proposed the existence of the Self, the anima, the animus and the shadow as psychological structures having an archetypal nature.

Actualisation and complexes

Archetypes seek actualisation within the context of an individual's environment and determine the degree of individuation. Jung also used the terms 'evocation' and 'constellation' to explain the process of actualisation. Thus for example, the mother archetype is actualised 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 spectrum. 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 behaviour of all living organisms, but that they were contiguous with structures controlling the behaviour of organic matter as well. The archetype was not merely a psychic entity, but more fundamentally, a bridge to matter in general. Jung used the ancient term of 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, organising 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.

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. Related concepts arguably include the work of Claude Levi Strauss, an advocate of structuralism in anthropology, the concept of 'social instincts' proposed by Charles Darwin, the 'faculties' of Henri Bergson and the isomorphs of gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler. In 1965 Noam Chomsky's ideas of human language acquisition being based an 'innate acquisition device' became known to the world.

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).

[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).

Articles on specific archetypes

• Trickster
• Wise old man
• Anima and Animus
• Shadow (psychology)

See also

• Archetype
• Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

References

• Stevens, Anthony (Chapter 3.) Papadopoulos, Renos ed.(2006) 'The Handbook of Jungian Psychology'
• Jung, C. G. (1917, 1928). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (1966 revised 2nd ed. Collected Works Vol. 7). London: Routledge.
• Jung, C. G., (1934–1954). The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious. (1981 2nd ed. Collected Works Vol.9 Part 1), Princeton, N.J.: Bollingen. ISBN 0-691-01833-2