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6 - The archetypal school

from Part II - Analytical Psychology in Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2008

Polly Young-Eisendrath
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
Terence Dawson
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
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Summary

Although Jung named his school of thought “analytical psychology,” he might with equal justification have called it “archetypal psychology.” No other term is more basic to Jungian analysis than “archetype”; yet no other term has been the source of so much definitional confusion. Part of the reason is that Jung defined “archetype” in different ways at different times. Sometimes, he spoke of archetypes as if they were images. Sometimes, he distinguished more precisely between archetypes as unconscious forms devoid of any specific content and archetypal images as the conscious contents of those forms. Both Freud and Jung acknowledged the existence of archetypes, which Freud called phylogenetic “schemata” (1918/1955), or phylogenetic “prototypes” (1927/1961). Philosophically, Freud and Jung were neo-Kantian structuralists who believed that hereditary categories of the psyche imaginatively inform human experience in typical or schematic ways. Freud (1918/1955) alludes to Kant when he says that the phylogenetic schemata are comparable to “the categories of philosophy” because they “are concerned with the business of 'placing' the impressions derived fromactual experience.” He states that the Oedipus complex is “one of them” - evidently one among many - “the best known” of the schemata.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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