Carl Jung and the Archetypes - Dr Kevin Lu, PhD

CGT young all right 1875 to 1961 Swiss psychiatrists founder of analytical psychology hugely best known as a one-time collaborator with Sigmund Freud and similar to Alfred Adler a defector of the psychoanalytic movement now all Depp psychologies begin from a recognition and an appreciation of the unconscious and the ways in which it informs our behavior and helps to shape our individual identity yet they differ in key ways so they differ in terms of what types of relationships they they emphasize ie vertical relationships with the parents or horizontal ones with siblings whether the utilization of the unconscious gazes towards the past focuses on the impact of relationships and birth order in the present or potentially what the unconscious tells us about our future personality so the T loss in the psyche which is a hallmark of Jung's thinking and particularly in the case of young he has really specific ideas about how the psyche is actually structured and when we say the psyche that includes consciousness and the unconscious right so he has different ideas about how the psyche is structured the mechanisms by and the tools with which the unconscious conveys its messages to consciousness alright so for Jung the psyche is split into three right so we have consciousness that of which we are aware right what do my senses tell me what can i perceive right what can i recognise how do I engage with the world that is consciousness he then goes on to the personal unconscious now the personal unconscious is well what it says on the tin right it's things that we're not aware of but the contents of the personal conscious unconscious are of a personal nature right so there could be things in our life right that just through the course of time we forget about it so if you ask me right unless say my sister comes up to me and says hey do you mind when we did and we were five right and you were four now I might not consciously remember it but if prompted right and if I thought a bit more about it I could actually retrieve it it's just that what I did at four years old doesn't quite resonate right now right I can't hold it in consciousness so that content goes somewhere it gets registered somewhere right and for young it goes into the personal unconscious other contents of the personal unconscious usually include things that have been quite traumatic for the individual right so things that would prevent us from engaging with everyday life and it's usually of a traumatic nature and nine times out of ten for young the complexes are built upon some kind of traumatic event not always right but most of the time it's some kind of trauma that lies at the heart of the formation of a complex so for instance if there's a difficult relationship right and you're finding it hard to go on to continue with work school etc well guess what what do you do you consciously push it down I can't think about this right now in more severe cases right as the other speakers have noted this like he actually splits right the moment of impact is when the psyche actually dissociates so Donald Cal shed who's a Jungian but he also uses quite a bit of object relations theory in his book called the inner world of trauma he gives an example of one of his patients one of his cases and basically what happens is that there's this girl right woman now who used to be sexually abused by her father every Sunday when her mother went to church right so through the course of the therapy itself what Cal shed gets her to you know to tell her is that in those particular moments the way she actually handled the abuse was that she saw herself from above right almost like an outer-body experience she had to be out of her body in order to distance herself from the physical trauma of what was actually happening right so that's number one and as time goes on right one day calstrs just asks her I wonder where you went during those and that's the moment she breaks down right in those moments I was in the arms of the mother right and now we're kind of getting to Jung's ideas of the archetype so whereas the real physical mother couldn't be there for her right in those moments of trauma she enters into a fantasy of being held by a larger and greater mother okay so that's the personal unconscious the collective unconscious so these this is one of the key distinctive ideas in young psychology that distinguishes it from Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology so the collective unconscious I'll just read it once because the definitions right here can be defined as the collective general part of the unconscious mind derived through eons of repetition of human cultural imagery and experiences that despite differences in detail remain typically human with recognizable commonalities and meanings sorry just one second so just for the purposes of today right because it's infinitely more complex than this just think of complexes as being the contents of the personal unconscious and the archetypes which is the focus today as the contents of the collective unconscious and because Jung right says well the archetypes are the contents of the collective unconscious you can't define the archetype without by default to finding the collective unconscious and vice-versa so you'll find that these definitions usually intermingle and interconnect on many levels so what I'm going to do now let's hear it straight from the horse's mouth right we're going to go through some definitions and then we're going to try to distill what I feel at this point or just the the key ideas that we want to take away about Jung's idea of archetypes okay so in the psychology or sorry in the relations between the ego and the unconscious written around I think 1916-17 revised several times he defines the archetype as impersonal collective components i IE Jung have therefore advanced the hypothesis that that at its deeper levels the unconscious possesses collective contents in a relatively active state all right so what we'll come back to this a bit more but what he means by active is that they're not dead right they're alive one of our colleagues previous previously used the term constantly right which is a very kind of therapeutic type psychological term so these archetypes aren't dead right they may be patterns let's say formed in the past form through the the history of human experience but at the same time once something triggers it it comes to potentially play a part in our lives okay let's go to the next quotation the archetype is the kind of readiness to produce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas right what does Young mean by this how does he come to this so for this we actually have to go back to his days at the Peugeot Slee mental hospital in Zurich all right very famous hospital at the time you know at the cutting edge of treating psychotic patients so it was here that you know Young's really cutting his teeth and how he's really getting into you know to Freud's ideas as well and during this time he's caring for schizophrenic patients and his whole approach is that actually let's not just lock the door and throw away the key right I really want to understand and help these people because really they're not beyond saving right so what does he do he just begins to listen right he begins to collect the stories he begins to collect the narratives and what he found was that there was a pattern arising in these delusions these fantasies these visions a lot of it actually had him with a character right so as a responsible clinician what does he do right so I need to learn more about myths because this is exactly just what I'm observing all right if I need to decode the messages decode the potential meaning and perhaps find the instance the secret or the trauma that actually caused all this confusion it's my duty to look into these myths right so that's why and how he actually delved into myths more and more and that he found that these themes keep recurring in the delusions right or visions of its schizophrenic patients but then also later on with his therapeutic patients and their dreams all right so that's why myth is such a cornerstone to young psychology and how its intricate intricately sorry tied to the archetypes because myth for young at least is one way the unconscious speaks to consciousness right and if we have the legend if we decode it if we spend time with learning the language we just might be able to decipher what our own true selves write our own innate knowledge is active trying to tell us right okay so we've got through that one now right now sometimes as well right what Jung found really interesting was that these delusions right or these these kind of fantasies that people were having they actually brought up a lot of rituals myths stories that were from a culture other than a Western culture right and this absolutely intrigued young right why is it that this person from this particular Swiss canton who I know has never traveled outside of Switzerland how is this person all of a sudden producing mandalas right producing images or fantasies of a phallus swirling off of the Sun all right and for young he couldn't really explain this right he couldn't at least he says right he couldn't explain it through diasporas clea crypt amnesia etc etc so that's how he begins to posit this idea of a collective unconscious right that irrespective of historical time of geographical distance we all have access right to this memory this human memory that's been imprinted on our psyches that's been gathered by our ancestors right and in these moments were actually able to dip down into this content and then to express it the unconscious speaks via right these main motifs etcetera but the way they get filtered into our psyches is actually shaped by our own personalities our own cultures our own economics etcetera etc right so that's why he felt at least it was important to proffer if you will this idea of a collective unconscious over and above the personal unconscious right okay let's keep going archetypes are recurrent impressions made by subjective reactions I like this one right it's a brief one but I like this one because it actually speaks to my interest in in the discipline of history so basically what you can distill from from this particular quotation is that he's talking about the history of human experience right so by default then and by extension every archetypal pattern at one point or another was a real historical experience right something to have that happened to humanity in general right and this is not me this is only Sean Dasani making that important point so these in turn leave an imprint on humanity ie about the different ways one is likely to react in a situation and it is this that we actually inherit now what young is also implying here is that we are predisposed to certain instincts imprinted on our psyches ie the instinct to live typically human lives right so what does he give as an example for example how do bees intrinsically know to build hives right how do migrating birds intrinsically know where to fly when to migrate what path to follow etc etc right so for young this is not learned behavior this is instinctual so the notion of an archetype as the a priori determinant of all psychic processes is what Jung introduces as an explanation for this phenomena right and I was actually very pleased to see when I was looking through the archives of the The Weeknd University that they invited Rupert Sheldrake to give a talk so his idea of morphic resonance --is actually have a parallel in Young's archetypal theory so that's very interesting now moving on to another quotation not only are the archetypes apparently we're sorry not only are the archetypes apparently impressions of ever repeated typical experiences but at the same time the behave empirically like agents that tend towards the repetition of these same experiences for when an archetype appears in a dream and a fantasy or in life it always brings with it a certain influence or power by virtue of which it either exercises a numinous or fascinating effect or impels to action all right so what can we distill here right what can we take away so archetypes are typical human experiences reactions relationships that are expressed as patterns which may in turn shape our lives in both visible ie conscious and invisible ie unconscious ways they can either be constellated or in more complex and severe cases they can come to possess the individual ie the individual has over identified with a particular idea or pattern right and usually when people feel like they're there on a course of destruction that they feel that they can't get out that fate is actually you know controlling their lives to a certain extent well for young this is just the constellation of a particular pattern right and someone's over identified with it right and it's just a recurring circle right you're just repeating what the pattern is telling you the more we are aware of them ie the archetypes and their effects the better off we are right we might mitigate its potential negative effects and actually tap into its potential creativity alright now why do we need to know about archetypes anyone want to answer that one because my livelihood depends on it if I can answer this I'm in trouble okay why do we need archetypes what's the added value what does it bring to our life so knowledge of these patterns can have a potentially healing effect because it ties us back to our innate shared knowledge of our human experience which we've forgotten or lost sight of now at the time for young at the time for young when he was right writing he felt that society was completely disenchanted completely disengaged right this was largely due to the fact of industrialization right the fact that humanity if you will was feeling more and more alien from its surroundings and because of the rapid development of you know what machines basically right so there's disenchantment it's one factor the second factor and many people have already alluded to this is the loss of religion as a framework right the the loss of religion as a framework for providing meaning and structure in one's life right and when God is dead where do you turn all right and that's where his therapy if you will begins to spring up to rien be you meaning into the world and into individual lives so a knowledge of underpinning archetypes may help us frame our current troubles trials and ills with those that have been experienced by all humanity regardless of cultural differences placing our own experiences in a larger context also helps alleviate what psycho analysts would call a harsh super-ego right now the super-ego in itself is not negative right let me just go back and recalculate what I'm saying about Freud the resolution of the Oedipus complex right aids in the establishment of the super-ego which in turn allows us to identify with the father but then also to identify with a more symbolic and larger father ie society right so the super-ego plays a socializing function and that's all fine and good the difference here is the harsh super-ego right it's the voice that keeps telling you you're really weird actually right I tell that to myself all the time you're really weird right I'm projecting this on to you by the way you have no friends it's all your fault right you're the one to blame you're the one who's broken up this relationship right it's your fault that the kids don't listen et cetera etc no one likes you right you'll never amount to anything you'll never get that other job because guess what you're not good enough right so it's this constant berating and devaluing of oneself right which actually cripples life it really damages life seen in another way you could see you call this the guilt and shame right that many people feel not all but many people feel when they're about to enter into therapy and it's you know these feelings that were actually exploring throughout the therapy so when you frame your experience within an archetypal pattern you may realize that you are not alone in what you are experiencing that you are not to blame and there's this great scene really moving scene in Good Will Hunting does I remember the film Good Will Hunting fantastic if you haven't watched it please take the time to watch it filmed at the University of Toronto my alma mater another reason to watch it but Robin Williams is the therapist and you know but Will Hunting very troubled young man very brilliant young man and there comes the moment in the therapy where he just tells Jason Bourne are you Matt Damon he just tells him he tells Jason Bourne it's not your fault and he repeats it it's not your fault it's not your fault you're not to blame right and that's a very kind of you know emotional and healing moment for that particular individual so it doesn't all fall on you and the perceived quirkiness of your personality what you are going through others have gone through you are not the first and not the last and knowledge of this can be for some quite liberating it can lessen the grip of guilt one feels which can often as we said crippled life right so this is potentially a you know an important effect right if you will of buying into or per you know perhaps entertaining Young's idea of an archetypal pattern right of the importance of myth because it potentially infused life with meaning we can see your life in larger context right and much like Joseph Campbell although Joseph Campbell was inspired by Jungian ideas he wasn't a Jungian so let's just get that clear but this whole idea of reframing our lives our quote-unquote mundane lives right in in more kind of mythic terms can you know can give us a sense of of meaning in a very kind of mundane boring world sometimes a very troubling world right so also knowing a pattern and how the story ends is a signal to us of what we can do proactively to change things so that a particular pattern does not repeat itself so a part of the therapeutic process is to break these deleterious patterns that we may actually enjoy enacting over and over again now for severe traumas happen it's not that we want to repeat the trauma right excuse me I think Ruth said that the trauma is history right it's the return of the event itself so in those cases I don't think it's that but we also have to acknowledge the sense of comfort that we feel or that we find in our psychology right in our ills in our symptoms why because they actually provide a certain sense of stability and identity for individuals so it's just important to take note of that it's not that we're actively joyously engaging in what ails us but sometimes they're very hard to let go of why because they become a part of who we are so by bringing into consciousness or by bringing these contents into consciousness and working diligently to change those behaviors we mitigate the archetypes potential tyranny and control over us consciousness returns to us human agency and control of our lives right and you can see this in Jung's Jung's way of working with dreams right that obviously he would listen to the personal stories he would contextualize that but when the time's right he would start to amplify it and to see if there was a particular mythic narrative now I usually give an example I've used quite a bit but I'll just give you a hypothetical one because I don't want to repeat it but sometimes right if you see someone where someone's dreams of burning right of being burned if you will I mean a Jungian might think well fire burns away there's new life there's rebirth etc that's one way of looking at it but if we amplify it further and further we might find that someone is being burned right because they're flying too close to the Sun right and in more symbolic terms what happens when someone's flying too close to the Sun it's someone who is moving beyond his or her station of not honoring their own limitations as an individual right so you could see that depending on the context when someone dreams something so potent right such such a very difficult image actually to deal with and to work with it could be pointing to someone's ambition right that you're moving faster and faster right towards this end goal and not realizing that at some point much like Icarus right Icarus flying off to the Sun not listening to his father Daedalus right that if you fly too close to the Sun the the wax holding together our wings they will burn you will fall you will die all right and if you play with this idea of rebirth as well sometimes that fall is actually crucial to the individual's development right so you can see based on the dream itself collating what we know of the history of the personal circumstances you might then move on to myths to see whether or not a myth can contain or frame an explanation of what that individual is going through right everyone okay so far yeah all right take a drink okay let's see what we have for time most people will probably know young through the personified archetypes okay the persona the shadow the anima the anima the wise old man the trickster the divine child the self right now it is not the case that they are real figures that they're embedded somewhere in our brains they are metaphors for psychological processes that are expressed both internally and externally in our everyday lives so young during his own confrontation with the unconscious actually encounters many of these figures right DW Winnicott basically says it's proof that he's psychotic hey he writes that he is psychotic now sometimes young hears voices sometimes he sees images but these were fleeting right there were mercurial and protein encounters so in order to sustain a more constant dialogue with these phenomena and literally asking them what do you want from me right literally stopping and speaking them what do you want from me he felt it necessary to concretize them right to treat them as if they were real because in many ways they were and are real right their psychic phenomena we take the psyche seriously now the most important example the anima the anima was theorized around this time so a feminine voice basically tells young that the artwork he was producing as part of the red book was art right so this is voice it's actually Maria Moltres voice right that what you're doing here it's fantastic it's art and this is very seductive for young why because at the time he breaks with Freud right so the the first half of life all the things that he built up for himself in terms of esteem recognition his profession etc etc all gone right and now he is persona non grata and this voice begins to tell him and probably insinuates to him maybe you have an artistic career here and it comes the time then where he realizes that voice is actually his own inner desire and weakness and he actually says to that voice no this is not art this is psychology right also very important and I really wanted to hammer this home is that these ideas they don't they're not created in a vacuum right they're created in relationships and because of relationships right so it's not that the the founding fathers and mothers of psychoanalysis in depth psychology they sit on something and say oh yes you know that's the child sucking at the breasts yes that's introjection etc etc etc no right it's actually built and lived through relationships with other people in the inner circle so it's not that they're just theorizing it they're playing it out in the relationships as they go along and I just bring this up because when we're looking at the formation of the anima for young you have to look at the feminine figures in his life right Marie emotes er perhaps the first we don't know sabina spielrein Toni Wolff right and let's not forget his wife Emma right so all these individuals have a hand if you will at helping young formulate the idea of the anima so just keep that in mind so going back to the personified archetypes these personified archetypes are important for another reason and will let young speak I would mention in particular the shadow the animal the wise old man the anima the animus the mother the child besides an indefinite number of archetypes representative of situations a special position must be accorded to those archetypes which stand for the goal of the developmental process so basically he's making a link between these specific archetypes and the individuation process ie the process of becoming within Jung's analytical psychology the process of becoming who you truly have the potential to be right of realizing your fullest potential and wholeness which for Jung is not perfection right it means noting what your strengths are but also what you mrs. R as well right in honoring what those limitations are as well so in that sense then these archetypes are meeting these archetypes throughout the life process or integral to individual development right they're stepping stones to the larger archetypal self so in many ways individuation is not linear although there's a definite t loss in young psychology right we're moving towards a particular end all right but it's also cyclical in nature so it's like spiral upwards right because we're constantly meeting constantly negotiating our understanding of these archetypes and how they are personified in their lives as art as figures real figures right so it's not that right I meet a feminine figure the first one's my mother I've dealt with that I left home I'm okay anima tic right let's not potentially the last female figure you'll meet in your life you can meet a partner right you can meet a boss right you can meet someone again over and over again and at each point it's a born again to to know what we've learned from a previous experience and then to build on it and to learn more etcetera etc all right so again these archetypes are important because they literally build a stepping stone to other archetypes right now we've got five minutes I'll just go through one and then we'll take a break so the shadow right usually the first archetype that one will meet in therapy why because it's pretty much on the surface right you get to projected onto people so the shadow that which a person has no wish to be without realizing that those very characteristics reside within the individual it's usually referred to as a negative side of the personality the sum total of all those unpleasant qualities we wish to hide young however also states that it is anything as yet unrealized by consciousness right so it can also point to something more positive within yourself so if the best version of you right if you haven't actually realized that yet for him it lies in shadow right you are unaware of it so again you have to balance with all these archetypes you know the positive with the negative as well so we usually learn about shadow through projection right so we'll give you an example so on the surface an individual may always remain calm the always the the veneer of agree ability sociability etc etc so what we find out though is that such a person casts a huge shadow and it is usually someone else who cops it right who becomes the vessel for that unlived negativity and it would usually be a partner a neighbor or someone close to the individual could be a child as well so there's an example in in memories dreams reflections young goes and visits a minister who is renowned for his piety right so young spends three days walking around this guy completely shadowing him actually and he's trying to pick holes he's trying to find what's this guy's story what's wrong with them and after three days he's baffled right he's like like I'm a bad person hey this guy over here is perfect and he's really on the verge of going home and really thinking about his life he perhaps thinking about what he does to his wife Emma when he invites Tony wolf for Sunday roast right because that's exactly what he did but then he speaks to the minister's wife right and realizes that all his negativity all those projections are actually cast onto her right she's the sinful one she is the one we're sorry the reason why my life isn't going the way it's supposed to go right she's the reason for all my faults etc etc etc so then young realizes poignant we yeah that's where the shadow is it's been projected onto the wife okay we've gone through that hmm what is the shadow a shadow of what is the shadow a shadow of the shadow is a shadow of the persona right our next archetypal figure so the persona is the social mask one wears and presents it denotes what one wishes to be seen by others so some of you who have social media think about your LinkedIn profile right think about your Facebook picture what picture do you have up there this is the night you know the picture of you after drinking blurry-eyed probably not right it's usually if it's not you know it could not be a picture of you but that says something about you as well but if it is a picture of you it's usually a pretty good representation of what you want the world to see right so fair enough so that's the persona now we can have multiple masks depending on our social roles right so for me for instance I'm a son I'm a father what else am i a university lecturer sometimes a friend a really annoying colleague to others etc etc okay so there are many social rules I have to play now for me when I think about the persona I think about decorum right what does decorum dictate in a specific situation what informs the way I react in any given situation so the persona is the mechanism by which the ego relates to the external world that part of the total personality that is concerned with collective adaptation so it is also linked with survival conformity or relationship to Authority and by extension or relationship to father figures and our desire to court those holding power now some people may say alright and level at the persona the person who's very conscious of putting on different masks that they're actually fake right mate you're fake alright you're not real you're not being real right you're just putting on a mask and this is you know a shot at someone's integrity it's a shot at someone's authenticity that people aren't being there quote-unquote true selves in their everyday life and for me one answer to that is that it's not actually easy being the real you all the time all right it's tiring and neither is it really desirable to be the real you all the time right because if we go back to Freud the real you might want to act on those it impulses constantly right and if you're acting on those Ede impulses constantly in society actually going to survive now I think authenticity right and being able to express yourself freely whether it's anger it's aggression that's fine in manageable chunks right but it's not something we actually want to indulge in if we're actually interested in cultivating society and for young that is partly our responsibility of maintaining society and playing our part within society one could also argue that those who had level such accusations are really wearing a mask of their own right the mask of authenticity the mask of being real when really what they might be masking is a desire or longing or sorry along in to belong to fit in perhaps someone has been wounded by an experience and so INRIA in retaliation overcompensates and identifies with the opposite NRK disorder where in reality the wish is to bring greater order and regularity within oneself and the way in which we relate to others so having personas is not sorry is an aspect of maintaining a healthy psyche we all have to dawn these masks in order to survive and not alien that alienate others the problems begin when we actually over identify with one particular mask right where we only see ourselves as one particular thing and I thought this is a great example showing my age Jim Carrey the mask remember this film right yeah I mean you know okay fine whatever but but the symbolism of it of putting the mask on and then not being able to actually disidentify and take it off right that is where the danger of the persona lies right of over identifying with one particular way of being now I'll make the next segue the next link and then we'll have a pause for a break so say from my perspective I'm a man right and right now in my life I am too consumed with this idea of being the male breadwinner I must provide for my family all right this is a man's duty to do this and what young would actually say that in the unconscious of this particular individual all right we have a very undeveloped anima right so you have this this opposition if you will between a very strong way of being in consciousness by default what lies in the unconscious is undeveloped and ultimately for a young that is the soul image that is undeveloped so we've made a link between the persona and the anima and and this is what Jung says in the relations between the ego and the unconscious can everyone hear me hello Chuck Chuck Chuck hello yeah you can hear me okay the socially strong man is in his private life often a mere child where his own states of feelings are concerned his public discipline which he demands quite particularly of others goes miserably to pieces in private ouch so I've got lots to do when I when I get home all right so we find that attention or opposition between the external persona and the interior life an overly developed persona in other words often betrays a lack of engagement with our own interior tea all right so that's basically what Jung is saying positioning the persona with the anima and the animus he goes on in psychological types to write as to the character of the anima my experience confirms the rule that it is by and large complimentary to the character of the persona the animus usually contains all those common human qualities the conscious attitude lacks if the persona is intellectual the anima will quite certainly be sentimental the complementary character of the anima also affects the sexual character a very feminine woman has a masculine soul and a very masculine man has a feminine soul okay so before the rotten tomatoes get chucked at me all right let's just kind of go through the motions first and then we'll we'll throw some critiques out there right okay so with the anima and the animus consciousness and integration of the anima and animus is integral to the individuation process and it's often described as the bridge to the self all right the anima and animus is often described as the bridge to the self so we've kind of built up with these archetypes here so we've got the shadow right usually the first archetypal imperative that we meet in Jungian therapy all right what is the shadow the shadow of the shadow is the shadow of the persona right if I hold too strongly to my persona in a social role it usually means that my own interior life ie my soul image is weak and undeveloped and in order right to become more fully aware more developed I need to get in touch with that image that is my complete opposite hence moving from the anima animus to this notion of the self right so like we said obtaining a more complete picture of oneself and necessitates an integration of what we consider other and in sorry an inner image of our complete opposite the anima is the inner image of a woman in a man's psyche characterized by typically feminine traits ie an inclination towards feeling intuition and being better at expressing and managing emotions among amongst other things the animus is the inner image of a man in a woman psyche characterized by typically masculine traits reason logic conviction consistency yikes yeah wait for the punchline now Jung writes a lot about masculine psychology and not feminine psychology why do I say this because you might say to me well actually he wrote quite a bit about the anima right and yes the anima you know refers to femininity but if you think about this idea of the conchos contra sexual opposite when he's talking about the anima he's talking about the male psyche he is not talking about the female psyche right so there is certainly a gap in Jung's thinking on the anima and female psychology other people have taken it forward the field has moved on quite a bit but I'll just give you some some classical or sorry some references to classical thinkers on the topic so Eric Newman the fear of the feminine someone else mentioned Marian Woodman one of her books is called addiction to perfection still and reversed bride and many of you will already be familiar with Clarissa Penkala estis women who run with the Wolves right but obviously you know the field of young you didn't post any studies has moved quite far away from from this line of thinking but just going back to young being in relationship with the Contra sexual opposite is particularly important because these images usually shape the way we interact with partners for what we seek within is often mistaken for what we seek in others mainly life partners spouses and those who we decide to share our lives with if brought to light we are no longer unconsciously dominated by the archetype then there will be fewer illusions in relationships and hence better bonding and understanding right now let's rip this apart then there are a few assumptions at the heart of Jung's thinking about the anima and the animus number one he assumes that individuation is only possible within heteronormativity right is the male-female pond the only one in which this heightened realization is possible and the answer to that is clear absolutely not right moreover the concept of the anima and animus smacks of an essential izing tendency that unfortunately is the birthright of archetypal theory right if you buy archetypal theory and you read it to the letter right then yes it does lead to this very conservative and very closed way of thinking mainly that this is what it means to be a man and this is actually what it means to be a woman so my colleague Andrew Samuels has posited that both anima and animus resides in all individuals and that maleness and femaleness were useful ways one could describe that which is not I in other words the soul image that stands in opposition to the persona right so it's not linked to biology it's a metaphor it's a way of thinking about that which is not I yet equally it has become clear that such descriptors are no longer appropriate and failed to encompass the full complexity and vibrancy of everyday life it fails to speak to the reality of contemporary life so for example when it comes to parenting Andrew again speaks of the good enough parent of whatever sex who depending on the situation can father and mother when the need arises fathering is not the exclusive domain of men and mothering is not the exclusive practice of mothers we have to resist the temptation to split roles ye nurturing comes from the mother and discipline comes from the father in practice such stratifications are inaccurate and fail to acknowledge an individual's ever-shifting role and capacity for a plurality of reactions and experiences right so there's a lot that needs to be done with this concept of the anima anonymous some people might still find it to be a helpful way of thinking but in reality it certainly needs to be updated in key ways and there are many young uns and post unions working in this regard now moving to the final archetype we'll talk about quickly the self right perhaps the penultimate personified archetype it both guides and is the goal of the individuation process it is an image of our fullest potential right in many ways who we were born to be what our ideal actually is and it's usually symbolized in dreams as mandalas and divine figures young at times conflates the self with the god image where that images of God can be explained via the archetype of the self so this then leads to many accusations against young but he psychologizing God excuse me that he's reducing the experience of religion itself and religious belief to some some psychological function right so there is a lot of debate and you know the way in which young is actually presenting or interpreting religion from a psychological perspective now one key symbol of the self but I just want to point you towards this the last one there right the hermaphrodite right so Hermes and Aphrodite together right male and female a symbol that unites the masculine and feminine and again a symbol of our potential wholeness so again we're tying in this concept of the anima and animus and how crucial it is to an understanding of a more complete and whole image of ourselves ie in the hermaphrodite in real life we may project an image of the self on two mentors and teachers and people that we idolize right we want to be like them we want what they want we think we want what they want and in part good teachers good Mentors you know and not necessarily in this psychological language would be able to see the role they actually play but then encourage people to let go of it as well right that your own individuality means carving your own path right in many ways of killing the image of the mentor and the teacher and not to be over identified with that particular person and not seeing that person as an individual I a person who has shadow right a person who's actually not perfect right now moving on to the archetypal image so Jung makes a distinction between the archetype and the archetypal image this is what we're going to unpack now so the archetype oh I'm sorry the archetype is universal providing a skeletal framework that gives shape to human experiences it's an analogy right or I'm going to present an analogy to you so what we inherit is the scaffolding around the building each building is different and unique and for me this is actually quite nice because I don't live in London anymore so coming back to London seeing the land you know the just the the sheer difference right of old and new it's actually quite fascinating so lovely to see that in London so the shape of buildings may be different its contours its edges the number of windows the materials used yet it still embodies all the qualities of a building right we can recognize it us that is the type of building in a similar vein an archetype may provide a rough blueprint or sketch but the way in which these plans are executed and expressed can vary depending on personal circumstances culture history politics and economics so what I'm going to do now is provide an example of what young means by an archetypal image all right so that's one of my goals I'm also going to try to show how analytical psychologies ideas remain salient in a rapidly changing world and how these ideas may help us to better understand and frame our own culture and experience and what this may be telling us about what lurks in the unconscious now obviously this example is highly subjective it speaks to my own personal interests and also my interest in education in the psychology of religion so if it's not your cup of tea just bear with me so as we mentioned earlier Nietzsche proclaims God is dead right Jung was actually quite interested in Nietzsche perhaps too interested in just telling us why he was so sick right and then what went wrong with him but for Jung with the statement god is dead Jung's perspective on it is that is it the fact that God is dead or that an older idea of God no longer resonates with humanity and that perhaps the idea of God takes shape in new forms and guises if traditional images of God no longer contain our experience of numerosity they no longer speak to how we want to see or conceptualize that which is completely other than other than from sorry other from ourselves then other images will rise we still possess that archetype will urge to worship something that is beyond ourselves it may not embody a typical God image but we give it a god-like status and for young this could be money right this could be science all right so we don't worship God anymore but we worship money we don't worship religion we worship science right equally there's a danger of then worshiping young right and that's a large what we try to do in Indian studies is actually to you know to take young off that pedestal right because that's a lot to project on one person this idea of a guru this idea of perfection of you know one system providing meaning to the masses so just be a bit thoughtful and mindful of that so my question is this where have the gods gone wherever gods gone now it's a pretty stupid question because the slides were we're handed out earlier so you know where I'm going with this and I am going here all right not quite there ones like have you noticed the extent to which superhero films have come to dominate the cinematic landscape since the 1990s all right very interesting obviously there's Christopher Reeve right I remember that very clearly in my childhood but at the time I was growing up it was the crow James Oh bar right very dark very interesting graphic novel Black Panther is now the first superhero movie in history to receive a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars right some of you probably thought wasn't it the Dark Knight no it wasn't right it should have been but it wasn't the question then is why right why now and it's more than just because the industry has you know the the software the computer power to actually convincingly pull off some of these special effects right and sometimes they don't alright so in one of my papers I talked about the digitized Hulk in in angley's adaptation of the Hulk right not brilliant do you remember Rove Wolverines claws and yeah in the first origins yeah me too man I want my money back I really do that was horrible with the sink but anyways right now there's obviously something to be said about having the tools to produce those rich images that you actually see in the illustrations right in the real actual graphic novels in the comics and they're up you know some of it is actually phenomenal but special effects on their own do not make the movie right great special effects do not guarantee box-office success and critical acclaim so why now is certainly one question you could ask of graphic novels and comic culture from a psychological perspective could we be witnessing a psychological process of compensation the rise in popularity of the superhero genre may be telling us something about the culture itself ie the need for escapism in light of worldwide upheaval or simply it's just the case that we need heroes right in a very dark time we need heroes comic book superhero culture may also express something of the politics of a certain period and many people have written on this right and it's it's a very very interesting field that comics can serve an ideology but even within this framework of this perspective of reading comics you can add a psychological flavor to it right it can still speak to it so look at these images right Captain America versus the Nazis right and when he was done fighting the Nazis Captain America call me Smasher alright very interesting even the Hulk right when he wasn't off battling aliens and scientists in the military he also found the time to fight the commies right so very interesting now comics and the superheroes that populate their pages express and represent and contain the anxieties fears and fantasies of a culture at a specific point in time there are both historical artifacts and windows or keyholes into a deeper psychological understanding of a culture or society at a given point in time right so we can read these right as images of potentially our collective fears and anxieties right they can be compensations to speak to those anxieties and to live it out in a very particular way right so in that sense comics are not childish right they're anything but okay now it may also fulfill a religious need right and that's what I'm going to focus on now so if we go to and again we're emphasizing here the difference between an archetype and really the archetypal image and I'm looking specifically at it's the experience or archetypal experience of Messiah figures and I'm going to focus specifically on the life of Christ and the question I'm asking is this what are the main motifs or themes that define his life now you could probably choose others right this is highly subjective I've obviously chosen headline points that proved my point right so so be very wary and and and conscious of that but hopefully you'll still find it compelling now equally right I'm not saying that the life of Christ or Jesus of Nazareth is a myth we know that it's not right so there's a whole field of scholarship of the historical Jesus some very interesting work and even from historical accounts of Josephus we know a man named Jesus of Nazareth actually exists existed right and that he did certain things to piss people off which then led to his crucifixion okay so I'm not denying it what I'm trying to do is just to put that aside right to bracket on it asserted to bracket it and focus on its rich symbolism and what it may point to psychologically that is the need it fulfills and the meaning it actually provides okay so the need it fulfills and the meaning it actually provides so let's look at the life of Christ okay so number one he is not a typical human child alright there's usually some react Ulis birth or some you know miraculous origin story and what is it in the case of Christ right he's the son of God brought into the world by a virgin very very indeed right so tick right we've got the first bullet point I mean you could also then play with the ideas of the divine child new beginnings etc etc but we'll just leave it at that for now number two abandonment or a threat to the self right so you see this theme cropping up in a lot of stories much like Moses Wright was abandoned in a basket hephæstus right the Smith Guard also abandoned so in the life of Christ we don't have abandonment per se but we do have a threat to the self right what happens Herod wants to track the child down right and he fails for quite a long time and then decides to kill all the male children in Bethlehem under the age of two right and thank goodness there was an insider someone tipped off Mary and Joseph and they fled to Egypt right before the child could be killed so certainly we have a threat to the self tick right number two paradox as the essence of the Messiah figure so here I'm really talking about the tension that the individual holds right how the were side the tension the individual symbolically holds so for Jesus Christ it's the tension between being both man and God right I mean with the Gospel of John you see this this very kind of idealized figure of you know Christ so I turned the other cheek I'm all good well you know price was also there to bring the Ox right and you see moments of his humanity throughout you know the narratives on Christ that people just really don't appreciate you know the pain he feels in Gethsemane when he's just begging his father please please please let this cup pass from me right so it's really important to then note this dichotomy or this tension within the individual that there's something divine with the individual but then also something very human and also significance is to be found within simplicity right he's a carpenter all right nobody expects the carpenter to be the son of God right to be humanity's Redeemer so take we have this idea of a paradox the overcoming of physical death which points to themes or psychological themes of death and rebirth and do we have this yes we do Jesus is crucified but rises again in three days time right so there's this idea of being twice born that young discusses at length sorry I'd length in symbols of transformation everyone okay so far okay the life of kal-el aka Clark Kent aka the Superman so we go to point one not a typical human child yes well you already know where I'm going with this kal-el is an alien sent from another world by his father as the planet Krypton is dying right and he will also come to have a dual identity a normal and rather clumsy journalist as a persona if you will and a being of superhuman strength powered by the Sun I eat Apollo right this already points to two point number three okay so point one take abandonment threat to the self do we have abandonment yes he was abandoned by his parents right by his father in particular he's raised by the Kent family Jonathan and Martha Kemp I'm sorry Martha Kent and another commonality he shares with Christ have surrogate fathers all right so you have Joseph here and you have Jonathan Kent over here okay abandonment threat to the self tick paradox as the essence of the Messiah figure right well yes we do we have godlike abilities yet an individual living as a normal human being from Kansas of all places okay Superman is a man sent from the heavens by his father to use his special powers for the good of humanity all right so we're definitely seeing some parallels do we have the overcoming of physical death does Superman die and does he subsequently rise in the dead does anyone any comic aficionados yes he does in 1992 so here's my copy much easier to carry then on we F Ellen burgers you know quintessential work the you know the history of the unconscious this is obviously a Bible of sorts hermetically sealed in a ziploc bag for that extra layer of protection okay so yes he does in 1992 Superman dies now many argue that the death of Superman was a publicist or a publicity stunt to drum up interest for falling readership right and certainly it was that but equally you could suggest that there is certainly a constellation of an archetypal narrative or pattern right and to add to the connotations or the religious connotations who actually kill Superman anyone an alien being called doomsday right so then you draw the parallels back to the Bible you have an image of Revelation of the Apocalypse of the end of days now after he is killed there are several competitors to their throne until Superman rises triumphantly again and note the christ-like main to boot all right so you have some of the imagery right that's pointing to more traditional religious representations of Christ now if you also look to the cover right at the death of Superman alright there it is sorry you can't see this one what does that look like anyone [Music] right okay so we have here Michelangelo's pietà right Louis as the Virgin Mary now you could argue that the authors and illustrators purposely drew on this parallel to convey the christ-like qualities they wish to attach to the Superman yet equally the idea of a Superman were sorry a superhuman being a metahuman the ability to be more than what we were meant for is intrinsic to the human condition in other words this fantasy of being able to transcend boundaries to test and push limits is archetypal these figures are the manifestations of our own creative impulse and proclivity towards an idea of wholeness and completion and not merely perfection so emphasize this point again because if we look at every superhero no superhero is perfect all right there will always be an Achilles heel Superman has his kryptonite and Batman well he's Batman right he's all too human all right he's got some psychology to deal with definitely so but these heroes act despite their limitations while personifying a state of being transcending what may be considered quote-unquote normal but there are other religious elements of comic culture other than the figures themselves to which analytical psychology may speak comic-con I've never been I'd love to go all right anyone ever been to comic-con or even London comic-con yeah okay fantastic right so what happens at comic-con so it's usually a conference the one I'm taking thinking of specifically is in San Diego we have stands for merchandise the opportunity for autographs to meet artists writers to you know listen or sorry to hear announcements panels for upcoming films etc etc now it's taken very seriously right for the people who are in comic culture they take it very seriously you might say even religiously so for instance the devotion of fans and the franchise's ability to speak to the desire and expectations can resurrect or sink a project right so if you think back to the bat and franchise right the movies I remember are the Tim Burton adapt ations then overall no I thought they were pretty good actually Who am I to you know to say what I think I thought the first one was second sorry the first one was better than the second one but overall the bit quirky very Tim burton-esque but people like them that's fine what happens after that oh dear right Batman and Robin and Batman Forever okay those two films almost literally single-handedly sunk the entire franchise and the superhero genre right in general so it took a revision Nolan's trilogy The Dark Knight trilogy to bring the Dark Knight and in the DC franchise as a whole back to its former glory so the reverence for characters can reach a fever pitch and evinces a religious preoccupation or devotion right and here's my point again the archetypal urge or the religious function of the psyche cannot be suppressed it will find a way to express itself by extension comic-con and related events or sites of worship and devotion right now what leads me to say that well what do some people do at comic-con they dress up right this phenomenon called cosplay many people engage in cosplay dressing up as your favorite heroes not dissimilar to rituals in the pagan world where celebrant the Divas the event itself divides the safe space to live out fantasies and dress up as The Cosby worship so Comic Con and conventions also serve a containment function to draw parallel to the state created within the narrative relationship in space now just a few concluding words okay let's go back to young so the archetype is inherited archetypal images are not there could be multiple images and variations and here we see young moving away from the essentialist aspects of his thinking to one that is more nuanced and culturally aware yet equally the reason why myths and stories continue to fascinate is because it is one way the unconscious communicates with consciousness one way that our own innate knowing tries to relate to us what our psyche needs and the means of achieving it similarly psychological symptoms do not always signal ill health rather they can be seen as invitations to greater self-awareness and personal growth it is the compensate re relationship between the unconscious and consciousness that gives rise to the mythic themes and fantasies that populate our dreams and it is the archetype which appears to us as an archetypal image that signals to us which part of our life requires attention so in very simple terms what is Jung trying to say via the theory of archetypes and the distinction that he makes between the archetype and the archetypal image all right basically he's saying there are similarities in human life and there are also differences and this could be read as a rather banal insight all that we just thought yeah some things are similar some things are different right a rather banal insight that denotes confusion in Jung right and let's face it he really wasn't the most consistent person intellectually right perhaps a therapist he was but not intellectually or we could read this another way we could see the theory of archetypes or sorry we could read the theory of archetypes as someone's attempt or struggle with the profound paradox of our very existence and trying to find the language and tools to give voice to it all the time knowing that such formulations will never fully do justice to this tension and the psychology that lies behind it and that's it thank you everyone [Applause]

Channel: The Weekend University

Views: 15,577

Rating: 4.8095236 out of 5

Keywords: the weekend university, psychology lectures, Carl Jung Archetypes, Jungian Archetypes, Archetypes, Jungian psychology, C.G. Jung, Collective unconscious

Id: 3tuqiTMSzkU

Length: 70min 5sec (4205 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 28 2019