Archetypes & The Wisdom of all Ages
The evidence for archetypes isn't tangible, but like the wind, the effects can be felt across skin and time. “In the end we dig up the wisdom of all ages…
The evidence for archetypes isn't tangible, but like the wind, the effects can be felt across skin and time. “In the end we dig up the wisdom of all ages and peoples, only to find that everything most dear and precious to us has already been said in the most superb language” (Jung, 1968, CW 9i, para.31). The line names Jung’s method. His case for archetypes persuades by convergence. Between 1909 and 1912, he set out to map “a general psychology that would map the psyche” (Stein, 1998, p. 87), Jung cites “philology, history, archaeology, mythology, folklore, ethnology, philosophy, theology, pedagogy, and biology” as contributors (Stein, 1998, p.87).
Jung asserts more specifically that the term archetype appears in Philo Judaeus, Irenaeus, the Corpus Hermeticum, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Augustine’s ideae principales. What mythology calls motifs, Lévy-Bruhl calls réprésentations collectives, Hubert and Mauss call categories of the imagination, and Bastian calls primordial thoughts (Jung, 1968, CW 9i, para.5). The monumental synthesis is the empirical evidence for archetypes Jung offers us.
Yet the map has provisional edges. “Whatever we have to say about these archetypes . . . is either directly verifiable or at least rendered probable by the facts. At the same time, I am fully aware that we are discussing pioneer work which by its very nature can only be provisional” (Jung, 1969, CW 9ii, para.27). The anima and animus show where the edges fray, serving as a bridge. Classically, they stand as psychopomp, mediating between conscious and unconscious, and as archetypes, they lie beyond the range of human perception, known only through projection (Jung, 1969, CW 9ii, para.40).
The structural claim holds: the binding of that projection exclusively to a partner of the opposite sex does not, once the conscious threshold is acknowledged as wider than repression alone (Jung, 1966, CW 7, para.203). The archetype is the collective bedrock for psychic life, and the anima/us is the Bifrost between the realm of the gods and humans.
Refernces
Jung, C. G. (1966). Two essays on analytical psychology (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Collected works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 7). Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1968). The archetypes and the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Collected works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1). Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1969). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Collected works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 2). Princeton University Press.
Stein, M. (1998). Jung’s map of the soul: An introduction. Open Court.
References
Jung, C. G. (1968). The archetypes and the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9, Pt. 1, 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1959)
Jung, C. G. (1969). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9, Pt. 2, 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951)
Jung, C. G. (1966). Two essays on analytical psychology (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 7, 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press.
Stein, M. (1998). Jung’s map of the soul: An introduction. Open Court.