ARCHETYPAL PATTERN. FUNDAMENTALS OF NON-TRADITIONAL PSYCHOANALYSIS. Textbook.
ISBN: 9781370810925
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Archetype Semantics: How It Corresponds To The Concept Of “An Image.” How Archetypal Are Images?
Andrey Davydov and Olga Skorbatyuk
Translated by Kate Bazilevsky.
Research in the field of the human psyche in search of its base (as a principle underlying psychical life in general and the specific structure underlying psychophysiology of a specific individual in particular) focused on studying the unconscious as that mythical stone, “which the builders rejected,” but which eventually became the “chief cornerstone.”1 It is logical to argue that the most important information about a human was implanted by nature specifically at this implicit level of psyche that is out of reach by both consciousness and work of human intellect. After all, processes that occur in human unconscious (which essentially are psychical proto-reality) are characterized by that a person cannot influence them only with his or her will, without special means. Perhaps nature intended to hide all vitally important information in psychical area that is out of reach by intellect and consciousness. By hiding information about the very essence of a human in this way, nature reliably protected it first of all from a human himself (like the so-called “fool-proofing” mechanism in modern technology). Recognizing the unconscious as not only the main guardian of psychical content, but also the forming beginning of human psyche, psychoanalysts (including Carl Gustav Jung, who was the first to include the concept of an archetype in psychology) correctly thought that it should not be touched by the intellect.
However, the complexity of studying the unconscious, which confused many researchers of human psyche, from our point of view, cannot stand in the way of its actual study. C. G. Jung, the founder of the analytical direction in psychology, wrote in his book titled Man and His Symbols: “Our unconscious is somehow attuned to our surroundings … to the space-time continuum and the whole of nature” (205). The answer to this question has been found: a human is connected with nature through his psyche; study of the unconscious as a place where, by definition, it is possible to find the location of the soul, as the cause and the fundamental principle of psyche, has led us to individual archetypes and their conglomerates in the form of archetypal patterns located there. We found out that recording of absolutely all human psychophysiological parameters occurs specifically in, as we called them, individual archetypal patterns. This record contains all information about each person: from individual particularities of his physiology to particularities of his psychology, his individuality. The general conclusion was that each individual as if gets manufactured by nature according to specific individual project located in his individual unconscious. However, the most interesting and surprising result of research was that the individual project of any person can be identified.
While considering individual archetypal pattern located in the unconscious part of psyche, we found out that it is recorded by images. In this case, it was reasonable to suggest that if absolutely all information about the psychophysiology of a human is recorded specifically by images in the individual archetypal pattern of a particular individual, then specifically images determine the semantic content of this record.
In itself, the term “image” originated from a Latin word that means imitation, and most of ways of its use in psychology either way revolve around this concept. The most common synonyms of this term include the following concepts: “similarity”, “copy”, “reproduction”, “duplicate.” This raises the question: who or what exactly do images of human unconscious reproduce, what do they duplicate, carry similarity with whom or what, what are they, strictly speaking, a copy of? The answer is simple: images of the individual unconscious, as something implanted in a human by nature, already by definition can imitate, reproduce, duplicate, only those objects or phenomena of reality, which are directly related to exclusively natural phenomena and objects. Why is this so?
First of all, this is so because unconscious (as the main, fundamental part of human psyche), unlike consciousness, is an archaic, ancient structure by definition. It specifically controls all vital physiological processes in the human body, as well as many important psychical processes because it contains the most important, instinctive part of the entire human psychophysiology as a whole.
Logically, it turns out that the unconscious as a forming origin, as a matrix for construction of the entire human psychophysiology appeared at least simultaneously with appearance of a human. Therefore, unconscious as the baseline of human psyche already existed at the time when a human did not yet speak and, of course, had no idea about any symbols and signs, which were created (and, created by him), but much later.
Therefore, it is illogical to even think that any artifacts as objects created by a human (which include all phenomena of cultural, social and religious life) can serve as preimages: after all, a human appeared before culture. In fact, culture was created by a human. Therefore, archetypes as preimages, as those blueprints with the help of which numerous individual variants of project “Human” have been made, can contain only properties of natural objects and not artifacts; in other words—can have a natural, but not cultural origin.
This raises questions: does archetype semantics in its traditional sense correspond to the concept of “an image” if we begin considering an image specifically in terms of “a copy”, “a duplicate?” Is it possible to seriously consider an archetype of culture as something that directly forms individual human psyche, as a structure that emerged long before symbolism?
Is it correct to consider an archetype as a structural element of the collective unconscious, as proposed by the author of analytical theory in psychoanalysis—C. G. Jung, as something directly related to the individual archetypal pattern of an individual? …
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Bibliography
Jung, C. G. (1991). A. M. Rutkevich (Ed.). Arkhetip i simvol [Archetype and Symbol]. Moscow: Renessans.
Jung, C. G. (1994). (Trans. from German). Problemy dushi nashego vremeni [Problems of the Soul of Our Time]. Fwd. A.V. Brushlinsky. Moscow: Izdatel’skaya Gruppa Progress, Univers.
Jung, C. G. (1997). Bozhestvennyy rebonok: Analiticheskaya psikhologiya i vospitaniye [Divine Child: Analytical Psychology and Education]. Moscow: Olimp; OOO Izdatelstvo AST-LTD.
Jung, C. G., Samuels, A., Odajnyk, V., & Hubback, J. (1997). V. V. Zelensky & A. M. Rutkevich (Eds.). Analiticheskaya psikhologiya: Proshloye i nastoyashcheye [Analytical Psychology: Past and Present]. Moscow: Martis.
Jung, C. G., von Franz, M.-L., Henderson, J. L., Jacobi, J., & Jaffé, A. (1998). S. N. Sidorenko (Ed.). Chelovek i yego simvoly [Man and His Symbols]. Moscow: Serebryanyye Niti.
© 2005 Andrey Davydov, Olga Skorbatyuk
Translation © 2017 Kate Bazilevsky