Jungian archetypes
Jungian archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The psychic counterpart of instinct, archetypes are thought to be the basis of many of the common themes and symbols that appear in stories, myths, and dreams across different cultures and societies. Some examples of archetypes include those of the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood, among others. The concept of the collective unconscious was first proposed by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
According to Jung, archetypes are innate patterns of thought and behavior that strive for realization within an individual's environment. This process of actualization influences the degree of individuation, or the development of the individual's unique identity. For instance, the presence of a maternal figure who closely matches the child's idealized concept of a mother can evoke innate expectations and activate the mother archetype in the child's mind. This archetype is incorporated into the child's personal unconscious as a "mother complex," which is a functional unit of the personal unconscious that is analogous to an archetype in the collective unconscious.
Later development[edit]
In later years, Jung revised and broadened the concept of archetype, conceiving them as psycho-physical patterns existing in the universe, given specific expression by human consciousness and culture. This was part of his attempt to link depth psychology to the larger scientific program of the twentieth century.[18]
Jung proposed the archetype contained a dual nature, existing both in the psyche of an individual and the world at large. The non-psychic element, or "psychoid" archetype, is a synthesis of instinct and spirit[19] and is not accessible to consciousness.[20] Jung developed this concept with the collaboration of Austrian quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who believed that the psychoid archetype was crucial to understanding the principles of the universe.[3] Jung also saw the psychoid archetype as a continuum that includes what he previously referred to as "archtypal tendency", or the innate pattern of action.[19]
The archetype is not just a psychic entity, but is more fundamentally a bridge to matter in general.[21] Jung used the term unus mundus to describe the unitary reality that he believed underlies all manifest phenomena, observable or perceivable things that exist in the physical world. He conceived of archetypes as 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. The psychoid aspect of the archetype impressed Nobel laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who embraced Jung's concept and believed that the archetype provided a link between physical events and the mind of the scientist studying them. This echoed the position adopted by German astronomer Johannes Kepler. Thus, the archetypes that order our perceptions and ideas are themselves the product of an objective order that transcends both the human mind and the external world.[3]
Ken Wilber developed a theory called Spectrum of Consciousness that expanded on Jung's archetypes.[22] He said that Jung's archetypes were not used in the same way as the ancient mystics (e.g. Plato and Augustine).[23] Wilber also drew from mystical philosophy to describe a fundamental state of reality from which all subsequent and lower forms emerge.[24] For Wilber, these forms are actual or real archetypes and emerged from the Emptiness or the fundamental state of reality.[24] In Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm, Wilber clarified that the lower structures are not the archetypes themselves, but are instead given collectively and archetypically.[25] He also explained that levels of forms are a part of psychological development, in which a higher order emerges through the differentiation of a preceding level.[26]
Actualization and complexes[edit]
Archetypes seek actualization as the individual lives out their life cycle within the context of their environment. According to Jung, this process is called individuation, which he described as "an expression of that biological process - simple or complicated as the case may be - by which every living thing becomes what it was destined to become from the beginning".[44] It is considered a creative process that activates the unconscious and primordial images through exposure to unexplored potentials of the mind.[45] Archetypes guide the individuation process towards self-realization.[46]
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.[17]
Criticism[edit]
Feminist critiques have focused on aspects of archetypal theory that are seen as being reductionistic and providing a stereotyped view of femininity and masculinity.[76]
Carl Jung has also been accused of metaphysical essentialism. His psychology and particularly his thoughts on spirit lack a scientific basis, making them mystical and based on assumption rather than empirical investigation.
Another criticism of archetypes is that seeing myths as universal tends to abstract them from the history of their actual creation, and their cultural context.[77] Some modern critics state that archetypes reduce cultural expressions to generic decontextualized concepts, stripped bare of their unique cultural context, reducing a complex reality into something "simple and easy to grasp".[77] Other critics respond that archetypes do nothing more than to solidify the cultural prejudices of the myth interpreter – namely modern Westerners. Modern scholarship has characterized archetypes as an Eurocentric and colonialist device to level the specifics of individual cultures and their stories in the service of grand abstraction.[78] This is demonstrated in the conceptualization of the "Other", which can only be represented by limited ego fiction despite its "fundamental unfathomability".[79]
Others have accused him of a romanticized and prejudicial promotion of 'primitivism' through the medium of archetypal theory. Archetypal theory has been posited as being scientifically unfalsifiable and even questioned as to being a suitable domain of psychological and scientific inquiry. Jung mentions the demarcation between experimental and descriptive psychological study, seeing archetypal psychology as rooted by necessity in the latter camp, grounded as it was (to a degree) in clinical case-work.[80]
Because Jung's viewpoint was essentially subjectivist, he displayed a somewhat Neo-Kantian perspective of a skepticism for knowing things in themselves and a preference of inner experience over empirical data. This skepticism opened Jung up to the charge of countering materialism with another kind of reductionism, one that reduces everything to subjective psychological explanation and woolly quasi-mystical assertions.[81]
Post-Jungian criticism seeks to contextualize, expand and modify Jung's original discourse on archetypes. Michael Fordham is critical of tendencies to relate imagery produced by patients to historical parallels only (e.g. from alchemy, mythology or folklore). A patient who produces archetypal material with striking alchemical parallels runs the risk of becoming more divorced than before from his setting in contemporary life.[5]