BRIEF Introduction to Carl

Gustav Jung
Mythical-Archetypal Approach to
Literature
• One of the most
outstanding Founding
Fathers of modern
psychoanalysis, Jung
has brought an immense
contribution to the fields
of literature, religious
studies, anthropology
and philosophy, and has
opened a new way in the
psychological and
psychotherapeutical
research, his findings
being of paramount
importance even today.
 Common Jungian Archetypes
• Animus and Anima
• the Great Mother
• the Child
• the Self
• the Trickster
• the Magician
• the Shado

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 The Collective Unconscious
• Jung has revealed the fact that the human
psyche is made up of two distinct parts:
• the personal unconscious, that represents a
more superficial layer of the psyche, derived
from the personal experience (cf Jung: 2)
• the collective unconscious whose “contents
and modes of behaviour are more or less the
same everywhere and in all individuals“
(Jung: 2).
• the contents of the personal unconscious “are
mainly the feeling-toned complexes that
constitute the personal and private side of
psychic life, (...)
• the contents of the collective unconscious, are
known as 'archetypes' and they represent “a
common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal
nature which is present in every one of us“
(Jung: 2).
• all humanity shares a collective unconscious that
is “inborn“ and “universal“ (Jung: 2) and whose
contents “are made up essentially of archetypes“
(De Coster: 2)
 Archetypes
• From the Greek ‘arche’- origin and ‘typos’-
pattern, model, type
• a series of “original inherited patterns or forms of
thoughts and experience. They constitute an
ancient and unconscious source of much what we
think or do, as human beings“ (De Coster: 5).
• “a symbol, theme, setting or character-type that
recurs (...) in myth, literature, folklore, dreams
and rituals“ (Baldick: 19)
• They are “atavistic and universal, the product of
the collective unconscious and inherited from our
ancestors“ (Cuddon: archetype).
• Far from being a modern notion, the term archetype
appears as early as in the time of St Augustine
• it also occurs in the writings of Philo Judaeus, with
reference to “the Imago Dei in man“(Jung: 2)
• as meaning, the term is very close to Plato's conception
of 'idea' as supraordinate and preexistent to all
phenomena“ (Jung: 7)
• the basis of the archetypal literary criticism lies in the
fundamental writings of four main authors:
• Carl Gustav Jung's seminal studies in the field of
mythical and archetypal psychoanalysis
• James Frazer's outstanding research in the field of
anthropology
• Maud Bodkin and Northrope Frye's remarkable studies
in applied archetypal literary criticism
James Frazer
• in his twelve-volume work The
Golden Bough, he examines an
impressive number of myths
from various parts of the world
suggesting that “myth and ritual,
however various their occurrence
in time and place, followed
certain recurrent patterns“ (Murray: 45)
• his book discusses ancestral
symbols and rituals such as
fertility rites, vegetal spirits
worship, sacred marriage, human
sacrifice, the death and the
resurrection of certain pagan
gods, the scapegoat and other
cultural totems and taboos (cf Frazer:
757)
Maud Badkin
• Archetypal Patterns in
Poetry- she takes a step
further and brings together
imaginative literature and in-
depth psychological
exploration
• she attempts to identify in
various literary works a set of
primordial patterns such as the
archetypes of rebirth, of
heaven and hell, the
archetypal images of woman,
of God, and of the Hero, as
well as archetypal patterns in
sacred and in contemporary
literature.
Northrope Frye
• Bible: The Great Code - he
demonstrates that the whole
global literature springs
from a relatively restricted
set of primordial images,
that originate in the Holy
Bible
• The Anatomy of Criticism,
in the essay entitled
Archetypal Criticism- A
Theory of Myths, he
identifies and defines
archetypal correspondences
between the four main
dramatic genres and the four
seasons
Joseph Campbell
• he turned “to culture, not to
the psyche, as the locus and
transmitter of archetypal
patterns“ (Staton: 97)
• he considered that all
“religions, philosophies, arts,
the social forms of primitive
and historic man, prime
discoveries in science and
technology, the very dreams
that blister sleep, boil up from
the basic, magic ring of myth“
(Campbell: 1).
• The Hero with a Thousand
Faces-
• the monomyth: separation;
initiation; return
• Heroes- in myth, literature, and real life- take
journeys, confront dragons (i.e. Problems) and
discover the treasure of their true selves (...). The
need to take the journey is innate in the species. If
we do not risk, if we play prescribed social roles
instead of taking our journeys, we may feel numb
and experience a sense of alienation, a void, an
emptiness inside. People who are discouraged
from slaying dragons internalize the urge and slay
themselves (...) When we declare war on our true
selves, we can end up feeling as though we have
lost our souls (...) In shying away from the quest ,
we experience nonlife (...) This is the experience
of the wasteland. (Pearson: 3)
• ARCHETYPES- Just like in the case of the animal
instincts, they are deeply embedded in us.
• they are neither good, nor bad, and they can take
different significances for different people
• for instance, while for some individuals the archetype
of the Father is associated with positive aspects like
love, protection or strength, for others it can take
negative connotations, depending on each person's
personal background (cf De Coster: 5)
• even if every person who displays the characteristics of
a certain archetype is different, we can still easily
recognize that specific pattern (cf Pearson: 19), just as
even if “every snowflake is unique (...) there is
something similar in the deep structure of snowflakes
that allows us to recognize them as snowflakes“
(Pearson: 19).
• Some of the most frequent archetypal patterns are
• archetypal characters (such as the hero, the
Ulysees figure, the trickster, the Don Juan figure,
the rebel, the maiden in distress, the magician, the
trickster)
• archetypal places (the paradisiacal garden, the
labyrinth, the underworld)
• archetypal physical elements and celestial
bodies (the earth, the water, the sun, the moon)
• archetypal creatures and plants (the rose, the
serpent, the lion), archetypal colours (white,
black, red)
• archetypal actions (the quest, acts of redemption
such as the sacrificial death, the descent into
underworld, the seasonal cycle) (cf. Murray: 46).
Animus and Anima
• Anima- the woman in men.
There are certain secondary
female sexual features in male.
• On the psychological plane we
talk about the soul, or
sensuality as opposed to
rationality and reason (animus).
• anima archetype rules over the
relationship between men and
women. It is a kind of innate
guide that leads one through
the ambiguous path of meeting
the woman and interact with
her.
• The most known anima
image is the mother
archetype.
• It rules over the mother-
son relationship. Therefore
it is projected onto the
mother image.
• We know of such female
figures from the cultural
and religious themes.
• Virgin Mary or Mother
Earth and other such
mythical figures may lead
us to the mother archetype.
 Mythical-Archetypal Criticism
• considers that a literary work is a combination
of symbolic intertextual elements, rooted in
our collective unconscious and representing a
mixture of archetypes as they appear in myths
and dreams.
• the role of the critic is to decode the
significance of these symbols in order to reveal
the author’s conscious or unconscious
intention when writing that text
• TEMA

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 Bibliography
• Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008.
• De Coster, Philippe L. Meditation Triangle Units. The Collective Unconscious and
Its Archetypes. Gent: Satsang Press, 2010.
• Jung, C. G. Collected Works of C.G. Jung. The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious. New York: Pantheon, 1959. Print.
• Jung, C. G. Four Archetypes; Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 1970. Print.
• Jung, C. G. Instinct and the Unconscious, in Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 8.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. Print.
• Jung, C. G. On the Nature of the Psyche. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1969. Print.
• Jung, C. G. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. London: Routledge, 1992.
Print.
• Jung, C G. Psychology and Literature in Lodge, David, and Nigel Wood. Modern
Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Harlow: Longman, 2000. Print.
• Pearson, Carol. Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find
Ourselves and Transform Our World. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
• Pearson, Carol. The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live by. San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1989.