I was interested in what Craig said about archetypes. Clarissa Pinkola Estes said that nouns were archetypes during a workshop I attended with her. I think I heard Craig disagree. It would be great if Craig could write what the teacher in the class he took said about archetypes. I did not quite get it from the verbal webinar.
Thank you.
Jane Knox
Replies
The class I took held archetypes as modes of discourse: not which god are we discussing, but which god is reflected by the mode of our discussion. Which altar do I now stand at?
The disagreement might be more conceptual than anything. The traditional Jungians tend to speak of archetypes as things. They could be things, but I like to emphasize their process dimension.
Hi Jane,
I took a note or two of what Craig said. My notes say:
I confess that I am still trying to find the perfect phrase that conveys this concept myself.
Jung declared there were two different kinds of archetypes -- personifications and events*. So "Hero" is a personification while "Death" is an event (although it could be argued that Death is a personification if one considers The Grim Reaper).
I'm laughing a bit now as I write this... perhaps the lesson here is that it can be difficult to pin archetypes down**.
....And as a pure technicality, I should be using the term "archetypal representation." All we ever encounter are the representations, never the archetype itself. (But most people shorten it to just say "archetype," so it's not an embarrassing error to do so.)
I hope this contributes something useful.
-Vicky Jo
__________
* "There are," writes Jung, "types of situations and types of figures that repeat themselves frequently and have a corresponding meaning."
from "Complex Archetype Symbol in the Psychology of C.G. Jung," by Jolande Jacobi, pg. 57-58
** "The contents of the unconscious, unlike conscious contents, are mutually contaminated to such a degree that they cannot be distinguished from one another and can therefore easily take one another's place, as can be seen most clearly in dreams. The indistinguishableness of its contents gives one the impression that everything is connected with everything else and therefore, despite their multifarious modes of manifestation, that they are at bottom a unity. The only comparatively clear contents consist of motifs or types around which the individual associations congregate. As the history of the human mind shows, these archetypes are of great stability and so distinct that they allow themselves to be personified and named, even though their boundaries are blurred or cut across those of other archetypes, so that certain of their qualities can be interchanged."
from Mysterium Coniunctionis, CG Jung, par. 660
VJ, your contributions are really excellent. Thanks so much.
Vicky Jo, this is fabulous. Thank you, Jane