I prefer to think of archetypes within 'literature'. Others like to think of archetypes as 'in the head'. I am just wondering how members of Depth Psychology Alliance view archetypes? Of course everything derives from the mind/psyche but I think that it is important to see where such phenomena goes/ends up... so-to-speak. And then we can take a perspective on it.
Paul.
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Bonnie - didn't read what you wrote before i posted
I like the idea of Archetypes as hard-wired/imprinted patterns --- is almost like they are these pre-existing images with lines and then we color them in with the energies and experiences
i view archetypes as both energies and image...
i use the term 'archetype-as-such' when referring to the archetypal energy behind something...whether it be an image, behavior, metaphor, etc. And then the core of the this type of energy being the complex....as if the complex feeds the energy but the image informs or 'frames' what archetypal energy and complex is activated..
and Archetype as the actual image which represents the energy...i.e. great mother, puer, trickster...So in my mind, the Greek Pantheon, or our modern Western fairy tales do a good job of putting form to the image that embodies the energy...
if that makes sense
I recently had a great discussion with Lionel Corbett, author of Psyche and the Sacred among other books, on this very topic. He confirmed what Jung thought: that Archetypes are at level of transpersonal.According to Jung, archetypes are “hardwired” imprints--like preloaded software--innate patterns already in the psyche. James Hillman, who is an Archetypal psychologist says archetypes are not gods and goddesses and vice versa, whereas Jung regarded the gods and goddesses as images of archetypes.
Every culture, instance, has an archetypal image for Mother (Goddess, Great Mother, Kali, Sharina, Sophia, Mary) and for a Sky Father (God, Zeus). Jung would say none of them are the archetype itself, but rather folkloric images. The archetype is irrepresentable; the local culture just dresses it up and represents it in a certain way.
Archetypes (like the Teacher, Healer, Warrior, etc.) are already present in the world we are born into. They are patterns—but they have no content. If the mother archetype is present at birth, one particular woman fills in the content. She humanizes the archetype, brings it into lived time and space. Thus, you don’t inherit a particular idea but rather the potential to fulfill it. Therefore, mothering in any form would fill the archetype. Archetypes are autonomous, come from objective psyche (autonomous, objects act for themselves) – can grip or possess you.
I liked this particular description because it makes sense to me, helped me see the underlying patterns and yet still understand the surface differences between 'forms'. It also enabled me to get, on whatever level possible, the idea of Jung's about the "rhizome" and his quote: "The deeper layers of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into the darkness. Here they become increasingly collective until they are universalized, merging with the body’s instinctual and biological functions and eventually with nature itself. Hence, ‘at bottom’ the psyche is simply ‘world’" - that, I think, is the closest I can get to ascertaining even the slightest inkling of an archetype...
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