Jung and the Jungians on Myth

Steven Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135347673
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was never more insightful and intriguing than when he discussed mythology. The key to understanding the Jungian approach to mythology lies in the concept of the image, which provides the basis for his theory of the unconscious. By emphasizing the image over the word, Jungian psychology distinguishes itself dramatically from Freudian, Lacanian, and other psychologies that stress the task of interpreting the language- the words- of the unconscious. In Jung and the Jungians on Myth, Steven Walker carefully leads the reader through the essential lines of thought in Jungian psychology before developing his method for using Jungian ideas to approach mythological texts. Whether one is sympathetic toward Jung's ideas or critical of them, one will find in Walker's discussion a lucid introduction to Jungian perspectives on myth and psychology.

CHAPTER ONE

Mythology and the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

The road leading from C.G. Jung's concept of the archetypal world of the collective unconscious to the world of mythology is a rocky one, theoretically speaking. Jung was not a philosopher, and his thought proceeded through intuitive leaps, not logical progressions. His terminology is vague enough to create misunderstandings on a purely formal level, not to speak of the natural difficulties involved in communicating the intellectual system resulting from a highly introspective probing of the human mind.

The key to understanding the Jungian approach to mythology lies, in my opinion, in the concept of image. By emphasizing the image over the word, Jungian psychology differentiates itself radically from Freudian, Lacanian, and other psychologies that stress the task of interpreting the language of the unconscious. The term first used by Jung to designate what he would later call an archetype of the collective unconscious was urtüliches Bild (“primordial image”, a phrase Jung borrowed from the great nineteenth-century historian Jacob Burckhardt.¹ Late in his life Jung gave what was probably the most vivid illustration of his theory of the archetypes as containing latent images of instinct in humans and animals alike when he wrote that the form of an instinct,

when represented to the mind, appears as an image which expresses the nature of the instinctive impulse visually and concretely, like a picture. If we could look inside the psyche of the yucca moth, for instance, we would find in it a pattern of ideas, of a numinous or fascinating character, which not only compel the moth to carry out its fertilizing activity on the yucca plant, but help it “recognize”the total situation.²

Since the term archetype designates an unconscious and unrepresentable element of the instinctual structure of the human psyche, the more proper term to use for one of the pictures of an archetype that the human mind is capable of representing is archetypal image. However, even though the term archetypal image proves useful in differentiating an unconscious archetype from an image or representation of it in human consciousness, both Jung and his followers frequently, though incorrectly, use archetype and archetypal image interchangeably.

From the treasure house of archetypal images are drawn the elements, the archetypal motifs, of mythology. Whether represented visually, dramatically, musically, or verbally, these motifs are usually found linked in a sequence, which we call a myth. Myths are thus not purely spontaneous products of the psyche; they are culturally elaborated. Over the centuries innumerable cultures have created a bewildering variety of myths out of the common human fund of the archetypal images of the collective unconscious. Mythology as a whole therefore constitutes a mirror for the collective unconscious, which is the common psychological basis for all human life.

From the Jungian perspective, then, myths are essentially culturally elaborated representations of the contents of the deepest recesses of the human psyche: the world of the archetypes. Myths represent the unconscious archetypal, instinctual structures of the mind. They represent these structures not in an historical and cultural vacuum but rather as they are culturally elaborated and expressed in terms of the world view of a particular age and culture. Just as human instincts are the same universally, so the collective unconscious is the same for all human beings. If myths present such astonishing diversity, it is because of the various ways of representing them culturally as images of the psyche. The vast diversity of myths and symbolic images point, not to some universal message or monomyth (as Joseph Campbell seems to have concluded) valid for all human beings, but rather to a common human instinctual organization which Jungian psychology theorizes as the collective unconscious. Since the collective unconscious is the same for all, Jungians assume that, in spite of the bewilderingly rich diversity one finds in the full spectrum of world mythology, nothing in mythology is ever alien to us as modern human beings, nothing is ever totally culture-bound. Every myth, however peculiar or exotic, contains the potential for revealing indirectly some unforeseen or neglected aspect of the human psyche.

Instinct and Archetype

In Jungian terminology, myths are ultimately expressions of archetypes. But what is an archetype?

At various times and in various ways Jung attempted to define this key term. For example, in 1959 a zoology student in Zurich, who apparently considered the aged Jung a Wise Old Man or “guru”(the word used by Jung in his friendly reply to the student's letter), had sent him some offprints of his scientific publications. In reply, Jung reformulated his definition of “archetype”in terms of the student's own biological interests. Jung wrote, “for me the archetype means: an image of a probable sequence of events, an habitual current of psychic energy. To this extent it can be equated with the biological pattern of behaviour.”³ Now Jung had frequently speculated over the years about the relationship between archetype and pattern of behavior, but this late reformulation underlines the biological dimension of the archetypes of the collective unconscious with particular clarity. It is also completely in line with his earlier definitions, which had asserted that archetypes represent different aspects of the human instinctual structure, inasmuch as human beings, like animals, are creatures of instinct.

Later that same year Jung, in a letter written in English, defined archetypes as “instinctual forms of mental functioning.”He then underlined most of the following sentence: “they are not inherited ideas, but mentally expressed instincts, forms and not contents.”⁴

In another letter in English written a few months later, Jung seems close to equating archetypes and instincts, stating that “our instincts (i.e., archetypes) are biological facts. ”e goes on to explain the archetype's “spontaneity”as well as its “functional relation to the actual situation,”with special reference to the archetype of the “helpful divine being.”When people feel themselves to be in danger, he writes, “even people who can boast of no particular religious belief find themselves compelled by fear to utter a fervent prayer. ”s a result of this prayer, he explains, the archetype of a “helpful divine being” “is constellated by their submission and may eventually intervene with an unexpected influx of strength, or an unforeseen saving impulse, producing at the last moment a turn in the threatening situation which is felt to be miraculous.”⁵ In this way at the end of his career Jung continues to insist on the close connection between the biological sphere and the psychological, between instinctually based behavior patterns and the archetypes of the collective unconscious.

Let us examine more closely the association in Jung's thought between instinct and archetype. In the last essay he wrote for publication, the 1961 essay “Approaching the Unconscious,”written in English for the volume Man and His Symbols, Jung made his final attempt to clarify the “relation between instincts and archetypes”in the following terms: “what we properly call instincts are physiological urges, and are perceived by the senses. But at the same time they also manifest themselves in fantasies and often reveal their presence only by symbolic images. These manifestations are what I call archetypes.”⁶ Jung uses, as he and other Jungians do frequently, the term “archetype”for “archetypal image,”but there is no need for us to quibble. What is clear is that once again the term image is the key to understanding archetypes. While the archetypes are in and of themselves unknowable, they are known indirectly through their effects, that is, through the images they produce in the mind. These images are their psychological “effects”in the same way that actions are the natural effects of instinctual, physiological urges.

But archetypes express themselves not only through images passively reflected in the mirror of the conscious mind but also through a kind of “suggestive effect”that, like that of the instincts, tends to stimulate action. In 1957 Jung was interviewed and filmed in his home at Kiisnacht near Zurich by the psychologist Richard I. Evans of the University of Houston. In the first of these interviews Jung was asked to elaborate on his concept of the archetype. He brought up the “behavior pattern”of animals, citing his favorite example of the way in which the weaver bird builds its nest. He qualified the analogy by saying that the weaver bird may or may not be conscious of a mental image while it weaves its nest. That is, the archetypal image may not be present in animals' response to instinctual behavior patterns, as tends to be the case with humans.⁷ The relevance of such animal behavior patterns to human life may be seen, he said, in situations when “you are seized by an emotion or by a spell, and you behave in a certain way you have not foreseen at all.”⁸ This kind of unpremeditated act stems from the “suggestive effect” of an archetype

Jung illustrates such an act by referring to a well-known event in Swiss history, the assassination of Albrecht I by his nephew Johannes and his cohorts in 1308. Albrecht's would-be assassins were riding with him on a journey, and they remained plagued by doubt and indecision, unable to bring themselves to murder him; but the moment Albrecht rode into the ford of the river Reuss near Zurich, they set upon him immediately and spontaneously. This change of heart, for Jung, demonstrated the strength of the “suggestive effect”of the archetype of “the passage of the ford”⁹ that had been “constellated”(activated or stimulated) in their unconscious. The sight of Albrecht riding into the river had suggested to Johannes and his men the metaphorical need to “cross the Rubicon,”to take decisive action, to kill the king. Jung commented elsewhere on this event:

the ford is the natural ambush, the place where the hero slays the dragon. Then suddenly Johannes found it in him to do the deed; the archetype was constellated.¹⁰

What proof is there, however, that archetypes actually exist? Jung seems satisfied with the argument that the only scientific proof for a scientific hypothesis lies in its applicability. “the idea of the archetype explains more than any other theory.”¹¹ But others may not be so easily contented, since any argument for the existence of archetypes and instincts can only be based on the existence of their concrete manifestations. Falling in love and other “archetypal situations”may be alleged to derive from a priori conditioning factors of the human mind, whether one calls these factors archetypes or instincts. But the existence of these situations does not in and of itself provide any definitive proof for the existence of the archetypes of the collective unconscious; ultimately, the existence of archetypes may be only a useful, if very useful, hypothesis.

The idea of the biological basis of the archetypes was well anchored in Jung's mind in his later years. Does he thereby consider that the archetypes, those “living dispositions … that preform and continually influence our thoughts and feelings and actions,”¹² are inherited genetically? In 1958, writing to his British colleague Michael Fordham, Jung emphasizes that “we follow patterns as the weaver-bird does.”He goes on to add that “the assumption … that the … ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Deication
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor's Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter One—Mythology and the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
• Chapter Two—The Strange Mythology of the Psyche: The Shadow, Anima, and Animus
• Chapter Three—The Strange Mythology of the Psyche: The Hero, Wise Old Man, Great Mother, Divine Child, and Self
• Chapter Four—The Jungian Analysis of Myth
• Chapter Five—New Orientations and Developments
• Epilogue: Jung for the Twenty-First Century
• Selected Bibliography
• Index