Archetypes, Human Universals

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Archetypes, Human Universals the Heros Journey
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Freud
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Jung
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The Collective Unconscious

• 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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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The Shadow

• 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.

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Shadow-type Universals

• 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

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Anima

• 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 four-fold 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.

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Anima-related Universals

• Females do more direct childcare
• Mother normally has a consort during
  child-rearing years
• Husband older than wife on average

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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.

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Animus-related Universals

• Males dominate public / political realms
• Males more prone to lethal violence
• Males more aggressive
• Males more prone to theft

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Other archetypes

• 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)

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Monomyth

• 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. 575Joyce
  flirted with the idea that all ones 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
• 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.

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Joseph Campbell
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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.

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The Journey of the Hero
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Mythic literary archetypes

•  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).      3.The
  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). 
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Criticism Comparativism in a world of difference?