Carl Jung and the Archetypes - Dr Kevin Lu, PhD

CGT young, okay, 1875 to 1961, Swiss psychiatrists, founder of analytical psychology, widely known as a former collaborator of Sigmund Freud and similar to Alfred Adler, deserter of the psychoanalytic movement. Now all of Depp's psychologies begin with the recognition and appreciation of the unconscious. and the ways in which it informs our behavior and helps shape our individual identity, however, differ in key ways, so they differ in terms of what types of relationships they emphasize, i.e. vertical relationships with parents or horizontal relationships with siblings , either using unconscious glances into the past to focus on the impact of relationships and birth order in the present or potentially on what the unconscious tells us about our future personality, so the loss of T in The psyche is a hallmark of Jung's thought and particularly in the case of young people. he has really specific ideas about how the psyche is really structured and when we say that the psyche includes consciousness and the unconscious, he has different ideas about how the psyche is structured, the mechanisms and the tools with which the unconscious transmits its messages.

Consciousness Okay, so for Jung the psyche is divided into three, so we are aware of what we are aware of, what do my senses tell me? What can I perceive? What can I recognize? How do I relate to the world what is consciousness?, then it goes to the personal unconscious now the personal unconscious is good what it says on the tin, right, these are things that we are not aware of, but the content of the personal conscious unconscious is of a personal nature, so There could be things in our life. It's true that as time goes by we forget, so if you ask me right, unless my sister comes up to me and says, hey, do you mind when we did it and there were five of us, right, and you were four now?

You may not remember it consciously. but if I'm pointed out correctly and if I think about it a little more I might actually be able to bring it back, it's just that what I did when I was four doesn't quite resonate right now, I can't keep it in consciousness, so the content goes somewhere. It is recorded somewhere and for young people it goes to the personal unconscious. Other contents of the personal unconscious generally include things that have been quite traumatic for the individual, so things that would prevent us from engaging in everyday life and are generally traumatic in nature. and nine times out of ten in the case of young people, the complexes are based on some type of traumatic event which is not always correct, but most of the time it is some type of trauma that lies at the heart of the formation of a complex, for example, if there is a difficult relationship. true, and you find it difficult to continue with work, school, etc.

Well, guess what you do? You lower it consciously. I cannot think of this right now in more serious cases, as the other speakers have noted this. like it actually splits right at the moment of impact is when the psyche really dissociates, so Donald Cal stripped down, who is 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 now there is a woman who used to be sexually abused by her father every Sunday when her mother went to church, so throughout the therapy which Cal leads her to you.

What I can tell you is that in those particular moments the way she really handled the abuse was that she saw herself from above, almost as an out-of-body experience; he had to be out of his body to distance himself from the physical trauma of what was really going on, so that's number one and as time goes by, one day Calstrs just asks him: I wonder where you went during those and that's the moment when she collapses right in those moments, I was in the mother's arms, right now. We're getting to Jung's ideas about the archetype, so while the real physical mother couldn't be there for her in those moments of trauma, she goes into the fantasy of being held by an ever-growing mother, well, that It's the personal issue. unconscious the collective unconscious so 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 will only read it once because the definitions here can be defined as the unconscious collective part of the unconscious mind derived through eons of repetition of human cultural images and experiences that, despite differences in details, remain typically human with recognizable commonalities and meanings.

Sorry, just a second, just for today's purposes, because it's infinitely more complex than this, just think. of complexes as contents of the personal unconscious and

archetypes

, which is the focus today, as contents of the collective unconscious and because Jung says well that

archetypes

are the contents of the collective unconscious, the archetype cannot be defined without them by default. . to find the collective unconscious and vice versa, so you will find that these definitions generally intermingle and interconnect on many levels, so what I'm going to do now, let's hear it straight from the horse's mouth, we're going to go over some definitions and then we're going to Try to summarize what I feel at this point or just the key ideas we want to extract about Jung's idea of ​​archetypes, whether it is in psychology or I feel it in the relations between the ego and the unconscious. written around 1916-17, revised several times, defines the archetype as impersonal collective components.

Therefore, IE Jung has advanced the hypothesis that at its deepest levels the unconscious has collective contents in a relatively active state. Let's come back to this a little bit more, but what he means by active is that they're not right, they're alive. One of our colleagues previously used the term consistently right, which is a therapeutic-type psychological term, so these archetypes are not true, they may be patterns, let's say, formed in the past through the history of the human experience, but at the same time, once something triggers it, it potentially plays a role in our lives. Okay, let's move on to the next quote, the archetype is. the type of disposition to produce the same or similar mythical ideas over and over again.

What does Young mean by this? How did he come to this? For this we have to go back to his days in the Peugeot Slee psychiatric hospital in Zurich. certain very famous hospital at the time you know is at the forefront of treating psychotic patients so it was here where you know that Young is really cutting his teeth and how he is really getting into Freud's ideas as well and during this time he is caring for schizophrenics. patients and his whole approach is that we don't actually lock the door and throw away the key. I really want to understand and help these people because they really are not beyond salvation.

So what does he do? Just start listening. You start collecting the stories, you start collecting the narratives and what you discovered was that a pattern emerged in these delusions, these fantasies, these visions, many of them actually had it with a correct character, so as a responsible doctor, do you? what does it do well? so I need to learn more about the myths because this is exactly what I'm observing. If I need to decode the messages, decode the potential meaning and perhaps find the instance, the secret or the trauma that really caused all this confusion, it is my duty.

That is why and how he delved deeper and deeper into the myths and discovered that these themes were repeated in the delusions or visions of his schizophrenic patients, but also later in his therapeutic patients and his dreams. Alright, that's why myth is a cornerstone of youth psychology and how intricately it is, I'm sorry, tied to archetypes, because myth, at least for young people, is a way that the unconscious speaks to you. to conscience, right? And if we have the legend, if we decode it, if we spend the time learning the language, maybe we can decipher what our true self writes, our own innate knowledge is active trying to tell us okay, okay, so we're over that right now. , sometimes also, what Jung really found.

The interesting thing was that these delusions or these types of fantasies that people had, actually brought out many rituals, myths, stories that were from a culture other than Western culture, and this young man Absolutely intrigued, why this person from this particular Swiss canton, that I know, has never traveled outside of Switzerland. How come this person suddenly produces mandalas? Does it produce images or fantasies of a phallus swirling in the sun? couldn't at least say well, couldn't explain it through diasporas, crypt amnesia, etc., that's how he begins to put forward this idea of ​​a collective unconscious right that, regardless of historical time or geographical distance, we all have the right to access this.

Memory, this human memory that has been imprinted in our psyche, that has been compiled by our ancestors and that in these moments we were able to immerse ourselves in this content and then express it, the unconscious speaks through these main motives, etc., but the way they are filtered. in our psyche is actually shaped by our own personalities, our own cultures, our own economy, etc., etc., so he felt it was at least important to offer, if you will, this idea of ​​a collective unconscious above the personal unconscious. Okay? Let's continue. Archetypes are recurring impressions generated by subjective reactions.

I like this one, true, it's short, but I like this one because it actually speaks to my interest in the discipline of history, so basically what you can deduce from this particular quote is that he is talking about the history of human experience, so by default and by extension, every archetypal pattern at one time or another was an actual historical experience, something that happened to humanity in general, right, and this is not me, this is just Sean Dasani doing that important point, so these in turn leave a mark on humanity, that is, on the different ways in which one can react to a situation and this is what we really inherit now.

What young also implies here is that we are predisposed to certain instincts imprinted on us. our psyche, that is, the instinct to live typically human lives, so what does it give as an example, for example, how bees intrinsically know how to build hives? For young people this is not a learned behavior, it is instinctive, so the notion of an archetype as an a priori determinant of all psychic processes is what Jung presents as an explanation for this phenomenon and, in fact, I was very happy to see it when I was looking through the archives at The Weeknd University who invited Rupert Sheldrake to give a talk, so his idea of ​​morphic resonance actually has a parallel in Young's archetypal theory, so it's very interesting.

Now, moving on to another quote, it's not just archetypes that apparently are us. Sorry, not only are archetypes apparently impressions of always repeated typical experiences but at the same time they behave empirically as agents that tend to the repetition of those same experiences, because when an archetype appears in a dream and a fantasy or in life always brings with him. with it a certain influence or power by virtue of which it exerts a numinous or fascinating effect or prompts action. So what can we distill here? What can we remove? So, archetypes are typical human experiences, reactions, relationships that are expressed as patterns. which in turn can shape our lives visibly, that is, conscious, and invisible, that is, unconsciously.

They can constellate or, in more complex and serious cases, they can come to possess the individual, that is, the individual has over-identified with a particular, correct, idea or pattern. Usually when people feel like they are on a course of destruction, they feel like they can't get out, that destiny is actually, you know, controlling their lives to a certain extent, well for the young people, this is just the constellation of a particular pattern. and someone is too identified with that, right? and it's just a recurring circle, right? You're just repeating what the pattern tells you, the more aware we are of them, that is, the archetypes and their effects, the better we are right, we could mitigate their negative potential. effects and really tap into your creative potential.

Why do we need to know about archetypes? Does anyone want to answer that question because my livelihood depends on it? If I can answer this, I'm in trouble. Well, why do we need archetypes? What is the added value? What does it bring to our lives so that the knowledge of these patterns can have a potentially healing effect because it unites us with our shared innate knowledge of our human experience that we have forgotten or lost sight of now at that time for the young people of that time? For young people, when I wrote, I feltthat society was completely disenchanted, completely disconnected, true, this was largely due to the fact of industrialization, the fact that humanity, so to speak, felt more and more alien to its environment and the rapid development of you know the machines are basically right, so there is disenchantment, it is one factor, the second factor and many people have already alluded to this is the loss of religion as a framework, the loss of Religion as a framework to provide meaning and structure to one's own. life, and when God is dead, where do you go?

And that is where your therapy, if you will, begins to emerge to give meaning to the world and to individual lives, so that knowledge of the underlying archetypes can help us frame our current problems and ills that all of humanity has experienced, regardless of cultural differences. Placing our own experiences in a broader context also helps alleviate what psychoanalysts would call a severe superego at this time. The superego in itself is not negative. Let me go back and recalculate what I am saying about Freud. The resolution of the Oedipus complex helps the establishment of the superego, which in turn allows us to identify with the father. but then also identify with a more symbolic and larger parent, that is, society, then the superego plays a socializing function and that is very good, the difference here is the tough superego, right, it is the voice that keeps telling you that you are really weird, actually true, I say it to myself all the time, you're really weird, right, I'm projecting this on you by the way, you have no friends, it's all your fault, right, you're the one to blame, you're the one indicated.

Who broke up this relationship? It's your fault the kids don't listen, etc., 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? It is this constant rebuke and devaluation of oneself that actually paralyzes life, it really damages life seen in another way, you can see, this is called guilt and shame, what many people feel, not all, but many people feel when they are about to enter therapy and you know these feelings that were really explored throughout the therapy, so when you frame your experience within an archetypal pattern, you can realize that you are not alone in the that he's experiencing, that it's not his fault, and that there's this really moving big scene. scene in Good Will Hunting Do I remember the movie Good Will Hunting?

Fantastic if you haven't seen it, take the time to see it filmed at the University of Toronto, my alma mater, another reason to see it, but Robin Williams is the therapist and you. I know, but Will Hunting is a very troubled young man, a very bright young man, and there comes a moment in therapy where he just says to Jason Bourne, is that you? Matt Damon, he just tells him, he tells Jason Bourne that it's not your fault and he repeats it, it's not your fault. It's not your fault, it's not your fault, right? And that is a very emotional and healing time for that particular individual, so it's not all going to fall on you and the perceived extravagance of your personality for what you're going through. been through so you are neither the first nor the last and the knowledge of this can be quite liberating for some, it can lessen the feeling of guilt that one feels, which often, as we said, can paralyze life, so this is Potentially an important effect, right?

If you want to accept or accept, perhaps entertain Young's idea of ​​an archetypal pattern, the importance of myth because it potentially gave meaning to life, we can see his life in a broader context, correct and much like Joseph Campbell, although Joseph Campbell was inspired. because of Jungian ideas, he wasn't a Jungian, so let's make that clear, but this whole idea of ​​reframing our lives, our quote-unquote mundane lives, in more mythical terms, you know, can give us a sense of meaning in a very boring and mundane, sometimes a very worrying world, right, so knowing a pattern and how the story ends is a sign to us of what we can proactively do to change things so that a particular pattern does not repeat itself for make it part of the process.

The therapeutic process is to break these harmful patterns that we can actually enjoy acting out over and over again now because severe trauma happens, it's not like we want to repeat the trauma, right? Excuse me, I think Ruth said that 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 recognize the sense of comfort that we feel or that we find in our psychology , right in our illnesses, in our symptoms, why, because they actually provide a certain sense of stability. and identity of individuals, so it is important to take note that it is not that we are actively and joyfully participating in what ails us, but that sometimes it is very difficult to let go of the why because they become part of what we are, so by bringing them. in consciousness or by bringing these contents to consciousness and working diligently to change those behaviors, we mitigate archetypes, potential tyranny and control over us, consciousness gives us back human agency and control of our lives, and you can see this In the way Jung works with Dream Well he would obviously listen to the personal stories and contextualize them, but when the time came he would start to amplify them and see if there was a particular mythic narrative.

Now I usually give an example that 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 it's true that if you see someone who dreams of being burned, they have the right to be burned, if you want, I mean, a Jungian. You might think that well, the fire burns, there is new life. there is rebirth, etc., that's one way of looking at it, but if we amplify it more and more, we might find that someone is being burned because they are flying too close to the Sun and, in more symbolic terms, what happens when someone flies too close ? for the Sun is someone who is moving beyond his position of not honoring his own limitations as an individual right, so you can see that, depending on the context, when someone dreams something so powerful, it is such a difficult image to deal with. and working with him could be signaling someone's ambition, right, that you're moving faster and faster towards this ultimate goal and not realizing that at some point, very much like Icarus, right, Icarus flying towards the Sun without listening to his father Daedalus, right, that if you fly too close to the Sun, the wax that holds our wings together, they will burn you, you will fall, you will die, that's fine, and if you also play with this idea of ​​rebirth, sometimes that fall is really crucial to the development of the individual, so you can look based on the dream itself by gathering what we know from the history of personal circumstances, then you can turn to the myths to see if a myth can contain or frame an explanation of what that individual is happening, everyone is fine so far, yeah. okay, have a drink, okay, let's see what we have for time, most people will probably know the young through the personified archetypes, okay, the persona, the shadow, the anima, the anima, the old wise man, the trickster, the divine child, the self at this moment, is not the case.

They are real figures that are embedded somewhere in our brain. They are metaphors for psychological processes that are expressed both internally and externally in our daily lives. So young during your own confrontation with the unconscious you actually encounter many of these figures, right? ? DW Winnicott basically says that it is proof that he is psychotic hey he writes that he is psychotic now sometimes young he hears voices sometimes he sees images but these were fleeting right there there were mercurial and protean encounters so to maintain a more constant dialogue with these phenomena and literally ask them what do you want from me?

Literally stop them and talk to them. What do you want of me?. He felt it was necessary to specify them. Correct. Treat them as if they were real because in many ways they were and are real. Correct. Its psychic phenomena we take the psyche. Seriously, now the most important example is the anima. The anima was theorized around this time, so a female voice basically tells the young man that the artwork he was producing as part of the red book was art, so this is the voice, it's actually the voice of Maria Moltres . What you are doing here is fantastic, it is art and this is very seductive for young people, because at that moment it breaks with Freud, in the first half of his life, all the things that he built for himself in terms of esteem, recognition, your profession, etc. everything went well and now he is persona non grata and this voice starts telling him and probably hinting to him that maybe you have an artistic career here and the moment comes when he realizes that this voice is actually his own inner desire and weakness and he actually tells that voice that no, this is not art, this is psychology, right, it's also very important and I really wanted to emphasize this at home, is that these ideas are not created in a vacuum, they are created in the relationships and because of relationships, so it's not that the founding fathers and mothers of psychoanalysis in depth psychology sit on something and say oh, yes, you know, that's the child who sucks the breasts, yes, that's introjection, etc. ., etc., no, it is actually built and lived through relationships. with other people in the inner circle so it's not like they're just theorizing but they're acting it out in the relationships as they go and I only mention this because when we look at anima formation for young people you have to look at the female figures in his life, right, Marie gets emotional, maybe the first one we don't know, Sabina Spielrein, Toni Wolff, right, and let's not forget his wife Emma, ​​so all these people can lend a hand, if they want, to help young people formulate. the idea of ​​the anima, so keep that in mind, so going back to the personified archetypes, these personified archetypes are important for another reason and they will let the young people speak.

I would mention in particular the shadow, the animal, the wise old man, the anima, the animus, the mother. the child, in addition to an indefinite number of archetypes representing situations, a special position must be granted to those archetypes that represent the goal of the developmental process, so he is basically establishing a link between these specific archetypes and the individuation process, that is That is, the process of becoming within Jung's vision. analytical psychology the process of becoming someone who really has the potential to be correct, to realize his maximum potential and fullness, which for Jung is not perfection, it means observing what his strengths are, but also what his strengths are. of the.

R is also right to honor what those limitations are, in that sense, so these archetypes are found throughout the life process or are integral to individual development, they are stepping stones to the larger archetypal self, so in many Individuation is not Linear, although there is a clear loss of t in young psychology, true, we are moving towards a particular end, but it is also cyclical in nature, so it is like an upward spiral, because we constantly find ourselves, we constantly negotiate our understanding of these archetypes and what they are like. personified in their lives as art as figures real figures true so it is not so correct I know a female figure the first is my mother who I have dealt with that I left home I am fine animate tic true, let's not potentially be the last female figure you you will find in your life, you can meet a partner, you can meet a boss, you can meet someone again and again and at each point it is a birth again to know what we have learned from a previous experience and then to build on it and learn more, etc., etc.

Alright, again, these archetypes are important because they literally build a stepping stone to other archetypes. Right now we have five minutes, I'll just go over one and then we'll take a break. So the shadow is usually the first archetype one will encounter in therapy. Why, because it's more or less on the surface, it can be projected onto people. So, the shadow is what a person does not wish to be without realizing that those same characteristics reside within the person. individual is generally referred to as a negative side of personality, the sum total of all those unpleasant qualities that we wish to hide when young, however, it is also stated that it is something that has not yet been realized by consciousness, so it also can point to something more positive within you, so if the best version of you, right, if you haven't realized yet that for him lies in the shadows, right, you're not aware of it, so again you have to balance all these archetypes, you also know the positive and the negative, so generally you learn about the shadow through projection, so we will give you an example so that on the surface an individual can always remain calm and always has the appearance of agreement, ability, sociability, etc., so what we discover is that that person projectsa huge shadow. and usually it is someone else who does it well who becomes the recipient of that unlived negativity and usually it would be a partner, a neighbor or someone close to the individual it could also be a child, so there is an example in memories, dreams , the reflections, when the young man leaves. and visits a minister who is famous for his piety, so young spends three days walking around this guy, completely following him, he's actually trying to find holes, he's trying to find what this guy's story is, what's wrong with them and After three days you are baffled, right? like he's a bad person, hey this guy here is perfect and he's really about to go home and he's really thinking about his life, maybe he's thinking about what he's doing to his wife Emma when he invites Tony Wolf to the Sunday roast. because that's exactly what he did, but then he talks to the minister's wife and realizes that all his negativity, all those projections are actually thrown at her, she's the sinner, she's the one, sorry, the reason why my life is not going the way it is supposed to go, she is the reason for all my mistakes, etc, etc., then the young man realizes that it is touching, yes, that is where the shadow is, it has been projected onto the wife, okay? we have been through that hmm what is the shadow a shadow of what is the shadow a shadow of the shadow is a shadow of the person just our next archetypal figure so the person is the social mask that one uses and presents, it denotes what one desires to be seen by others so some of you who have social networks think carefully about your LinkedIn profile think about your Facebook photo what photo do you have up there?

This is the night they know their blurry-eyed post-drink photo probably isn't the right one. Usually if it's not, you know it couldn't be a photo of you, but that also says something about you, but if it's a photo of you, it's usually a pretty good representation of what you want the world to see well, so which is fair enough. the person now we can have multiple masks depending on our social roles, so for me, for example, I am a son, I am a father, what else I am a university professor, sometimes a friend, a colleague really annoying to others, etc. ., okay, so there are many social rules I have to follow now when I think about the person.

I think about decorum. What dictates decorum in a specific situation? 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 the relationship with Authority and by extension or relationship with parental figures and our desire to court those who They hold the power. Now some people may say, "Okay." and level the person, the person who is very conscious of putting on different masks that are actually fake, right, buddy, you're fake, okay, you're not real, you're not being real, right? You're just putting on a mask. and that.

You know, an opportunity for someone's integrity, it's an opportunity for someone's authenticity, that people are not their true selves, quote-unquote, in their everyday life, and to me, one answer to that is that they actually It's not easy to be your true self all the time. Okay, it's exhausting and it's also not really desirable to be your true self all the time, because if we go back to Freud, the real thing, you might want to act on those impulses constantly, and if you're acting on those Ede impulses constantly. in society is really going to survive now, I think authenticity is fine and being able to express yourself freely, whether it's anger or aggression, is fine in manageable parts, but it's not something we really want to indulge in if we're really interested in cultivating society and for Youth, that is partly our responsibility to maintain society and play our role within society.

One could also argue that those who have made such accusations are actually wearing a mask in their own right, the mask of authenticity, the mask of being real, when in reality they are what they could be. Masking is a desire or longing or regret to belong to fit in, perhaps someone has been hurt by an experience and therefore INRIA, in retaliation, overcompensates and identifies with the opposite disorder of NRK, where in reality the desire is to bring greater order and regularity within oneself. and the way we relate to others, so having people is not a shame, it is an aspect of maintaining a healthy psyche.

We all have to confront these masks to survive and not be aliens who alienate others. The problems begin when we actually identify too much with one. mask in particular right where we only see ourselves as one particular thing and I thought this is a great example that shows my age Jim Carrey the mask remembers this movie, yeah, I mean, you know, okay, whatever. , but the symbolism of putting on the mask and then not being able to disidentify and take it off, that's where the danger lies of the person over-identifying with a particular way of being. Now I'll make the next transition, the next link, and then we'll have a Pause for a break, so from my perspective, I'm a man, and at this point in my life I'm too consumed by this idea of ​​being the breadwinner. male family.

I must support my family. Okay, it's a man's duty to do this. What Young would actually say is that in the unconscious of this particular individual, we have a very underdeveloped anima, so you have this opposition, if you will, between a very strong way of being in consciousness, by default, what is found in the unconscious it is not developed and Ultimately, for a young person, that is the image of the soul that is not developed, so we have established a link between the person and the anima and this is what Jung says in the relationships between the ego and the unconscious.

Can everyone hear me? Hello Chuck Chuck Chuck Hello. Yes, you can hear me, okay, the socially strong man is in his private life often a mere child when it comes to his own moods. His public discipline, which he especially demands of others, crumbles miserably in private. Oh, so I have many! do when I get home, then we find that attention or opposition between the external person and the inner life, an overdeveloped person, in other words, often betrays a lack of commitment to our own inner tea, so that's basically what Jung is saying position the person with the anima and the animus, he goes on to write in psychological types about the character of the anima, my experience confirms the rule that it is generally complementary to the character of the person, the animus generally contains all those human qualities common the conscious attitude is lacking if the person is intellectual the anima will surely 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 first They throw me the rotten tomatoes, okay, let's go through the motions first and then we'll throw in some critiques, okay, so with anima and animus, consciousness and integration of anima and animus are integral. to the process of individuation and is often described as the bridge to the self.

Well, the anima and animus are often described as the bridge to the self, so we've built these archetypes here, so we usually have the right shadow. the first archetypal imperative that we find in Jungian therapy. What is shadow? The shadow of the shadow is the shadow of the person. If I become too attached to my person in a social role, it usually means my own inner life, that is, my own inner life. The soul image is weak and undeveloped and to become more fully conscious and more developed I need to get in touch with that image which is the complete opposite, therefore, moving from the anima animus to this notion of the self, just as we said, obtaining a more complete image of oneself and requires an integration of what we consider other and, unfortunately, an internal image of our complete opposite.

The anima is the internal image of a woman in a man's psyche characterized by typically feminine traits, that is, an inclination to feel intuition and being. best for expressing and managing emotions, among other things, the animus is the internal image of a man in the psyche of a woman characterized by typically masculine traits logical reason conviction consistency oh yes, wait for the punchline now Jung writes a lot about male psychology and not about female psychology Why do I say this? Because you could tell 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 ​​contrasexual conchos, it's the opposite when he talks about the anima he is talking about the male psyche, he is not talking about the female psyche, 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 advanced quite a bit, but only I'll give you some classics or I'm sorry, some references to classic thinkers on the subject, so Eric Newman, the fear of the feminine, someone else mentioned Marian Woodman, one of her books is called Addiction to Perfection, Motionless Bride and reversed, and many of you will already be familiar with Clarissa.

Penkala is a woman who runs for the Wolves, but you obviously know that the field of young people in which you did not publish any studies has moved quite far from this line of thinking, but being young again in a relationship with the sexual opposite of the Con is Particularly important because these images generally shape the way we interact with our partners because what we look for within ourselves is often confused with what we look for in others, mainly life partners, spouses and those with whom we choose to share our lives. , if they come to light, we are no longer unconsciously. dominated by the archetype then there will be less illusions in relationships and therefore better bonds and understanding right now, let's tear this apart so there are some assumptions at the heart of Jung's thinking about anima and animus number one, he assumes that individuation is only possible within heteronormativity, true, it is the male-female pool that is the only one in which this elevated realization is possible and the answer to this is clear, absolutely incorrect; furthermore, the concept of anima and animus smacks of an essentializing tendency which is unfortunately a birthright of archetypal theory, right, if you buy archetypal theory and read it verbatim then yes, it leads you to this way of thinking very conservative and very closed off, mainly that this is what it means to be a man and this is actually what it means to be a man.

Being a woman, so my colleague Andrew Samuels has postulated that both anima and animus reside in all individuals and that masculinity and femininity were useful ways to describe that which is not self, in other words, the image of the soul that opposes the person in the correct way. It is not linked to biology It is a metaphor It is a way of thinking about what is not me, but it has equally become clear that such descriptors are no longer appropriate and fail to encompass all the complexity and vitality of everyday life It fails to speak with The reality of contemporary life, for example, when it comes to fatherhood, Andrew again talks about the good enough father of either sex who, depending on the situation, can be both father and mother when the need arises.

Fatherhood is not the exclusive domain of men and motherhood is not the exclusive domain of men. In mothering practice we have to resist the temptation to divide roles: nurturing comes from the mother and discipline comes from the father. In practice, such stratifications are inaccurate and do not recognize the ever-changing role of an individual and his capacity for a plurality of reactions and experiences. So there is a lot to do with this anonymous anima concept; some people will still find it a useful way of thinking, but in reality it certainly needs updating in key ways and there are a lot of young and post-unions out there. working in this sense, now moving on to the final archetype, we will quickly talk about the self, perhaps the penultimate personified archetype, it guides and is the goal of the individuation process, it is an image of our highest potential, in many ways, who we were.

Born to be what really is our ideal and is usually symbolized in dreams as mandalas and divine figures. Sometimes young people conflate the self with the image of God, where those images of God can be explained through the archetype of the self, so this leads to many accusations. against young people, but he psychologizes. God, excuse me, is reducing the experience of religion itself and religious beliefs to some psychological function. So there is a lot of debate and you know the way that young people actually present or interpret religion from a psychological perspective. now a key symbol of the self, but I just want to point you to this one, the last one there, the hermaphrodite, so Hermes and Aphrodite together, male and female, a symbol that unites the masculine and the feminine and again a symbol of our potential fullness.Again we are linking this concept of anima and animus and how crucial it is to an understanding of a more complete and complete image of ourselves, that is, in the hermaphrodite in real life we ​​can project an image of ourselves onto two mentors and teachers . and the people we idolize, 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 we could see the role that they really perform. but then encourage people to let it go too, as your own individuality means carving your own path in many ways, killing the image of the mentor and the teacher and not over-identifying with that particular person and not seeing that person. as an individual, I am a person who has the right to shadow, a person who is actually not perfect at the moment, moving on to the archetypal image, then Jung makes a distinction between the archetype and the archetypal image, this is what we are going to unravel now, so the archetype, oh.

Sorry, the archetype is universal, it provides a skeletal framework that shapes human experiences, it's an analogy, right? Or I'm going to present you with an analogy, so what we inherit is the scaffolding around the building, each building is different and unique and For me, this is quite nice because I no longer live in London, so going back to London to see the land You know, the sheer difference between the old and the new, it's actually quite fascinating, it's lovely to see that in London, so the shape of the buildings can be different, their contours, their edges, the number of windows, the materials used, but still embodies all the qualities of a building, we can recognize it, that is the type of building in a similar vein.

The archetype may provide a rough plan or sketch, but the way these plans are executed and expressed can vary depending on personal circumstances, culture, history, politics and economics, so what I am going to do now is provide an example of what young people understand by archetype. image very well, so that is one of my goals. I am also going to try to show how the ideas of analytical psychology continue to be salient in a rapidly changing world and how these ideas can help us better understand and frame our own culture and experience and what this can do. will be telling us about what is hidden in the unconscious now, obviously, this example is very subjective, it speaks of my personal interests and also my interest in education in the psychology of religion, so if you don't like it, have Bear with me, as we mentioned.

Previously, Nietzsche proclaims that God is completely right. Jung was actually quite interested in Nietzsche, maybe too interested in just telling us why he was so sick and then what went wrong with him, but for Jung with the statement God is dead, Jung's perspective on it is that. It is 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 will take shape in new forms and appearances, if the traditional images of God no longer contain our experience of God. numerosity, they no longer talk to them. how we want to see or conceptualize that which is completely different from that which is different from that which afflicts ourselves, then other images will arise, we still possess that archetype, it will urge us to worship something that is beyond us, it may not embody a typical image of God, but we give him a divine status and for young people this could be money, right, this could be science, so we no longer worship God, but we worship money, we don't worship religion, we worship science Likewise, there is the danger of then worshiping the young.

Well, and that's a lot, what we try to do in Indian studies is actually to take young people off that pedestal, because it's a lot to project onto a person this idea of ​​a guru, this idea of ​​perfection of a system that provides meaning. to the masses, so be a little bit reflective and aware of that, so my question is: where have the gods gone, where have the gods gone? Now it's a pretty stupid question because the slides we handed out earlier, so you know where I'm going. with this and I go here, well, not quite, things like have you noticed how much superhero movies have come to dominate the cinematic landscape since the 1990s?, very interesting, obviously, there's Christopher Reeve, right ?

I remember it very clearly in my childhood. but at the time when I was a child it was the crow James Oh bar, 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 it wasn't. is the Dark Knight, no it wasn't right, it should have been, but it wasn't the question, so it's why, why now and it's more than just because the industry has the software that has the computer power to achieve something convincingly. of these special effects, right, and sometimes they don't work well, so in one of my articles I talked about the digitized Hulk in Angley's adaptation of Hulk, right, it's not brilliant, do you remember the claws from Rove Wolverines and yes, in the first origins, yes, me too?

I want my money back. I really think it was horrible with the sink, but anyway right now there's obviously something to be said about having the tools to produce those rich images that you really see in the actual graphic novel illustrations of comics. and they're awake, you know, some of this is really phenomenal, but the special effects alone don't make the movie right. Great special effects don't guarantee box office success or critical acclaim, so why is it now certainly a question you might ask about graphics? 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, namely the need for escapism in light of global upheaval, or it may simply be the case. that we need heroes right in a very dark time, we need heroes. Comic book superhero culture can also express some of the politics of a certain period and a lot of people have written about this topic and it's a very, very interesting area in which comics can serve an ideology. but even within this framework of this perspective of reading comics, you can add a psychological flavor to it, you can still talk to it, so look at these images, Captain America against the Nazis, and when he finished fighting the Nazis, Captain America, call me.

Smasher, very interesting, even Hulk, just when he wasn't fighting aliens and scientists in the army, also found time to fight communists, very interesting now comics and the superheroes that populate their pages express, represent and contain anxieties. fears and fantasies of a culture at a specific moment in time, there are both historical artifacts and windows or keyholes to a deeper psychological understanding of a culture or society at a given moment in time, so that we can read them as images of our collective potential. fears and anxieties, right, they can be compensations for talking about those anxieties and living them in a very particular way, so, in that sense, comics are not childish, right, they are anything but good, now they can also satisfy a religious need, right , and that is.

What I'm going to focus on now, so if we go and again emphasize here the difference between an archetype and really the archetypal image and I'm looking specifically is the archetypal experience or experience of the figures of the Messiah and myself. I am going to focus specifically on the life of Christ and the question I ask is: what are the main motifs or themes that define his life? Now you could probably choose others, right? This is very subjective. Obviously, I've chosen headline points that proved My Point is correct, so be very cautious and aware of that, but I hope you still find it compelling now.

Just as true. I am not saying that the life of Christ or Jesus of Nazareth is a myth. We know it's not right. There is a whole field of studies on the historical Jesus, some very interesting works and even from historical accounts by Josephus we know that a man called Jesus of Nazareth really existed, existed and that he did certain things to anger people, which then led to his crucifixion. so I don't deny it, what I'm trying to do is just put that aside, put it in parentheses and focus on its rich symbolism and what it can point to psychologically, that is, the need it satisfies and the meaning it actually means.

It provides, okay, then, the need that it meets and the meaning that it actually provides, so let's look at the life of Christ, okay, then, number one, he is not a typical human child. Well, there are usually some reactions to Ulis's birth or some miraculous origin story that you already know. What happens in the case of Christ? He is the son of God brought into the world by a virgin. Really true. So he scores well. We have the first point. I mean, you could also play with the divine child ideas. new beginnings, etc., but we'll leave it at that for now, abandonment number two or a threat to self, so you'll see this theme come up in many stories, like Moses Wright being abandoned in a basket, Hephaestus, just the Smith .

The guard was also abandoned, so in the life of Christ we don't have abandonment per se, but we do have a threat to ourselves, right? What's going on? Herod wants to locate the boy and fails for quite a while and then decides to kill. all the male children in Bethlehem under the age of two, right and thank God there was an insider that someone tipped off Mary and Joseph and they fled to Egypt just before the boy could be killed, so we certainly have a threat to the self , number two. paradox as the essence of the figure of the Messiah, so here I am really talking about the tension that the individual holds, how on the opposite side, the tension that the individual holds symbolically, so for Jesus Christ it is the tension between being both man and God , I mean by In the Gospel of John, you see this kind of idealized figure of Christ, so I turned the other cheek.

I'm very good, you know, the price was also there to get the Ox right and you see moments of humanity from him throughout, you know. the narratives about Christ that people don't really appreciate, you know the pain he feels in Gethsemane when he just begs his father, please, please let this cup pass from me, so it's very important to notice this dichotomy or this tension within the individual there is something divine in the individual but also something very human and also the meaning is found in simplicity true, he is a carpenter, very well, no one expects the carpenter to be the son of God, true, to be the Redeemer of humanity, so we have this idea. of a paradox, the overcoming of physical death that points to themes or psychological themes of death and rebirth and we have this yes, we have Jesus is crucified but resurrected within three days, so there is this idea of ​​being born twice that Young discusses in length sorry I would go on about transformation symbols everyone's fine so far it's fine the life of Kal-el aka Clark Kent aka Superman so let's get to point one he's not a kid typical human, yeah, well, you know where I'm going with this.

Kal-el is an alien sent from another world by his father, since the planet Krypton is dying and will also have a double identity, a normal journalist and quite clumsy as a person, so to speak, and a being of superhuman strength powered by the Sun, like Apollo, right, this already points to two point number three, okay, so point one takes abandonment, threatens oneself, do we have abandonment? Yes, he was abandoned by his parents, by his father in particular, he was raised by the Kent family, Jonathan and Martha. Kemp, sorry, Martha Kent and another commonality she shares with Christ have surrogate parents, okay, so you have Joseph here and you have Jonathan Kent here, okay, threat of abandonment to the paradox of self as essence of the figure of the Messiah, well, yes, us.

We have godlike abilities and yet an individual lives like a normal human being from Kansas of all places? Well, Superman is a man sent from the heavens by his father to use his special powers for the good of humanity. He's fine, so we're definitely seeing some. parallels, do we have the overcoming of physical death? Does Superman die and subsequently rise from the dead? Does anyone have a comic book fan? Yes, it does in 1992, so here's my copy, much easier to carry than us, F Ellen burgers, you know, the quintessential job. Know the history of the unconscious, this is obviously some kind of Bible sealed tightly in a ziploc bag for that extra layer of protection, okay, so yeah, in 1992 Superman dies.

Now many argue that Superman's death was a publicist or apublicity stunt to drum up interest in falling readership, and it certainly was that, but equally one could suggest that there is certainly a constellation of a narrative or archetypal pattern, and add to the religious overtones or overtones that really kill Superman , any extraterrestrial being called doomsday. So if you draw the parallels with the Bible, you have a picture of the Revelation of the end of days Revelation. Now, after he is killed, there are several competitors for his throne until Superman rises triumphantly again and watches as the main Christ kicks off well, so you have some of the imagery that points to more traditional religious representations of Christ now, if too You look at the cover right at Superman's death, okay, sorry, you can't see this one, what does it look like? like anyone, okay, so we have here the piety of Michelangelo, Louis as the Virgin Mary.

Now one could argue that the authors and illustrators deliberately relied on this parallel to convey the Christian qualities they wish to attribute to Superman, but equally the idea of ​​a Superman lamented him, a superhuman being, a metahuman, the ability to be more than that we are meant to be is intrinsic to the human condition, in other words, this fantasy of being able to transcend limits to test and overcome limits is archetypal, these figures are the manifestations of our own creative impulse and propensity towards an idea of ​​wholeness and completion and not just perfection, so I emphasize this point again because if we look at every superhero, no superhero is perfect, there will always be an Achilles heel.

Superman has his kryptonite and Batman, well, is Batman. true, it's all too human, okay, it definitely has some psychology to deal with, but these heroes act despite their limitations while embodying a state of being that transcends what can be considered quote-unquote normal, but there are other religious elements of comic culture in addition to the Figures themselves that analytical psychology can speak to at Comic-Con. I have never been. I'd love to go. OK. Anyone has ever been to Comic-Con or even London Comic-Con. Yes, he is fine. Fantastic. So what happens at Comic-Con? Usually a conference I'm thinking of specifically is in San Diego, we have booths for merchandise, the opportunity for autographs to meet artists, writers, you know, listen or I'm sorry to hear bulletin boards for upcoming movies, etc., etc., now they take it very seriously.

For people who are into comic book culture, they take it very seriously, one might even say religiously, so, for example, the devotion of fans and the franchise's ability to speak to desire and expectations can resurrect or sink a project, so if you think about the bat and franchise, the movies I remember are the Tim Burton adaptations soOverall, no, I actually thought they were pretty good. Who am I to say what I believe? I thought the first was the second. Sorry, the first one was better than the second, but overall it's a little quirky, very Tim Burton-esque, but people like it. them, okay, what happens after that, oh my god, Batman and Robin and Batman Forever, okay, those two movies almost literally single-handedly sank the entire franchise and the superhero genre in general, so it was A revision of Nolan's trilogy, the Dark Knight trilogy, is necessary to bring the Dark Knight and the DC franchise as a whole back to their former glory, so reverence for the characters may reach a fever pitch and evidence a religious concern or devotion, and here is my point again, the archetypal impulse or religious function of the psyche cannot be suppressed; it will find a way to express itself by extension at comic-con and related events or sites of worship and devotion in this moment, which leads me to say, well, what are some people doing at comic-con?

They dress well, this phenomenon is called cosplay. People engage in cosplay by dressing up as their favorite heroes, not unlike rituals in the pagan world where divas celebrate, the event itself divides the safe space to live out fantasies and dress up like the Cosby cult, so the Comic Con and conventions also serve a containment function. To draw a parallel to the state created within the narrative relationship in space, now just a few final words, okay, let's go back to youth so that the archetype is inherited. Archetypal images may not have multiple images and variations, and here we see young people moving away from the essentialist aspects of their thinking to one that is more nuanced and culturally aware, but equally the reason myths and stories continue to fascinate is because It is a way in which the unconscious communicates with consciousness, a way in which our own innate knowledge tries to relate to us with what our innate knowledge tries to relate to us.

The needs of the psyche and the means to achieve them. Similarly, psychological symptoms do not always indicate poor health, but can be seen as invitations to greater self-awareness and personal growth. It is the compensatory relationship between the unconscious and consciousness that gives rise to mythical themes. and fantasies that populate our dreams and it is the archetype that appears to us as an archetypal image that tells us what part of our life requires attention, so, in very simple terms, what is Jung trying to say through the theory of the archetypes and the distinction that He makes a distinction between the archetype and the archetypal image, He is basically saying that there are similarities in human life and there are also differences and this could be read as a rather banal idea.

All we think is that yes, some things are similar, some things are different, right? a rather banal idea that denotes confusion in Jung, right, and let's face it, he really wasn't the most intellectually consistent person, maybe he was a therapist, but not intellectually, or we could read this another way, we could see the theory of archetypes, or sorry. We could read archetype theory as someone trying or struggling with the profound paradox of our own existence and trying to find the language and tools to give it voice all the time, knowing that such formulations will never do full justice to this tension. and to psychology. what's behind it and that's all thanks to everyone