THE ARCHETYPE

Etymology
Archetype - from the French archetype (meaning a principal type) from the Latin
archetypum (the original pattern) originating in the Greek archetypos (a
model).
(Skeat, W.W. (1993) The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology. Hertfordshire:
Wordsworth)
Definition
According to Regis Boyer, there are three main meanings attributed to the term
archetype at the moment.
The first refers to it as the prototype of something, the first real example of it,
which implies no value judgement. In this case the archetype is seen as atemporal, for it existed first and it gave rise to the temporality, explaining its
derivations.
Secondly, the archetype is perceived as an ideal model, meaning that there is
a value judgement involved.
The third interpretation of the concept presents archetype as the supreme
type, the absolute, the perfect image that transcends particular
circumstances.
(Archetypes in Brunel, P. (ed.) (1992) Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and
Archetypes. London: Routledge, p. 111)
Perspectives
Anthropology: George Frazer The Golden Bough
Researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential
similarity with which the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy
of life. []
If we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi,
has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its
institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps
universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of
institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can show, lastly,
that these very motives, with some of their derivative institutions, were
actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may infer that at a remoter age
the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi.
Psychology: C.G. Jung The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
Jung supports his theory by referring to a newborn child, who comes into the
world with a differentiated brain, predetermined by heredity, and who meets
outside sensory stimuli with specific aptitudes. The latter are
inherited instincts and preformed patterns []. Their presence gives the
world of the child its anthropomorphic stamps. They are archetypes
which direct all fantasy activity into its appointed paths and in this way
produce, in the fantasy images of childrens dreams as well as in the
delusions of schizophrenia, astonishing mythological parallels such as
can also be found, though in lesser degree, in the dreams of normal
persons and neurotics. It is not, therefore, a question of inherited ideas,
but one of inherited possibilities of ideas.

The distinction between archetype and archetypal representations: the former

is not an inherited idea, but a possibility of ideas; [it] is in itself
irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible,
namely, the archetypal images and ideas.
Literature: Northrop Frye - Anatomy of Criticism
A poem is a reiteration of the world of literature and it is conditioned by the
existing order of words.
Archetype is defined as a typical or recurring image [] a symbol which
connects one poem with another and thereby helps to unify and integrate our
literary experience.
Classical Jungian therapy consists in a process of individuation
The ideal classical Jungian individuation process is expected to traverse the following
stages:
(1) Integration of the personal unconscious, or shadow, loosely equated with the
unconscious as defined in psychoanalysis; this prepares the individual for integration
of the collective unconscious, that is, the archetypes; [The shadow is the darker
side of our unconscious self, the inferior and less pleasing aspects of the personality,
which we wish to suppress]
(2) the animaunrealized feminine aspects of a man, or animusunrealized
masculine aspects of a woman; [ The anima is perhaps the most complex of Jung's
archetypes. It is the "soul-image," the spirit of a man's lan vital, his life force or
vital energy.]
(3) the Great Mother, the embodiment of everything maternal, both nurturing and
engulfing, as nature herself can be;
(4) the Wise Old Man, the embodiment of spirit;[ A personified representation
(imago) of a capacity for spiritual insight and experience.]
(5) the Self, an overarching union of all of these, that is at once the superordinate
representation of God and the foundation of individual identity.
With the acquisition of a sense of meaning and higher purpose in life, symptoms
may be expected either to disappear or, if not, to have taken on the kind of meaning
that allows them to be accepted as a gift rather than a hindrance.
(Hersen, M., Sledge, W.H. (2002) Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy. New York:
Academic Press & Guerin, W. et al. (2005) A Handbook of Critical Approaches to
Literature. fifth ed. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press)