Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that archetypes are models of people, behaviors or personalities.

Jung suggested that the psyche was composed of three components: the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind while the personal unconscious contains memories, including those that have been suppressed. The collective unconscious is a unique component in that Jung believed that this part of the psyche served as a form of psychological inheritance. It contains all of the knowledge and experiences we share as a species.

THE JUNGIAN APPROACH TO SYMBOLIC INTERPRETATION

NB: It is important to remember that Carl Jung's thought evolved and changed over his long life, and also that his preferred method of exploring a topic was suggestive, metaphoric amplification rather than logical exposition (see Wehr 49). In this course, we shall adopt and use certain definitions of core Jungian terms that I feel are best suited for our purpose (the exploration of archetypal symbolism) without claiming that these definitions provide a complete explanation of Jung's psychological theories.

SCHEMATIC FREUD-JUNG CONTRAST: Freud's approach to symbolic interpretation rested primarily on his model of psychic structure, charting a kind of outside==>inside and conscious==>unconscious movement which emphasized the importance of external influences and individual experiences (especially infantile experiences). Jung developed a different model of psychic structure which, while not denying the significance of individual experience, added an inherited collective component whose influence worked from inside==>outside and unconscious==>conscious. Hence Jung's approach to symbolic interpretation was less rigid than Freud's, paid more attention to the actual symbols and their contexts (since he viewed symbols as the natural language of the unconscious), and claimed that symbols could point toward future directions needed by the person rather than solely reflecting problems created by repression of past experiences. THE PERSONAL UNCONSCIOUS: similar to Freud's concept of the Id, the personal unconscious contains forgotten or repressed materials or experiences of an individual that were once conscious Eric Pettifor, Process of Individuation: The personal unconscious is pretty much self defining and doesn't need to be perceived as mysterious or supernatural (though it is occult in the truest sense of the word - 'hidden'). The personal unconscious contains all the stuff that simply isn't conscious. It contains stuff that can be made conscious by simple act of will, stuff that requires some digging, as well as stuff that may never be recalled to consciousness ever again. It is made up of the things you've experienced every day of your life. I'm not sure if it is strictly true that nothing is ever really and truly lost, totally forgotten, but it seems that the psyche is

very reluctant to let much go in the event that it might come in handy someday. The psyche is a pack rat, the unconscious full of its stuff. The personal unconscious is also a dumping ground for things we aren't comfortable with and which we'd really rather not have in consciousness very often. Repressed memories are a hot issue at the moment, but even without total all out suppression of memory, we are adept at not thinking about things we'd rather not think about. THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS (also termed the Objective Psyche): a genetically inherited psychological structure that is common to all human beings and is not based on personal experiencetherefore objective rather than subjective and transpersonal rather than individual (see Wehr 51); analogous to the genetically inherited anatomical structure common to all human beings. C. G. Jung, The Concept of the Collective Unconscious: 1. Definition: The collective unconscious is part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes. The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate of the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere. . . . My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents. 2. The Psychological Meaning of the Collective Unconscious: Medical psychology, growing as it did out of professional practice insists on the personal nature of the psyche. By this I mean the views of Freud and Adler. It is a psychology of the person, and its aetiological or causal factors are regarded almost wholly as personal in nature. Nonetheless, even this psychology is based on the sexual instinct or on the urge for self-assertion,

which are by no means merely personal peculiarities. It is forced to do this because it lays claim to being an explanatory science. Neither of these views would deny the existence of a priori instincts common to man and animals alike or that they have a significant influence on personal psychology. Yet instincts are impersonal, universally distributed, hereditary factors of a dynamic or motivating character, which very often fail so completely to reach consciousness that modern psychotherapy is faced with the task of helping the patient to become conscious of them. Moreover, the instincts are not vague and indefinite by nature, but are specifically formed motive forces which, long before there is any consciousness, and in spite of any degree of consciousness later on, pursue their inherent goals. Consequently they form very close analogies to the archetypes, so close, in fact, that there is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves, in other words, that they are patterns of instinctual behavior. The hypothesis of the collective unconscious is, therefore, no more daring than to assume there are instincts. One admits readily that human activity is influenced to a high degree by instincts, quite apart from the rational motivations of the conscious mind. So if the assertion is made that our imagination, perception, and thinking are likewise influenced by inborn and universally present formal elements, it seems to me that a normally functioning intelligence can discover in this idea just as much or just as little mysticism as in the theory of instincts. Although this reproach of mysticism has frequently been leveled at my concept, I must emphasize yet again that the concept of the collective unconscious is neither a speculative nor philosophical but an empirical matter. The question is simply this: are there or are there not unconscious, universal forms of this kind? If they exist, then there is a region of the psyche which one can call the collective unconscious. It is true that the diagnosis of the collective unconscious is not always an easy task. It is not sufficient to point out the often obviously archetypal nature of unconscious products, for there can just as well be derived from acquisition through language and education. Cryptomnesia should always also be ruled out, which it is almost impossible to do in certain cases. In spite of all these difficulties, there remains enough individual instances showing the autochthonous revival of mythological motifs to put the matter beyond any reasonable doubt. But if such an unconscious exists at all, psychological explanation must take account of it and submit certain alleged personal aetiologies to sharper criticism. Eric Pettifor, Process of Individuation: The collective unconscious likewise is pretty much self defining. While you participate in it, it isn't your exclusive property, we all share in it. It belongs to the species. When Jung had his official doctor hat on and was defining things

ex cathedra , the collective unconscious was something passed on genetically. It was like an edition of a book of which we each had our own copy. However, in more off the record materials such as letters, Jung seemed to possess a more spiritual understanding of something which we are all tapped into somehow, an understanding which would not have sold in medical circles then and doesn't sell in any academically oriented circles now, though Jung has become very popular with the general reading public who seem to enjoy very much those ideas of Jung's which are farthest out on a limb. In any event, it was a theory which took courage to advance, but Jung felt it necessary to do so, since he was noticing a strong degree of correspondence between dreams of patients, both private and institutionalised, and mythological motifs. In alchemy he found not only parallels in terms of content, but process as well. What he was seeing he felt to be a psychic fact, and the only acceptable explanation for the persistence of these patterns down through millenniums was biological inheritance. ARCHETYPES: innate, non-experiential, emotion-charged tendencies or predispositions to symbolize reality in certain ways; the organizing structures of the collective unconscious (see Wehr 51-52). C. G. Jung, Concerning the Archetypes with Special Reference to the Anima Concept (Carl Jung: Anthology): They are the archetypes, which direct all fantasy activity into its appointed paths and in this way produce, in the fantasy-images of children's dreams as well as in the delusions of schizophrenia, astonishing mythological parallels such as can also be found, though in lesser degree, in the dreams of normal persons and neurotics. It is not, therefore, a question of inherited ideas but of inherited possibilities of ideas. C. G. Jung, A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity (Carl Jung: Anthology): I have often been asked where the archetype comes from and whether it is acquired or not. This question cannot be answered directly. Archetypes are, by definition, factors and motifs that arrange the psychic elements into certain images, characterized as archetypal, but in such a way that they can be recognized only from the effects they produce. They exist preconsciously, and presumably they form the structural dominants of the psyche in general. They may be compared to the invisible presence of the crystal lattice in a saturated solution. As a priori conditioning factors they represent a special, psychological instance of the biological "pattern of behaviour," which gives all living organisms their specific qualities. Just as the manifestations of this biological ground plan may change in the course of development, so also can those of the archetype. Empirically considered, however, the archetype did

not ever come into existence as a phenomenon of organic life, but entered into the picture with life itself. ARCHETYPAL IMAGES: Archetypes are always unconscious; they cannot be directly known or experienced in themselves, but can only be hypothesized through their effects, their manifestations in images and symbols. Though Jung was not always clear about the distinction between archetypes (which are universal and unconscious) and archetypal images (which are at least partially conscious and personally and culturally conditioned), in the later part of his life he did explain that these were different things: C. G. Jung, On the Nature of the Psyche (Carl Jung: Anthology): We must constantly bear in mind that what we mean by "archetype" is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas. We meet with a similar situation in physics: there the smallest particles are themselves irrepresentable but have effects from the nature of which we can build up a model. The archetypal image, the motif or mythologem, is a construction of this kind. C. G. Jung, Approaching the Unconscious, Man and His Symbols, ed. C.G. Jung and Marie_Louise von Franz (New York: Dell, 1964): Just as the biologist needs the science of comparative anatomy, however, the psychologist cannot do without a comparative anatomy of the psyche. In practice, to put it differently, the psychologist must not only have a sufficient experience of dreams and other products of unconscious activity, but also of mythology in its widest sense. . . . My views about the archaic remnants, which I call archetypes or primordial images, have been constantly criticized by people who lack a sufficient knowledge of the psychology of dreams and of mythology. The term archetype is often misunderstood as meaning certain definite mythological images or motifs. But these are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited. The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motifrepresentations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern. . . . . My critics have incorrectly assumed that I am dealing with inherited representations, and on that ground they have dismissed the idea of the archetype as mere superstition. . . . [Archetypes] are, indeed, an instinctive trend, as marked as the impulse of birds to build nests, or ants to form organized colonies. ( 57-58) Polly Young-Eisendrath, Myth and Body: Pandora's Legacy in a Post-Modern World: Carl Jung often used the idea of archetype in a way that now seems antiquated -- to mean something like a Kantian category or a Platonic idea, a sort of organizing form for our mental life. In his later work, after about 1944,

he revised his thinking. He defined archetype to mean a universal inclination (predisposition) to form an image in a highly charged emotional state. The image would have the same form, recognizable the world over, as for example the image of a Great Mother. Jung began to link emotion with his idea of archetype in a new way. His final definition of archetype was an innate releasing mechanism. . . . Universal emotions are connected with universal images that recur everywhere: great and terrible parents, dragons/monsters, magicians, madonnas, whores, heroes and demons/devils. These are the archetypal images that Jung initially thought arose from a substrate outside human experience. We can now say that they arise quite directly from human experience. They are universal because they occur in every human being in our emotional hard-wiring, our perceptions of a particular world, and our biological life cycle and what it demands of us. HOW TO RECOGNIZE ARCHETYPAL IMAGES: 1. they carry a high emotional charge (positive, negative, or both simultaneously); they have a powerful, compelling effect 2. for an individual, they frequently recur in situations when the rational, conscious mind is not in full control (e.g., recurring dreams and fantasies, obsessive behavior patterns which have no fully rational explanation) 3. this recurrence occurs also in many different eras and cultures (e.g., commonly used symbols in literature, art and life; recurring types of dreams; mythic patterns, etc.) Archetypes constitute a theory to explain the constant recurrence, persistence, and emotional power of certain ways of symbolizing reality. Their manifestations (archetypal images) are always personally and culturally conditioned. In given individuals and cultures, some archetypes are activated and others dormant; we say that their triggers are based on personal and cultural experience, though the archetypes are universal. A study of archetypal symbolism in myth provides us with maps, not dictionaries. NB: The Carl Jung: Anthology of Works web site appears to be currently offline. February, 1999 Barbara F. McManus Proceed to Individuation Back to Topics, Assignments, Notes
Pangasinan State University Bayambang Campus Bayambang, Pangasinan

Carlo Sheen A. Escao

Mrs. Mary Ann J. Bullagay

BSE III- major

Literary Criticism

TOPIC: The Jungian Approach CARL JUNG Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the school of analytical psychology. He proposed and developed the concepts of the extroverted and introverted personality, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. The issues that he dealt with arose from his personal experiences. For many years Jung felt as if he had two separate personalities. One introverted and other extroverted. This interplay resulted in his study of integration and wholeness. His work has been influential not only in psychology, but in religion and literature as well. He was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland and died 1961 in Kusnacht, on Lake Zurich.

THE 2 LITERARY CRITICISMS: JUNGIAN APPROACH INVOLVED

Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism. Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression as well as expanding our understanding of how language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires; and Carl Jung, whose theories about the unconscious are also a key foundation of Mythological Criticism. Psychological criticism has a number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches: 1. An investigation of the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how does it relate to normal mental functions? 2. The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an authors biographical circumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior. 3. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of psychology. Mythological Criticism: This approach emphasizes the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works. Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism explores the artists common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.

CARL JUNG APPROACH/ARCHETYPAL APPROACH Jung believed that symbol creation was a key in understanding human nature. Symbol, as defined by Jung, is the best possible expression for something essentially unknown. He wanted to investigate the similarity of symbols that are located in different religious, mythological, and magical systems which occur in many cultures and time

periods. To account for these similar symbols occurring across different cultures and time periods he suggested the existence of two layers of the unconscious psyche. The first of the two layers was the personal unconscious. It contains what the individual has acquired in his or her life, but has been forgotten or repressed. The second layer is the collective unconscious which contains the memory traces common to all humankind. These experiences form archetypes. These are innate predispositions to experience and symbolize certain situations in a distinct way. There are many archetypes such as having parents, finding a mate, having children, and confronting death. Very complex archetypes are found in all mythological and religious systems. Near the end of his life Jung added that the deepest layers of the unconscious function independently of the laws of space, time and causality. This is what gives rise to paranormal phenomena. The introvert and the extrovert are the main components of personality according to Jung. The introvert is quiet, withdrawn and interested in ideas rather than people. While the extrovert is outgoing and socially oriented. For Jung a person that had a healthy personality can realize these opposite tendencies within himself/herself and can express each. Dreams serve to compensate for any neglected parts of the personality. CHARACTERISTICS emphasizes repetitive patterns in mans life revealed in literature some of which are embodied in myths draws heavily on the non-literary field focuses on mans historical and prehistoric past THE HEROIC JOURNEY CYCLE Call: Our hero is an everyday person exposed to an opportunity to leave their world and explore other worlds. The adventure may be introduced by a Herald. If the hero accepts the call right away they might be provided with supernatural powers that will help them fight. Allies: These are the people that surround the hero and help prepare him and/ or support him on his journey. Preparation: Our hero prepares for the journey bringing along the tools that he/she feels will aid him/her during his/her journey. Threshold: This is the gate to the unknown world. Often depicted by darkness, strangeness and danger. The hero must fight the threshold guardians and win in order to cross the threshold. Trials: This is the action adventure section of the story. The hero faces all kinds of tests and trials. The hero is aided by supernatural help, amulets, powers and allies. Saving Experience: The hero survives the most intense adventure of the story, finds his/her life free from the dangers of the journey, and obtains the treasure. Sometimes the treasure is a damsel in distress, a ring that holds powers or other objects that the ordinary world needs. Transformation: After the struggle against physical or symbolic death, the hero must rise from the situation stronger and wiser. The Return: The hero must return to his ordinary world to see that his world is made better. In some cases the hero will continue to live in his ordinary world and also return to his heros world as well. Sharing the Gift: The gift received or the lessons learned from the journey are shared with others to give them insight that the hero learned, reflecting the new wisdom of the hero. The Archetypal Hero: The Archetypal Hero goes on a physical or emotional journey. While on that journey, he or she overcomes obstacles. Once he reaches the end

of the journey, he or she will change. The change can be physical or emotional. The struggle or quest symbolizes the merging or balancing of the ego and self. THE ARCHETYPES: Trickster: The trickster is often a hero who uses cunning, manipulation and deceit to reach his goal. Shadow: This archetype exhibits characteristics that are considered uncivilized. He or she is often antagonistic and attempts to hinder the hero in his journey. Anima: This archetype is dominated by the feminine characteristics of the anima, and consequently represses the masculine characteristics of the Animus. Animus: This archetype is dominated by the masculine characteristics of the Animus, and consequently represses the feminine characteristics of the Anima. Wise Old Man: The Wise Old Man is concerned with meanings and ideas rather than the actions and personalities of others,. He is a scholar, teacher, sage and philosopher. Seductress: The Seductress, is usually represented as a female who is beautiful, sensuous, manipulative and destructive. Mother: This archetype is nurturing, life giving, creative and loving. She is known as the Great Mother and also as Mother Earth. Child: The child is vulnerable, innocent and needs protection from the mother archetype. REFERENCES: http://www.dramatica.com/theory/theory_book/dtb_ch_4.html www.tenafly.k12.nj.us/~eschwartz/ArchetypePPT.ppt Literature in Critical Perspectives, edited by Walter K. Gordon www.coe.unt.edu/northstar/2004/Demos/Using_Movies.ppt www.tenafly.k12.nj.us/~eschwartz/ArchetypePPT.ppt Myth and the movies: discovering the mythic structure of 50 unforgettable films, by Stuart Voytilla Storybuilder User's Manual http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/persona.html http://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_jung&page=major_archetypes_and_individuation