What are Jungian archetypes?

[WillCameron]

At the most basic level, an archetype is a symbol that acts as a representation of several internal and external factors. Internally, they can include beliefs, perspectives, feelings within your body, the emotional categories you use to understand those feelings, potentially the whole gamut of things, categories, and processes that exist within you. Externally, the same is true. They include sociological, economic, political, and all other factors that we could think about in regards to the external world.

An archetype isn’t necessarily ALL of those things, but could include any combination of them. That also means that an archetype is always overflowing with what it intends to represent. In fact, the overwhelming complexity of all that an archetype could represent is kind of the point of the archetype. Think of it like a generative simplification. By simplifying all that complexity into the form of a symbol, image, or person of some kind, it becomes more generative or productive. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

But generative of what exactly? And how?

Through the archetype we are able to integrate the facets in order to see more deeply into them. Integration means that rather than there being all these disparate, seemingly disconnected factors, I am able to see them as one interconnected whole through the symbol.

What’s more, think about what happens when I hold all of these factors together through contemplation of the symbol. All of the cognitive machinery that typically acts in a less coordinated fashion is now brought to bear in the attempt to integrate the factors into a unified whole.

In other words, the archetype acts as a sort of focusing lens for the dynamic coupling of the cognitive machinery used in my understanding of myself, the world, and how they relate with one another. I can see not only that all these factors are connected, but how they are connected, which allows me to understand the complex causal web more deeply. This in turn allows me to see into myself as both an effect of that web of factors, but also as the knower who is modeling that complex web of factors.

Remember that however much I am trying to track real features of myself and the world, that tracking is itself a map that I am creating within myself. As such, the archetype can be thought of as a type of map of a territory. That territory consists of the various factors. By collecting them all in the form of the archetypal map, I am, hopefully, given a more integrated model in which I can see the complex causal web connecting the factors.

When I differentiate the various factors again, I do so in a way that has been influenced by what happened to them during the integration.

For example, once I understand my emotions as not just random feelings, but as feelings that emerged out of their relation to the other factors of the map, I am able to understand those emotions in a far more conceptually rich way. I see that my feelings of shame were not because I am intrinsically shameful, but because I was raised in a culture that valorized certain modes of being because of economic pressures. Failing to live up to that ideal makes me feel ashamed because that shame is meant to drive me to try harder to conform to that ideal.

Knowing this, I am now better able to deal with that shame when it arises. I can instead choose to aspire to better ideals that are more in alignment with the kind of person I want to be. I’m no longer pulled so strongly by what my culture expects of me simply because of economic pressures I’ve realized I don’t personally care about.

The focusing power of the archetypal map helped me understand the reasons for my feelings better, which helped me deal with the specific feeling better the next time it arose. I’m now able to see more deeply into myself in regards to how that feeling manifests within me, how it influences me, and so make better decisions. The integration of the different factors helped me differentiate them in a beneficial manner.

Once I can understand each differentiated factor better, think about what that means when I re-integrate them into another archetypal map.

This new map may be very similar, but also different given how the previous cycle of integration and differentiation affected it. This can continue as repeated cycles where a recursively differentiating integration opens me reciprocally with the world through the archetype. The deeper I see into the world through the archetypal map, the more deeply I am able to see into myself. This allows me to see deeper into and through the archetype into the territory it maps, which allows me to see more deeply into myself.

This recursively differentiating integration can open me up to a self and world beyond the territory that the archetype was mapping. An archetypal map is not just a beautiful picture, but a map for becoming more causally powerful in the world. The symbol itself helped me see what I was currently living by and aspiring to, even though I wasn’t aware of it. I can now more consciously aspire to something more.

An archetypal map is not just created willy-nilly by bringing disparate factors together, but was already functioning without me realizing it. When used properly, such a map helps me see real relations between all the factors that I mistakenly believed to be disconnected, or I was simply ignorant of the way in which they were already connected. As such, when I bring those factors together in the form of an archetype I am called to function in a way given what the archetype implies.

For example, if the archetype is a Heroic archetype, I am called to aspire toward it. If it is a Shadow archetype, that means that I was rejecting some aspect of myself or the world, and so I am called to find a better way of relating to that aspect than I was. I may have labelled something a threat when it wasn’t a threat, or was a treat that I was dealing with in a way that made the threat even more threatening. There are other functions of course, but let’s keep it as simple as we can.

What happens if an archetypal map has both Heroic and Shadow aspects?

This is the promise and danger of the archetypes. Remember that our first conception of an archetype helps us learn that this was the map we were already using to navigate the complex of factors it represents. If we bring together that archetypal map we are better able to understand how the factors are connected, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we really see the real relations nor does it mean that we are automatically able to use that map wisely. We could be wrong on both accounts.

For example, we may bring together a map that contains both Heroic and Shadow aspects, but believe it is primarily Heroic. This means as we reciprocally open through the recursively differentiating integrations of the map, we are doing so in a way that augments the unresolved Shadow aspects of the Hero we aspire to be. The more we aspire the more we reject those facets of our self and the world that we are perhaps most called to relate to better.

The overarching structure of the archetypal map also influences the way in which I can integrate the related factors. A Chinese globe will be very different from the globes made in a country that recognizes Tibet. The American globe was likely very different from the British globe during the revolution. A Hero in the shape of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robin Hood, and King Richard I will make for a very different kind of aspiration, as will an altogether different archetypal map for aspiration than the Heroic.

That’s precisely why the factors that an archetype integrates matter for the shape the archetype itself and vice versa. My emotions mapping into cultural and economic factors that produced shame for not becoming the Heroic Entrepreneur are all real relations. I aspired to be the Heroic Entrepreneur because of that shame, because of those cultural expectations, and because of those economic pressures. Even though I wasn’t fully conscious that my engagement with the world was defined by the archetypal map of the Heroic Entrepreneur, it acted almost like an autonomous agent, pushing me and pulling me toward ends that were intimately bound to and made up by the relevant factors.

In fact, we can better understand the archetypes by dialoguing with them as if they were fully autonomous agents. This is one of the ways in which we can get all of that cognitive machinery working together. When I sit down to talk to the archetype, imagining what it would say and how it would react, I am modelling all the factors I am trying to keep in mind. In some cases this can be felt like a real conversation with another person. Such experiences are also found in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and I can speak from personal experience how powerful both archetypal dialogue and IFS can be.

Sometimes they are so powerful that they quite literally force themselves upon us. When we’re living from an archetype that is maladaptive and dysfunctional we experience it as a rage, depression, addictive acting out, or a whole range of other behaviours that can cause horrible damage to ourselves and others. Whether or not we seek to change those behaviours depends on the archetype that lives within us and all the various factors that make it up. That can lead us to seek help or lead us to justify our rage as righteous fury on the unbelievers.

The purpose of identifying and working with the archetypes is to integrate all these different factors so that we can understand them better and to transcend the limitations of the archetype itself toward a new, higher, wider, and more inclusive archetypal map. This archetype will always be overflown by the complexity it seeks to represent, but this can help us grow to be overflown even just a little less. This can never be a definite growth to goodness, but the growth to goodness can be profoundly afforded by it. Though, of course, it can’t be the only practice, because as Vervaeke says, there is no panacea practice.

If you’d like to see how I’ve engaged with archetypes, here are some of my essays relevant to the image:

Psychology of the Succubus

Psychology of Epithymia

Psychology of the Zombie

The Rise of Epithymian Idolatry

 

[kavaris]

@WillCameron The Archetype; The Symbols or notions — It is a powerful way to do just as you said. They help you create an Archetyped map and to *see-through to something more core and more primal than the layers that may be on it, in between (or just flat out Not visible yet). That is what the Icon, logo or the symbol has always been meant to do. Its meant to encapsulate more than what we might be trying to express—And in such a way as to do it within a dedicated area, or a symbol that isnt easily dismissed. It gives you an apex, an azimuth to help in relating things to—to then—afterwards, make connections. The Archetypes you speak of have always been there in some form.

Speaking to this first succubi one — That one, specifically could and will likely end up (in the coming ages) following a circular pattern -> (Speaking from a more angelic beginning) First—To begin w/... You have the equality of human beings -> then a tipping towards one end of the spectrum or the other -> then a domination brought to the table, via the men on Earth (as its not necessarily a native womanly trait) -> then a suppression of, or the outward appearance of men (iuno if youd call them men or boys) being dominated -> then it just goes back to normal once that goofyness subsides, presumably.

It might take longer tlfor it to get smoothed out as its a chain reaction of different things happening. And as its really~not like a focal point or anything. Like its a consequence of consequence of a muddy center wherein nothing makes sense, and, in turn, you get these goofy things bubbling up and making it look like we are in some sortve backwards, anti men verse / paradigm. There are aspects that are true to make it so, then there are those that make it seem as though it is alot more than it really is/much more than it even ever could (like, totally *out there-stuff) and most of that i feel is self correcting, just as you had come to the conclusion to do this map in the first place, which is precisely how such issues get resolved internally (let a partial external one do as they must).

That is to say then, how we must simply and ambitiously map them out, just as anything on Earth/Reality has to involve, or resolve, through either:

A) A mapping out (*identifying) of the reality/experiences, and denoting the basis/initial form... To later bring in...

B) A "language" — and, of which is in turn created—by making connections and/or filling in the details.

The *mapping Archetype, if we might call it that for a moment, is more of like the *design/architect, or cartographer's direction, or so one might say (the Archetype of the Architect) (or the director of a sortve macro scale, and the erecting of runestones of acknowledgement within its territories, regions within *space)

Then you have more of the very *detailed Archetype, the one who makes connections and fills things out... Sortve "doing the~application of directed details" (if that makes sense) adding details to those already mapped out parts produced by the cartographer. Both are involved in mapping out something, whatever that may be, but there has to be someone sighting/revealing [insert a*space] before it can have details.

p.s. i dont know wat the canonical jungian archetypes are, i just have my own thing.

Edited 21 hours ago by kavaris