|
| In-site navigation |
|
Back to Home
|
| Dealing with Anxiety |
 |
Links coming soon
|
| Links coming soon |
|
Links coming soon
|
| Additional Links |
|
Fall 2002
To be announced
|
|
|
|
|
The story of Leda and the Swan contains universal human metaphors
Of all the complexities introduced by Jung into his Analytical Psychology, the concept of the archetype remains among the least understood and least frequently applied in mainstream psychology. Conversely, the concept quickly took root in many other non-scientific domains such as literature, art, and popular culture. However, the archetypal hypothesis is not an obscure irrelevancy within analytical theory, but rather a central and crucial concept which provides the context for analytical conceptualization of psychological health and mental illness.
An archetype in the analytical tradition is "an organizing principle, a system of readiness, and a dynamic nucleus of energy". At the barest functional level, the archetype is potentiality rather than form; it cannot be observed directly but is inferred through its effects. Jung claimed that archetypes "belong to the basic stock of the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions" but that they represent "typical situations in life". The point that archetypes are not "personal acquisitions" is significant in differentiating them from the constructs depicted as schemas, for it is assumed that archetypes come "hard wired" in the human brain as pre-set tendencies for conceptualization. In Jung’s formulation, archetypes emanate from the collective unconscious, which denotes a universal source of human experience. A deep analysis and review of the collective unconscious construct is beyond the scope of this work; however, the construct does carry theoretical relevance here to the extent that archetypes are assumed to arise not from personal experience but from a common human heritage, which Jung himself hinted was probably biologically coded.
In "On the nature of the psyche" Jung stated: "What we mean by archetype is in itself irrepresentable but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas." Most subsequent analytical writers have taken the archetypes to be essentially dynamic to the extent that they defy ready description. Therefore, a significant part of the difficulty facing any research dealing with archetypes is the lack of a satisfactory operationalization of the concept. Not only have different authors treated the construct somewhat differently across instances, but the construct itself has shown some consistent evolution, both within Jung’s lifetime and afterwards. Four aspects of the archetype as a psychological construct can be discussed: as a consistent pattern that manifests through ideas, images, or events; as a dynamic organizer of both psyche and matter ; as a psychological structure associated with strong affect, and as a phenomenon associated with synchronistic events meaningfully connecting physical and psychological event.
| |
