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CHAPTER 3: Archetypes and Symbols

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CHAPTER 3: Archetypes and Symbols CHAPTER THREE: ARCHETYPES AND COMMUNICATION “Before the visible universe was formed its mold was cast. This mold was called the Archetype, and this Archetype was in the Supreme Mind long before the process of creation began.… [t]he Supreme Mind…gouged out caverns in primordial space and cast the form of the spheres in the Archetypal mold...The Supreme Being - the Mind - male and female, brought forth the Word; and the Word, suspended between Light and darkness, was delivered of another Mind called the Workman, the Master- Builder, or the Maker of Things”. The Vision - The Divine Poimandres of Hermes (Mercurius) Trismegistus 3.1 INTRODUCTION The exploration of literature from a selected yet diverse collection of disciplines and cosmologies in the preceding chapter points towards inclusive assumptions concerning the notion of a unitary and an ‘objective’ reality. The scope of such notions ranges from the ancient Egyptian ‘primeval ocean’, Nun, to the collective unconscious in depth psychology, a ‘unified force field’ posited in quantum physics, and the ‘ideosphere’ of memetics, a branch of evolutionary biology. Consequently, the postulation of both universal and archetypal theories is intimately related to notions of a unitary reality apparent in various scientific, philosophical and cosmological accounts along a continuum ranging from the ancient to current views of the psyche and human existence. It is also discernible that reality constructs occupy a quintessential and pivotal position in the pursuit of an integrated worldview and cosmology, and the universality of the symbolic and mythological, specifically the creation myth. Additionally, the human psyche appears to be extensively described as a three-tiered configuration with an innate, archaic predisposition to strive towards a transpersonal unity and integration (Walsh & Vaughan, 1993; Haeri, 1989). The Self, an archetypal sense of being and inherent self-image or archaic identity, furthermore acts as the archetype of order and meaning, and as the organising principle, which propels the psyche’s striving towards said unity and integration (Haeri, 1989:1, 155; Jung, 1933, 1968a). The probable connection between the Self and a unitary reality is alluded to by Jung (1933, 1965) when he termed the foundation from which the Self emerges the unus Archetypes & communication 106 mundus or collective unconscious. Moreover, the Self-archetype generates symbolic representations, mythico-religious or spiritual images and symbols from its personal unconscious and complexes, which are rooted in and derived from an archaic, collective and unconscious blueprint. Seemingly, images, myths and symbolic representations are the manifestations of the archetypes that are interpreted through self-talk in the conscious modality of the psyche (Jung, 1965). In order to portray the role of an underlying unitary reality in the representation and interpretation of symbols of the Self and hence intrapsychic communication, a comprehensive understanding of the unifying and innate structures, namely archetypes of the collective unconscious is necessary. Said exploration of the nature and characteristics of archetypes and universal archetypal symbols will facilitate the integration of universal archetypal symbols with current notions of symbols in the semiotic approach to communication studies. This chapter will accordingly aim to explore the nature of archetypes, archetypal images, myths and symbols and their relation to and application in communication studies. It will specifically explore the implication of deep behavioural drives implied by the notion of innate mental patterns in the collective unconscious and their possible coercive influence on communication patterns and symbols of the Self in intrapsychic communication. 3.2 ARCHETYPES OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS The notions of archetypes and the collective unconscious, in which they are rooted, are veiled in multiple interpretations and skepticism due to their apparent numinous and intangible nature, and their experimental “untestability” (Huston, Rosen & Smith, 1999:140). Nonetheless, they have been explored by various theorists from diverse disciplines and subsequently have either been embraced for their intuitive yet daring appeal or rejected as preposterous metaphysical nonsense. The following quotation from Jung’s (1950) Travistock lectures gives a clear indication of his response to such criticism: “Our unconscious mind, like our body, is a storehouse of relics and memories of the past. A study of the structure of the unconscious collective mind would reveal the same discoveries as you make in comparative anatomy. We do not need to think that Archetypes & communication 107 there is anything mystical about it. But because I speak of a collective unconscious, I have been accused of obscurantism. There is nothing mystical about the collective unconscious” (Jung 1950 in Huber, Edwards, & Heining-Boynton, 2000:272). Interestingly, 54 years after Jung made this statement, including years of criticism and marginalisation in certain branches of psychology, Stevens (2003:xii) states that the proof of the existence of archetypal structures in the collective unconscious could be based on evolutionary psychiatry and evolutionary psychology. These two new disciplines corroborate and amplify both the collective unconscious and its archetypes since they confirm that human experience and behaviour are complex products of environmental, and mental and hereditary forces. “Archetypes are intermediates between genes and experience; they are the organizing schemata by which the innate becomes personal” (Stevens, 2003:xii). Constructs which appear similar to Jung’s explanation of archetypes include Chomsky’s (1968) notion of an inborn ‘language acquisition device’; ‘primitives’ or basic phonemic building blocks by which language may be constructed proposed by Marslen- Wilson (1980); and Bierderman’s (1987) postulation of the concept of ‘geons’. ‘Geons’ are types of simple visual primitives from which more complex objects such as symbols can be visually constructed (Huston et al, 1999:139). Additionally, Levi-Strauss (1967) developed the concept of ‘infrastructures’ or processes that give rise to ‘cultural universals’, and Schuster and Carpenter (1986) identified similar symbolic and artistic patterns worldwide (Huston et al, 1999:139). Despite various supporting views, the existence of innate unifying and deep structures is an ongoing debate amongst theorists and scientists. Jung (1968:24) explains that the mystical nature that scientists and theorists ascribe to the collective unconscious is due to humankind’s estrangement from its natural roots. Consequently, the myths, “gods and symbols” of ancient times have been expelled from current reality constructs. “Heaven has become the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were” (Jung, 1968:24). He asserts that the result of myth and the symbolic being ousted from scientific investigation and spiritual exploration is a growing secret unrest at the root of human experience. Moreover, the exploration of the unconscious and its archetypal images relates to the vital question of humankind’s Archetypes & communication 108 spiritual being or non-being, and most things spiritual are considered unscientific and metaphysical (Jung, 1968). Consequently, any study of the spiritual, which is contrasted with the dominance of a socially and observable reality, is labeled as meta-physical and viewed with suspicion. The cynicism regarding the collective unconscious and its archetypes, according to Jung (1950 in Huber et al, 2000:274), is also typical because unconscious processes cannot be observed directly which make their delineation and measurement problematic. “They appear only in their products, and we postulate from the peculiar quality of those products that there must be something behind them from which they originate. We call this dark sphere of the mind the unconscious psyche” (Jung 1950 in Huber et al, 2000:275). Jung (1950 in Huber et al, 2000:275) furthermore postulates that the contents of the conscious mind of an individual consist of three sources. These sources include the ectopsychic contents of consciousness which are derived from the environment through the data of the senses; the endopsychic sphere consisting of contents derived from memory and processes of judgment; and a third source which is “the dark sphere of the mind”, the unconscious. The endopsychic sphere contains those functions that are not under the control of the will and are the vehicle by which unconscious contents reach the surface of consciousness. According to Jung (1950 in Huber et al, 2000:275), the contents of “the dark sphere of the mind” have a mythological character and universal nature. “It is as if they belong to a pattern not peculiar to any particular mind or person, but rather to a pattern peculiar to mankind in general and therefore they are of a collective nature”. Hall et al (1998:85) elucidate; “the collective unconscious is the psychic residue of human evolutionary development, a residue that accumulates as a consequence of repeated experiences over many generations”. This psychic residue of collective patterns and traces of an archaic history were called archetypes by Jung (1950 in Huber et al, 2000:274). The products of the unconscious psyche seemingly relate to meanings and interpretations derived from the symbolic representations in, for example, mythological motifs,
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