Last part of my archetypes waffle.
There is quite a bit of confusion about what archetypes are exactly. This could be down to the psychologist Carl Jung’s own changing theories about archetypes and archetypal structures in his works and his tendency to refer to them as archetypes then “primordial images.”
Carl Jung was also trying to keep the raw essence of archetypes – impulsive emanations from the unconscious – therefore not tying the individual and cultural expressions of archetypes down to a strict, formal definition.
A few weeks back I made a post about Jung’s idea of the Collective Unconscious that explored archetypes (as well as ghosts) and I have also done an exploration on where the idea of archetypes originated from.
Archetypes seem to be a basic pattern in our minds that is echoed in other theories in other disciplines, e.g. anthropology (for more of that, see this post).
Moving on now to how archetypes are used by us to construct stories we tell one another – and our own selves – and why.
In 2009, two scholars named Michael A. Faber and John D. Mayer conducted an experiment and discovered that specific archetypes in media can be accurately identified by individual people.
They also found that the life experiences and personalities of people identifying the archetypes seemed to give them a psychological resonance with particular archetypes.
Jungian archetypes have also been thought of as affecting ideas of what’s “cool” in youth culture.
When you think about this, it makes sense – as readers (and writers, or other artists), we are drawn to certain characters and certain experiences according to our own personalities and experiences in life… or the experiences we would like to have and the sort of person we want to be.
After Freud came up with the theory of psychodynamics, Melanie Klein had a theory about object relations. According to her, newborn infants had “unconscious phantasies” – not-quite-thoughts that were a combination of instinct and early sensory input from the environment. This could be the same thing as the “innate release mechanisms” Konrad Lorenz and Nicolaas Tinbergen said are in animals when they are born (e.g. imprinting on a mother figure).
To the infant, everything it experiences is either all good or all bad, never a mix of the two. It relates to “part-objects” (usually the breast / milk of the primary caregiver) in a rather split-personality fashion because of this.
If the object of the breast / milk is provided when the infant is hungry, it becomes a Good Object. However, if the infant is not fed when it is hungry, it forms an unconscious phantasy of a separate breast that is a Bad Object. The baby cannot understand that they are both the same object, so in its mind the phantasy of its primary caregiver is split in two.
When thinking of the Bad Object, the infant has an unconscious phantasy of oral aggression towards it, and this leads to it also having a polarised, split view of its own developing ego. Therefore both the life urge (love) and the death urge (hate) are first experienced.
It is only later on in babyhood that the primary caregiver is finally realised as a separate, autonomous being that is capable of being both Bad and Good. This triggers a “depressive episode” in the mind of the baby where it starts to feel complicated emotions such as guilt and grief over the unconscious phantasy it had of aggression towards its Bad Object, which it didn’t realise was its caregiver.
This leads to more nuanced emotions when it comes to love throughout life and interpersonal relationships, as it gives us the ability to develop sympathy and empathy for people who are not us. Without those complex emotions, stories would probably never exist.
In his Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1916–1917), Sigmund Freud said: “There can be no doubt that the source [of primal fantasies] lie in the instincts; but it still has to be explained why the same fantasies with the same content are created on every occasion. I am prepared with an answer that I know will seem daring to you. I believe that… primal fantasies, and no doubt a few others as well, are a phylogenetic endowment.”
Freud came to the idea that primal fantasies are a product of “memories” of prehistoric experiences – similar to Jung’s archetypes.
Stories are in our blood. They are ancestral. These ancient character types / archetypal experiences have walked with us for ages, probably from when we first learned to communicate as a species.
Stories were not just a tool for relating to people but also a method of explaining the world to ourselves, often with accompanying rituals that became lost to history. For example, the reason for sunrise and sunset was explained using a story of the god of the Sun travelling through the world of the dead every night to be reborn / rise in the morning.
As LaPlanche and Pontalis said, the primal fantasies – like collective myths have done for humans – provide a representation of and a “solution” to whatever constitutes an enigma for a child.
Archetypes in Literature
Archetypes may decide the shape and purpose of literary works, so the meaning of a story, song, or poem is affected by cultural and psychological myths.
Archetypes are unknowable basic ideas personified in recurring images, symbols, or patterns, for example the Quest for the Holy Grail, or characters like the Trickster (e.g. Loki) or the Hero, or the Sage (think Gandalf). These symbols and characters are already enriched with meaning in our minds when they are included in a piece of writing, even if they have different names and different surface foibles.
Archetypes are important figures in ancient Greek and ancient Roman culture, e.g. the epics The Odyssey and The Iliad. The scholar Robert Eisner said that the Anima exists in an early form in the goddesses in those old tales, e.g. Athena.
In John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, Lucifer has some qualities of the Hero archetype (bravery and determination) but ultimately becomes the Shadow archetype when he causes the downfall of Adam and Eve. His pride and rebellion is an inverted mirror of their obedience.
Adam and Eve also behave as one another’s Anima and Animus archetypes, making each other psychologically whole.
The archetype of a death-and-rebirth appears in such myths as the story of Persephone descending into Hades and remaining there for six months of the year, giving us autumn and winter (death) followed by spring (the rebirth).
Sometimes the archetypes appear as a symbol or something more subtle than a character. For example the Mother archetype doesn’t always appear as a caregiving or nurturing person / goddess – she can also crop up as things like the Moon, the church, heaven, earth, the woods, the sea or any still body of water, the underworld, a garden, or a cornucopia, to name a few possibilities.
To see 16 most used archetypes in literature and the lowdown on those, go here
Further reading for anyone interested in archetypes in literature:
- Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye
- The Archetypes of Literature (essay) – Northrop Frye
- Archetypal Patterns in Poetry – Maud Bodkin
- Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
- The Golden Bough – James Frazer
Archetypes in Marketing
Somewhat cynically, humanity uses archetypes when it comes to advertising as well.
In marketing, archetypes are the genres of brands, based upon symbols. The idea is to associate the brand with an icon, symbol, or mascot that already has certain connotations in the minds and subconsciousness of humankind.
This also makes the brand easy to identify. Archetypes used in branding include the Sage, the Innocent, the Explorer, the Ruler, the Creator, the Caregiver, the Magician, the Hero, the Outlaw, the Lover, the Jester, and the Regular Person.
Nightwalks 