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Archetypal Structures
The psyche's archetypal structures serve as conduits for great charges of primal psychological energy. Because of their own dynamic configuration, they mold this energy, imparting to it their particular patterns. For any individual the archetypes may be creative and life-enhancing or destructive and death-dealing. The result depends in part on how the Ego is able to relate to them based on its own developmental history. Properly accessing and using the Libido available to the psyche amount to a sort of psychological technology. If we learn the technology and use it properly, we can use the energy to make generative men and women of ourselves. But if we fail to learn how to use these vast energy resources, or misuse them, we will be courting our own destruction, and we may take others with us.
If we try to ignore the archetypes, they exert their mighty influence upon us nonetheless. They bend us to their nonhuman, sometimes inhuman wills. We must therefore face the evidence depth psychology and other studies have provided us. We are not as free of instinct or unconscious content as we have been encouraged to believe. Genuine freedom for the Ego results from acknowledging and properly accessing the chemical fires that burn hot in our unconscious minds.
Some Jungian analysts romanticize the archetypes. They encourage their patents to find and claim the particular archetype or myth that has organized their lives. Life then becomes a process of affirming and living out this myth. However, our goal should not be to identify with an archetypal pattern, or to allow a mythic expression of it to make our lives what it will. For when we romantically identify with any archetype we cease to be viable human beings moving toward wholeness. If we are drawn to an archetype by its seductive power, its promise that we can shirk our individual responsibilities and the pain involved in being a person with a personal Ego, we will be crushed by the sheer weight of unconscious compulsive thoughts.
More precisely stated, the objective is to develop mature Ego structures strong enough to channel useful libidinal energy into our daily lives. We can begin by making ourselves conscious of how archetypal energies already possess us. Only then can we begin to access them creatively, through a process that provides us with a greater sense of free will in the choices of our lives. The effort to achieve liberation for ourselves will in turn motivate us to help others do the same. Our renewed energies benefit ourselves and others on all the levels of our psychic organization: the personal, the familial, the communal, national, and global.
Continue at the Great Code
References:
The Quartet of Books: The King Within, The Warrior Within, The Magician Within, The Lover Within.
If we try to ignore the archetypes, they exert their mighty influence upon us nonetheless. They bend us to their nonhuman, sometimes inhuman wills. We must therefore face the evidence depth psychology and other studies have provided us. We are not as free of instinct or unconscious content as we have been encouraged to believe. Genuine freedom for the Ego results from acknowledging and properly accessing the chemical fires that burn hot in our unconscious minds.
Some Jungian analysts romanticize the archetypes. They encourage their patents to find and claim the particular archetype or myth that has organized their lives. Life then becomes a process of affirming and living out this myth. However, our goal should not be to identify with an archetypal pattern, or to allow a mythic expression of it to make our lives what it will. For when we romantically identify with any archetype we cease to be viable human beings moving toward wholeness. If we are drawn to an archetype by its seductive power, its promise that we can shirk our individual responsibilities and the pain involved in being a person with a personal Ego, we will be crushed by the sheer weight of unconscious compulsive thoughts.
More precisely stated, the objective is to develop mature Ego structures strong enough to channel useful libidinal energy into our daily lives. We can begin by making ourselves conscious of how archetypal energies already possess us. Only then can we begin to access them creatively, through a process that provides us with a greater sense of free will in the choices of our lives. The effort to achieve liberation for ourselves will in turn motivate us to help others do the same. Our renewed energies benefit ourselves and others on all the levels of our psychic organization: the personal, the familial, the communal, national, and global.
Continue at the Great Code
References:
The Quartet of Books: The King Within, The Warrior Within, The Magician Within, The Lover Within.
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