Alfredo Cervera   Archetypes 

Many theories have been developing and trying to explain the different reasons why some situations happen in human environment. Nobody knows exactly why people think, act, or develop different behaviors. However, there is a very interesting theory, in this respect, that Carl Jung calls the “Collective Unconscious” or “Archetypes”. This is a theory that explains that every human being, according to Jung, is born with a kind of “same background in his or her psyche”. This last quotation is very important for the understanding of our lives.

An interesting excerpt (Davis 2003, para. 2) indicated that “ there are a 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”.

To be more specific, Jung affirms that every person, when born already has a general psyche. When people do things, a part of their psyche, first, takes place in their actions. “ I think and then act” Aristotle said. This means that for every situation in our lives, we either decided to do something or not. The moment that takes place in our minds, when we are making a decision, what Jung refers to as “primordial” is filled with experiences, feelings, and instincts from remote times. Even though we have tried to hide some thoughts that we do not like, in our personal unconscious, these thoughts come automatically to us as a part of our Collective Unconscious. This is very important for Jung because this is not an individual’s own thoughts but collective thoughts, which are attached to all humans through out human history.

There are many situations in our lives where the collective unconscious is manifested. However in order to explain these different behaviors, Carl Jung developed a

Alfredo Cervera

Archetypes 

broad theory of what he calls “Archetypes”. There are two different ways how Jung explains the different archetype. The first description that Jung makes about archetypes is found in Kennedy and Gioia (2005)

Primitive tribal lore is concerned with archetypes that have been modified

in a especial way. They are no longer contents of the unconscious, but

have already been changed into conscious formulae taught according to

tradition, generally in the form of esoteric teaching. (p. 767 )

This ancestral learning of things by humans have evolved from collective experiences that is knowledge already acquired in our conscious. And this information has been transferred generation through generation. Among this kind of archetype, there are many classifications. Each archetype is trying to explain how people behave and what are the reasons for their different behaviors. Two of the most important among these archetypes are the shadow and the mother archetype.

The shadow archetype mainly is based on the dark human side. Fears, phobias, and rejected qualities are expressed in this archetype. For example, even though nobody ever tells you about killing somebody, if you were in a starving situation, you would probably kill anybody in order to survive. This last example means that even though we could look pleasing, we are capable of doing bizarre things. This is a natural human response for a special situation. Jung compares this situation with the environment of the animal kingdom. Animals, people, and even babies have the same instincts. One research 

Alfredo Cervera

Archetypes 

(Raffa,1999,para.2) reveals that archetypes can be loosely compared to the instincts of animals.

Jung shows that the same thing happens with the mother archetype. All women are, to some degree, using the same pattern behaviors. Women are born with some predisposition towards the nurture of babies. Mothers feed, guide, and take care of their babies naturally without previous apprenticeship. This is what Jung calls collective unconscious. In the beginning of civilization, women lacked the knowledge to nurture babies. After learning and sharing some facts through generations, women acquire the belongings to the essential nature of motherhood knowledge.

Children’s mothers, also, influence babies’ behaviors, to some extension. Even though babies do not have any experience as adults, these new creatures have already acquired some mechanisms for their urges. Many researches have found that a baby, who is separated from his mother, when he is delivered, cries because he does not like the new environment. Doctors, lights, and a lot of noise are unknown things that babies reject very soon without previous experience. The noise is not as hard when they where inside their mothers, the lights bother babies, and the weather is different where they come from. So, this means that from the collective unconscious, different people with the same urges went to a consciousness or acquired learning.

The second description that Jung gives defining archetypes is about myth and fairy tale. This kind of archetype is more symbolic. These archetypes are developed through fables and myths in history. They are told in different ways, having different

Alfredo Cervera

Archetypes 

interpretations. However, they have many similarities of the meanings among the different cultures. These acquired images or meanings, which are in the psyche, are trying to define situations that all humans come across. As Jung says in Kennedy and Gioia (2005)

The term –archetype- applies only indirectly to the “representations collectives”, since it designates only those psychic contents which have not yet been submitted to conscious elaboration and therefore an immediate datum of psychic experience. (p. 767).

We can refer, also, the reading “The Appointment in Samarra”, when we talk about archetypes. Here, the author W. Somerset Maugham, deals with the topic of death. In this fable, the writer clearly points out that death is inevitable, even though we always try to circumvent it. So, here death plays clearly a roll of archetype.

Jung said in the book by Kennedy and Gioia (2005) that “archetypal images (which often relate to experiencing primordial phenomena like the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood), trigger the collective unconscious” (p. 767).

In reference to the last example, we can say that death is a universal concept. It can be easy added to the list of situations, which we mention before, that those situations are released from the collective unconscious. Everybody knows that someday we will die. It does not matter religion, fate, or belief. A very interesting thing here is how death, in general, pushes people to have deep reactions. In our reading, we see how the guy is  

Alfredo Cervera

Archetypes 

shocking at the moment when he met death. He tries to run away because he does not want to die.

Sorrow, sadness, pity are common at the time of death. In many cases, we never had experienced those feelings before; however, among the people, these sensations are similar and intense. Here, the concept of death is applied as an archetype in the Jungian

sense. From unconscious thoughts, at time when occurring the situation, in this case death, people’s sentiments are unknown and unprecedented to ourselves. However, these different and weird reactions come to us, as part of our consciousness, at the time of these new situations.

Thus, this Collective Unconscious becomes part of our awareness, or as Jung calls part of the archetypes. This essentially means that unconscious content has been modified to form part of our conscious.