Archetypes, Human Universals &
the Hero’s Journey
Freud
Jung
“The Collective Unconscious”
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Dreams and myths are constellations of archetypal images. They are not free
compositions by an artist who plans them for artistic or informational effects. Dreams
and myths happen to human beings. The archetype speaks through us.
What then is an archetype? The archetype may emerge into consciousness in
myriads of variations. There are a very few basic archetypes or patterns which exist at
the unconscious level, but there are an infinite variety of specific images which point
back to these few patterns. Since these potentials for significance are not under
conscious control, we may tend to fear them and deny their existence through
repression. This has been a marked tendency in modern man, the man created by the
French Revolution, the man who seeks to lead a life that is totally rational and under
conscious control.
Where do the archetypes come from? In his earlier work, Jung tried to link the
archetypes to heredity and regarded them as instinctual. We are born with these
patterns which structure our imagination and make it distinctly human. Archetypes are
thus very closely linked to our bodies. In his later work, Jung was convinced that the
archetypes “shape matter (nature) as well as mind (psyche)" In other words, archetypes
are elemental forces which play a vital role in the creation of the world and of the human
mind itself.
How do archetypes operate? Jung found the archetypal patterns and images in every
culture and in every time period of human history. They behaved according to the same
laws in all cases. He postulated the Collective Unconscious to account for this fact. Mind
is rooted in the Unconscious just as a tree is rooted in the ground.
Modern man fancies that he has escaped the myths through his conscious repudiation
of revealed religion in favor of a purely rational natural religion.
Archetypes of the Unconscious
• The archetype is a concept of psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. In
this context, archetypes are innate prototypes for ideas, which may
subsequently become involved in the interpretation of observed
phenomena. A group of memories and interpretations closely
associated with an archetype is called a complex, and may be
named for its central archetype (e.g. "mother complex"). Jung often
seemed to view the archetypes as sort of psychological organs,
directly analogous to our physical, bodily organs: both being
morphological givens for the species; both arising at least partially
through evolutionary processes. There are four famous forms of
archetypes numbered by Jung:
• The Self
• The Shadow
• The Anima
• The Animus
Human Universals
• Donald E. Brown -- By winnowing the
literature of anthropology, Donald E Brown
collected a list of some 200 'human
universals'. These have showed up in
every human culture that anthropologists
have ever looked at. Anthropologists have
historically focused on the differences
while remaining blind to the (often more
fundamental and important) similarities.
The Self
• The ultimate pattern is the
Self. For Jung this is the God
image. Human self and divine
self are incapable of
distinction. All is Spirit. Images
of Spirit abound, wind and
breath being two very
common ones. Galahad
achieving the Grail and
ascending with it to Heaven is
an archetypal drama of Self.
Lancelot's failure to achieve
the Grail speaks of his failure
to achieve the final discovery
of Self.
Self-type Universals
• Actions under self-control distinguished from
those not under self-control
• Anthropomorphization
• Belief in supernatural / religion
• Self distinguished from other
• Recognition of an individual by face
• Self as neither wholly passive nor wholly
autonomous
• Self as subject and object
• Self is responsible
• Role and personality seen in dynamic
interrelationship
The Shadow
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In Jungian psychology, the shadow is a part of the unconscious
mind which is mysterious and often disagreeable to the conscious
mind, but which is also relatively close to the conscious mind. It
may be (in part) one's original self, which is superseded during
early childhood by the conscious mind; afterwards it comes to
contain thoughts that are repressed by the conscious mind. The
shadow is instinctive and irrational, but is not necessarily evil even
when it might appear to be so. It can be both ruthless in conflict
and empathetic in friendship. It is important as a source of
hunches, for understanding of one's own more inexplicable actions
and attitudes (and of others' reactions), and for learning how to
cope with the more problematic or troubling aspects of one's
personality.
The shadow may appear in dreams and visions in various forms,
often as a feared or despised person or being, and may act either
as an adversary or as a friend. It typically has the same apparent
gender as one's persona. It is possible that it might tend to appear
with dark skin to a person of any race, since it represents an old
ancestral aspect of the mind. The shadow's appearance and role
depend greatly on individual idiosyncrasies, because the shadow
develops in the individual's mind rather than simply being inherited
in the collective unconscious.
Interactions with the shadow in dreams may shed light on one's
state of mind. A disagreement with the shadow may indicate that
one is coping with conflicting desires or intentions. Friendship with
a despised shadow may mean that one has an unacknowledged
resemblance to whatever one hates about that character. These
examples refer to just two of many possible roles that the shadow
may adopt, and are not general guides to interpretation. Also, it
can be difficult to identify characters in dreams, so that a character
who seems at first to be a shadow might represent some other
complex instead.
According to Jung, the shadow sometimes takes over a person's
actions, especially when the conscious mind is shocked, confused,
or paralyzed by indecision.
Shadow-type Universals
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Actions under self-control distinguished from those not under self-control
False beliefs
Beliefs about death
Beliefs about disease
Beliefs about fortune and misfortune
Binary cognitive distinctions
Black (color term)
Childhood fears
Childhood fear of loud noises
Choice making (choosing alternatives)
Conflict
Conflict (means of dealing with, consultation, mediation)
Death rituals
Distinguishing right and wrong
Envy
Envy (symbolic means of coping with)
Facial expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness)
Fears
Good and bad distinguished
Sexual jealousy
Anima
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According to Carl Jung, the anima is the
feminine side of a man's personal
unconscious. It can be identified as all the
unconscious feminine psychological qualities
that a man possesses.
Jung also believed that every woman has an
analogous animus within her psyche, this
being a set of unconscious masculine
attributes and potentials.
The anima is one of the most significant
autonomous complexes of all. Its presence
from figures in dreams to how a man will think
of women in the real world is profound. Jung
said that confronting one's shadow is an
apprentice-piece while confronting one's
anima is the masterpiece. He also had a fourfold theory on the anima's typical development
ranging from its projection onto the mother in
infancy through projection on prospective
sexual partners and finally onto a later phase
he termed Sophia, doubtlessly in a Gnostic
reference. It is worth noting that in practically
every theory of Jung's, he would use a four
fold structure.
Anima-related Universals
• Females do more direct childcare
• Mother normally has a consort during
child-rearing years
• Husband older than wife on average
Animus
• According to Carl Jung,
the animus is the
masculine side of a
woman's personal
unconscious. It can be
identified as all the
unconscious masculine
psychological qualities
that a woman
possesses.
Animus-related Universals
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Males dominate public / political realms
Males more prone to lethal violence
Males more aggressive
Males more prone to theft
Other archetypes
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The Syzygy (Divine Couple, e.g. Aeons)
The Child (examples: Linus van Pelt, Arnold Shortman)
The Superman (the Omnipotent)
The Hero (examples: Siegfried, Beowulf, Doc Savage,
Luke Skywalker, Thomas A. Anderson ("Neo"), Harry
Potter)
• The Great Mother (manifested either as the Good
Mother or the Terrible Mother)
• The Wise Old Man (examples: Obi-Wan Kenobi,
Gandalf, Albus Dumbledore)
• The Trickster or Ape (examples: Brer Rabbit, Otto
Rocket, Bart Simpson, Bugs Bunny, Loki, Eris, Eshu)
Monomyth
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The “One Great Story”
The word MonoMyth was originally coined in the book Finnegan's
Wake by James Joyce. It appears in the following text:
And then and too the trivials! And their bivouac!
And his monomyth! Ah ho! Say no more about it! I'm sorry!
I saw. I'm sorry! I'm sorry to say I saw!
p. 575
Joyce flirted with the idea that all one’s life experiences could be
matched up with the greatest stories (myths) of all time. If one takes
all of Joyce's works, they mirror the mythology of Dante's Divine
Comedy
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Ulysses is the story of a Jewish Irishman who wanders Dublin on
June 16, 1904. Each chapter references a character in the Odyssey
and the growth of the characters Leopold Bloom and Stephen
Dedalus resemble the growth of Odysseus and Telemachus.
Soon after being published in 1922, the book fell into the hands of a
grad student in medieval studies who could not make hide nor hair
of it. Frustrated, he took it to the publisher who gave him a few hints
on how to break into its codex. That man's name was Joseph
Campbell.
Twenty-five to thirty years later, with the help of the works of Carl
Jung, that grad student would write a book on the idea, using
Joyce's term 'MonoMyth' to bring forth this idea in The Hero with a
Thousand Faces which would point out to the world how these
repetitive universal myths are evident in our stories, in our lives and
in our souls.
Joseph Campbell
“The Four Functions of Myth”
• Cosmological -- describes the "shape" of the cosmos, the universe,
our total world, so that the cosmos and all contained within it
become vivid and alive for us, infused with meaning and
significance.
• Metaphysical -- awakens us to the mystery and wonder of creation,
to open our minds and our senses to an awareness of the mystical
"ground of being," the source of all phenomena.
• Sociological -- passes down "the law," the moral and ethical codes
for people of that culture to follow, and which help define that culture
and its prevailing social structure.
• Pedagogical -- leads us through particular rites of passage that
define the various significant stages of our lives-from dependency to
maturity to old age, and finally, to our deaths. Allows us to make the
journey from one stage to another with a sense of comfort and
purpose.
The Journey of the Hero
Mythic literary archetypes
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A.The Hero – Lord Raglan in The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama contends that this archetype is so well defined that the life of the protagonist can be
clearly divided into a series of well-marked adventures, which strongly suggest a ritualistic pattern. Raglan finds that traditionally the hero's mother is a virgin, the
circumstances of his conception are unusual, and at birth some attempt is made to kill him. He is, however, spirited away and reared by foster parents. We know
almost nothing of his childhood, but upon reaching manhood he returns to his future kingdom. After a victory over the king or a wild beast, he marries a princess,
becomes king, reigns uneventfully, but later loses favor with the gods. He is then driven from the city after which he meets a mysterious death, often at the top of a
hill. His body is not buried; but nevertheless, he has one or more holy sepulchers. Characters who exemplify this archetype to a greater or lesser extent are Oedipus,
Theseus, Romulus, Perseus, Jason, Dionysos, Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Jesus Christ, Siegfried, Arthur, Robin Hood, Watu Gunung (Javanese), and Llew Llawgyffes
(Celtic). B. The Scapegoat – An animal or more usually a human whose death in a public ceremony expiates some taint or sin that has been visited upon a
community (e.g., Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"). C. The Outcast – A figure who is banished from a social group for some crime against his fellow man. The
outcast is usually destined to become a wanderer from place to place (e.g., Cain, the Wandering Jew, the Ancient Mariner). D. The Devil Figure – Evil incarnate, this
character offers worldly goods, fame, or knowledge to the protagonist in exchange for possession of his soul (e.g., Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Satan, the Faust
legend).
E. The Woman Figure 1.The Earthmother – Symbolic of fruition, abundance and fertility, this character character traditionally offers spiritual and
emotional nourishment to those with whom she comes in contact (e.g., Mother Nature, Mother Country, alma mater). 2.The Temptress – Characterized by sensuous
beauty, this woman is one to whom the protagonist is physically attracted and who ultimately brings about his downfall (e.g., Delilah, the Sirens, Cleopatra).
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Platonic Ideal – This woman is a source of inspiration and a spiritual ideal, for whom the protagonist or author has an intellectual rather than a physical attraction (e.g.,
Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, most Shelleyan heroines). 4.The Unfaithful Wife – A woman, married to a man she sees as dull unimaginative, is physically
attracted to a more virile and desirable man (e.g., Guinevere, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Lady Chatterly). F.The Star-Crossed lovers – A young man and
woman enter an ill-fated love affair which ends tragically in the death of either or both of the lovers (e.g., Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, Tristan and Isolde, Hero
and Leander). Situations A. The Quest – This motif describes the search for someone or some talisman which, when found and brought back, will restore fertility
to a wasted land, the desolation of which is mirrored by a leader's illness and disability. Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance traces one facet of this archetype
through the quests of Gawain, Perceval, and Galahad for the Holy Grail. This situation is also used in Tennyson's Idylls of the King , as well as in shorter poems by
Morris, Browning, and Arnold. Ahab's monomaniacal quest for the albino whale in Moby Dick is a variation on this archetype. B. The Task – To save the kingdom,
to win the fair lady, to identify himself so that he may reassume his rightful position, the Hero must perform some nearly superhuman deed (e.g., Odysseus must
string the bow, Arthur must pull the sword from the stone, Beowulf must slay Grendel). C.The Initiation – This usually takes the form of an initiation into life, that is,
the depiction of an adolescent coming into maturity and adulthood with all the attendant problems and responsibilities that this process involves. An awakening,
awareness, or an increased perception of the world and the people in it usually forms the climax of this archetypal situation (e.g., Holden Caulfield, Huckleberry Finn,
Stephen Dedalus, Eugene Gant). D. The Journey – Usually combined with any or all of the foregoing situational archetypes, the journey is used to send the Hero in
search of information or some intellectual truth. A common employment of the journey archetype is the descent into hell (e.g., Odyssey, Aeneid, Inferno, Endymion,
Joyce's Ulysses). A second use of this pattern is the depiction of a limited number of travelers on an airplane flight, sea voyage, bus ride, or walking trip for the
purpose of isolating them and using them as a microcosm of society (e.g., The Canterbury Tales, Ship of Fools). E. The Fall – This archetype describes a descent
from a higher to a lower being. The experience involves spiritual defilement and/or a loss of innocence and bliss. The Fall is also usually accompanied by expulsion
from a kind of paradise as penalty for disobedience and moral transgression (e.g., Paradise Lost, Billy Budd). F. Death and Rebirth – The most common of all
situational archetypes, this Motif grows out of the parallel between the cycle of nature and the cycle of life. Thus, morning and springtime represent birth, youth, or
rebirth; evening and winter suggest old age or death. Anthropologists believe that fertility rites and vegetative rituals usually took place in the spring because this is
the time of physical regeneration of Nature, an appropriate time to enact ritualistic statements of spiritual rebirth and resurrection. Symbols and Associations The
collective unconscious makes certain associates between the outside world and psychic experiences. These associations become enduring and are passed from one
generation to the next. Some of the more common archetypal associations are as follows: A. Light-Darkness – Light usually suggests hope, renewal or
intellectualillumination; darkness implies the unknown, ignorance, or despair (e.g., "Dover Beach"). B. Water-Desert – Because water is necessary to life and
growth, it commonly appears as a birth or rebirth symbol. It is archetypally significant, anthropologists believe, that water is used in baptismal services, which
solemnize spiritual birth. Similarly, the appearance of rain in a work of literature can suggest a character's regeneration or rebirth (e.g., The Ancient
Mariner). Conversely, the aridity of the desert is often associated with spiritual sterility and desiccation (e.g., The Waste Land). C. Heaven-Hell – Man has
traditionally associated parts of the universe notaccessible to him with the dwelling places of the primordial forces that govern his world. The skies and mountain tops
house his gods; the bowels of the earth contain the diabolic forces that inhabit his universe (e.g., Mount Olympus, the Underworld, Paradise Lost, The Divine
Comedy).
Criticism: Comparativism in a world
of difference?