CARL JUNG ARCHETYPES
n theory, Jungian archetypes refer to unclear underlying forms or the archetypes-as-such from
which emerge images and motifs such as the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood
among others. History, culture and personal context shape these manifest representations
thereby giving them their specific content. These images and motifs are more precisely called
archetypal images. However, it is common for the term archetype to be used interchangeably to
refer to both archetypes-as-such and archetypal images.
EXAMPLES
Jung described archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the
union of opposites; archetypal figures: great mother, father, child, devil, god, wise old man, wise
old woman, the trickster, the hero; and archetypal motifs: the apocalypse, the deluge, the
creation. Although the number of archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable,
recurring archetypal images, "the chief among them being" (according to Jung) "the shadow, the
wise old man, the child, the mother ... and her counterpart, the maiden, and lastly the anima in
man and the animus in woman". Alternatively he would speak of "the emergence of certain
definite archetypes ... the shadow, the animal, the wise old man, the anima, the animus, the
mother, the child".
The Self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expresses the unity of the
personality as a whole.
The shadow is a representation of the personal unconscious as a whole and usually embodies
the compensating values to those held by the conscious personality. Thus, the shadow often
represents one's dark side, those aspects of oneself that exist, but which one does not
acknowledge or with which one does not identify.
The anima archetype appears in men and is his primordial image of woman. It represents the
man's sexual expectation of women, but also is a symbol of a man's possibilities, his contra
sexual tendencies. The animus archetype is the analogous image of the masculine that occurs in
women.