International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities
In 1919 Jung introduced the term ‘archetype’. The archetype is seen as a purely formal skeletal concept, which is then fleshed out with imagery, ideas, motifs and so on. The archetypal pattern is inherited but the content is variable, subject to environmental and historical changes. From 1946 onwards, Jung made a sharp distinction between archetype and archetypal image. He refers to the archetype as an unknowable nucleus that ‘never was conscious and never will be…it was, and still is, only interpreted’ (CW 9i: para 266).
But before we settle for this, let us look at another view: Let us then imagine archetypes as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the roots of the soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves and the world. They are the axiomatic, self-evident images to which psychic life and our theories about it ever return.
(Hillman 1989:23–4).
We do not look for biological explanations, which perhaps could be seen as a reductionist way of going on, but rather trust to the mythopoetic mind itself as its own explanation. Singer (1990) speaks of ‘the archetypal matrix in which we are all embedded’, and this is perhaps more like it—archetypes are not things which we have, but more like a sort of home in which we partake.
But it is not only gods and goddesses who can be perceived and treated in this way: there are many archetypes, and today there are a number of writers who are treating them as important. For example, Moore and Gillette (1990) have written at length about the importance of the four archetypes King, Warrior, Magician and Lover for understanding men, the maturity in men. Carol Pearson (1991) has given us a great deal of information and help in tackling twelve archetypes: the Innocent, the Orphan, the Seeker, the Lover, the Warrior, the Caregiver, the Destroyer, the Creator, the Magician, the Ruler, the Sage and the Fool. She has even devised a questionnaire which enables people to discover which archetypes are dominant in their lives at a given moment, and which archetypes have something to do with the Shadow—that aspect of ourselves which we like least and may disown altogether. And more recently Caroline Myss (2003) has been talking about eighty archetypes which may be important in therapy.
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