Jungian archetypes  

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Archetypes are, according to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of human life emerge. 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.

Overview

The concept of psychological archetypes was advanced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, c. 1919. In Jung's psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex ( e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype). Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution.

Jung outlined five main archetypes:

• The Self, the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuation,
• The Shadow, the opposite of the ego image, often containing qualities with which the ego does not identify, but which it possesses nonetheless,
• The Anima, the feminine image in a man's psyche, or
• The Animus, the masculine image in a woman's psyche,
• The Persona, the image we present to the world, usually protecting the Ego from negative images (like a mask), and considered another of 'the subpersonalities, the complexes'.

Although archetypes can take on innumerable forms, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images:

• The Child
• The Hero
• The Great Mother
• The Wise old man or Sage
• The Wise Old Woman/Man, archetypes of the collective unconscious
• The Damsel in distress
• The Trickster or Fox
• The Devil or Satan
• The Scarecrow
• The Mentor
• Rebirth

Jung also outlined what he called archetypes of transformation, which are situations, places, ways, and means that symbolize the transformation in question. These archetypes exist primarily as energy and are useful in organizational development, personal and organizational change management, and extensively used in place branding.

See also

• Archetypal psychology
• Archetype
• Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism
• Evolutionary psychology