essay about archetype

Definition of Archetype

An archetype is a literary device in which a character is created based on a set of qualities or traits that are specific and identifiable for readers. The term archetype is derived from the studies and writings of psychologist Carl Jung who believed that archetypes are part of humanity’s collective unconscious or memory of universal experiences. In a literary context , characters (and sometimes images or themes ) that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human experiences, independent of time or place, are considered archetypes.

For example, one of the most common literary archetypes is the  Hero . The hero is generally the protagonist of a narrative and displays ubiquitous characteristics such as courage , perseverance, sacrifice, and rising to challenge. Though heroes may appear in different literary forms across time and culture, their characterization tends to be universal thus making them archetypal characters.

Common Examples and Descriptions of Literary Archetypes

As a rule, there are twelve primary character types that symbolize basic human motivations and represent literary archetypes. Here is a list of these example literary archetypes and their general descriptions:

• Lover: character guided by emotion and passion of the heart
• Hero : protagonist that rises to a challenge
• Outlaw: character that is rebellious or outside societal conventions or demands
• Magician: powerful character that understands and uses universal forces
• Explorer: character that is driven to explore the unknown and beyond boundaries
• Sage: character with wisdom, knowledge, or mentor qualities
• Creator:  visionary character that creates something significant
• Innocent:  “pure” character in terms of morality or intentions
• Caregiver:  supportive character that often sacrifices for others
• Jester:  Character that provides humor and comic relief with occasional wisdom
• Everyman:  Character recognized as average, relatable, found in everyday life
• Ruler:  Character with power of others, whether in terms of law or emotion

Examples of Archetype in Shakespearean Works

William Shakespeare utilized archetype frequently as a literary device in his plays. Here are some examples of archetype in Shakespearean works:

• Lover: Romeo (“Romeo and Juliet”), Juliet (“Romeo and Juliet”), Antony (“Antony and Cleopatra”)
• Hero : Othello (“Othello”), Hamlet (“Hamlet”), Macduff (“ Macbeth ”)
• Outlaw: Prince Hal (“Henry IV”), Edmund (“ King Lear ”), Falstaff (“Henry IV”)
• Magician: Prospero (“The Tempest”), The Witches (“Macbeth”), Soothsayer (“Julius Caesar”)
• Sage: Polonius (“Hamlet”), Friar Laurence (“Romeo and Juliet”), Gonzalo (“The Tempest”)
• Innocent: Viola (“ Twelfth Night ”), Ophelia (“Hamlet”), Hero (“Much Ado about Nothing”)
• Caregiver: Nurse (“Romeo and Juliet”), Mercutio (“Romeo and Juliet”), Ursula (“Much Ado about Nothing”)
• Jester: Touchstone (“As You Like It’), Feste (“Twelfth Night ”), Fool (“King Lear”)
• Everyman: Lucentio (“ The Taming of the Shrew ”), Valentine (“The Two Gentelmen of Verona”), Florizel (“The Winter ’s Tale”)
• Ruler: King Lear (“King Lear”), Claudius (“Hamlet”), Alonso (“The Tempest”)

Famous Examples of Archetype in Popular Culture

Think you don’t know of any famous archetypes? Here are some well-known examples of archetype in popular culture:

• Lovers: Ross and Rachel ( Friends ), Scarlett O’Hara ( Gone with the Wind ), Jack and Rose ( Titanic )
• Heroes: Frodo Baggins ( The Lord of the Rings ), Luke Skywalker ( Star Wars ), Mulan (Mulan)
• Outlaws: Han Solo ( Star Wars ), Star-Lord/Peter Quill ( Marvel Universe ), Ferris Bueller ( Ferris Bueller’s Day Off )
• Magicians: Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings), Dumbledore (Harry Potter ), Doctor Strange ( Marvel Universe )
• Explorers: Huck Finn ( The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ), Indiana Jones ( Indiana Jones ), Captain Kirk ( Star Trek )
• Sages: Atticus Finch ( To Kill a Mockingbird ), Jiminy Cricket (Disney’s  Pinocchio ), Obi-Wan Kenobi ( Star Wars )
• Creators: Victor Frankenstein ( Frankenstein ), Willy Wonka ( Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ), Daniel Plainview ( There Will Be Blood )
• Innocents: Tiny Tim ( A Christmas Carol ), Dorothy ( The Wizard of Oz ), Forrest Gump ( Forrest Gump )
• Caregivers: Mary Poppins ( Mary Poppins ), Alice ( The Brady Bunch ), Marge Simpson ( The Simpsons )
• Jesters: Donkey ( Shrek ), Kramer ( Seinfeld ), Eric Cartman ( Southpark )
• Everyman Characters: The Dude ( The Big Lebowski ), Homer Simpson ( The Simpsons ), Jim Halpert ( The Office )
• Rulers: Daenerys Targaryen ( Game of Thrones ), T’Challa/Black Panter ( Marvel Universe ), Don Corleone (The Godfather)

Difference Between Archetype and Stereotype

It can be difficult to distinguish the difference between archetype and stereotype when it comes to literary characters. In general, archetypes function as a literary device with the intent of complex characterization. They assign characters with specific qualities and traits that are identifiable and recognizable to readers of literary works. Stereotypes function more as limited and often negative labels assigned to characters.

For example, the movie “The Breakfast Club” features characters that are far more stereotypical than archetypal. This movie features five representations of “typical” teenagers such as a dumb jock, conceited rich girl, skinny nerd, misunderstood rebel, and disaffected slacker that are forced to spend time together. These representations include what may appear to be archetypes in that they are identifiable by the audience . However, they function much more as stereotypes in the sense that their characterization is oversimplified and primarily negative. The characters assume their given stereotypical roles rather than display the complex characterization generally demonstrated by archetypes.

Writing Archetype

Overall, as a literary device, archetype functions as a means of portraying characters with recurring and identifiable traits and qualities that span time and culture. This is effective for readers in that archetypes set up recognizable patterns of characterization in literary works. When a reader is able to identify an archetypal character, they can anticipate that character’s role and/or purpose in the narrative. This not only leads to expectations, but engagement as well on the part of the reader.

It’s essential that writers bear in mind that their audience must have a reasonably clear understanding of how the character reflects a particular archetype in order for it to be effective. If the characterization of the archetype is not made clear to the reader, then that level of literary meaning will be lost. Of course, archetypal characters can be complex and fully realized. However, they must be recognizable as such for the reader on some level.

Here are some ways that writers benefit from incorporating archetype into their work:

Establish Universal Characters

Archetypal characters are recurrent when it comes to human experience, especially in art. A literary archetype represents a character that appears universal and therefore gives readers a sense of recognition and familiarity. This ability to relate to an archetypal character alleviates a writer’s burden of excessive or unnecessary description, explanation, and exposition . Due to a reader’s experience, they are able to understand traits and characteristics of archetypes in literature in an almost instinctual way without detailed explication .

Establish Contrasting Characters

Archetypes can also help writers establish contrasting characters, sometimes known as foils . In general, a literary work does not feature just one archetypal character. Since readers have an awareness of the inherent and typical characteristics of an archetype, this can create contrast against other characters in the narrative that are either archetypes themselves or not. Therefore, writers are able to create conflict and contrast between characters that are logical and recognizable for the reader.

Examples of Archetype in Literature

Archetype is an effective literary device as a means of creating characters with which the reader can identify. Here are some examples of literary archetypes and how they add to the significance of well-known literary works:

Example 1: Nick Carraway: Everyman ( The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

In this passage, Fitzgerald establishes for the reader that Nick Carraway’s character is not just the narrator of the novel , but an “everyman” archetype as well. Though Nick’s father reminds him of “advantages” that he’s had, Nick is nevertheless considered the novel’s most relatable and “average” character. Therefore, as an everyman archetype, the reader is able to identify with Nick and consequently trust his observations and narration of the events of the story . This allows Nick’s character to influence the way in which the reader engages with the novel’s characters and events, as his everyman actions and interactions become vicarious experiences for Fitzgerald’s audience as well.

Example 2: Ma Joad: Caregiver ( The Grapes of Wrath , John Steinbeck)

Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself.

In Steinbeck’s heart-breaking novel, the female characters represent a life force. This is epitomized by Ma Joad’s character as a “caregiver” archetype. Ma Joad is not only literally a caregiver in the sense that she is the mother of the protagonist and cares for her family, but she is also an archetypal caregiver in the sense that she makes sacrifices in order to care for others. Readers’ recognition of the characterization of Ma Joad as a caregiver allows Steinbeck to portray her as a traditional and symbolic mother figure.

However, Steinbeck elaborates on this archetype by portraying the effects of these caregiver traits on Ma Joad’s character. Rather than establishing her as a passive maternal character which would be identifiable and understood by a collective readership, Steinbeck reveals the universal consequences of this archetype’s traits on the character herself. Ma Joad is a universal character, yet her character also has a universal understanding and experience of tragedy and suffering. This makes her role and sacrifices as a caregiver even more meaningful.

Example 3: Sancho Panza: Jester ( Don Quixote , Miguel de Cervantes)

The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.

In Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, Sancho Panza reflects the complexity and importance of the “jester” archetype. As Don Quixote’s sidekick, Sancho Panza provides humor and comic relief as a contrast to the title character’s idealism. However, as Sancho Panza’s character becomes more developed in the novel, his jester archetype develops as well into a voice of reason and example of empathy and loyalty. This is beneficial for the reader in that, though they are contrasting characters, Sancho Panza as a jester beside Don Quixote becomes a more legitimate and influential character. In turn, the jester archetype legitimizes the protagonist as well, making the novel’s fool the “most perceptive character.”

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Home Essay Samples Psychology

Archetype Essay Examples

An archetype essay explores the universal symbols and patterns that repeat across different cultures and time periods. In literature, these archetypes often manifest as characters or plot points that represent common human experiences and emotions. When deciding how to write an archetype essay, it’s essential to first identify the archetypes at play and then analyze how they contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole.

One example of an archetype is the “hero’s journey,” in which a protagonist undergoes a transformative journey or quest, facing challenges and obstacles before emerging victorious. Another example is the “wise mentor,” a character who imparts knowledge and guidance to the hero along their journey.

To write an archetype essay, begin by selecting a work of literature that contains prominent archetypes. Then, identify the specific archetypes present in the text and consider how they contribute to the meaning of the work. For example, in the classic novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the archetype of the “innocent” is embodied by the character of Scout, who navigates the complexities of racial injustice in her small town. This archetype reinforces the novel’s themes of prejudice, justice, and moral courage.

Overall, a successful archetype essay should demonstrate a deep understanding of the archetypes at play and how they contribute to the work’s meaning. To find a perfect archetype essay example, be sure to check this section on WritingBros.

Archetypal Analysis Of Jon Krakauer's Novel Into Thin Air

After the conclusion of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, it is somewhat difficult to say which literary theory provides the most insight into the text. Initially, the novel was analyzed from potentially four different perspectives: reader response theory, archetypal theory, feminist theory, and post-colonial theory....

The Archetypes in Young Goodman Brown

The psychological archetypes within Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown emulate how one’s social relationships can crumble as culture is imbued with judgement. The Puritan society, portrayed by the causes of goodness at its core, spurns its members to cast discernment on others, yet not on...

• Young Goodman Brown Symbolism

Archetypes of Mother and Crone in the Novel Everyday Use by Alice Walker, A Worn Path' by Eudora Welty, and Mothers Tongue by Amy Tan

In the texts 'Everyday use' by Alice Walker, 'A Worn Path' by Eudora Welty, and 'Mothers Tongue' by Amy Tan, You see the at least two different Archetypes occur. The two archetypes are the mother and crone. 'Everyday use' by Alice Walker is about a...

• Everyday Use
• Mother Tongue

The Depth Psychology of Carl Jung and the Complexity of Carl Jung's Archetypes

When I was eight years old, I had this reoccurring dream about being in an open playing field with friends. We were in the center of the field in a bright sunny day. The weather is pleasant with an enjoyable breeze. The color of the...

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Analysis of The Archetypal Villain in The Odyssey

Introduction Thesis: The archetypal villain is crucial for the story to continue because the villain guides the hero to the next part of their story, the villain reveals the hero’s weaknesses and faults, and without the villain, the hero wouldn’t be a hero. The Archetypal...

• The Odyssey

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The Tragic Downfall of Heroes: Aristotelian Tragic Hero Archetypes in The Illiad and Million Dollar Baby

Homer’s “The Iliad“ is in general a story about a war and the confusion that caused the war. The plot focuses on the development of a young man named Achilles and his journey of anger and seeking revenge after he learns of the death of...

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Implementation of Business Strategies and Archetypes by Brands

Nowadays, every company in the market tries to be different than the others. According to Houraghan S. (2018) The Ultimate Guide To Brand Archetypes: Hack the Mind of Your Customers article, all of the brands can be divided into 12 archetypes, based on how they...

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Literary Hero Archetypes in Brown's Prose

Archetypes are found both covertly and overtly in most of the characters one come across in Brown’s novels. They either strongly adhere to or staunchly deviate from certain archetypes, the identification of which helps one to gain a better psychological insight and efficient character analysis....

The Darker Aspects of the Human in British Literature

British literature has long explored the complexities of the human experience, and one of its recurring themes is the archetype of evil. This archetype takes various forms, from monsters to tyrants, and serves to represent a force of chaos that threatens the stability of society....

How To Read Literature Like A Professor By Thomas C. Foster: Archetype Symbols

In Chapter 9 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster discusses an archetype theme of “It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow”. Foster describes the symbolism of snow as clean, stark, severe, warm, inhospitable, inviting, playful, suffocating, and filthy. The meaning...

• Reading Books

Best topics on Archetype

1. Archetypal Analysis Of Jon Krakauer’s Novel Into Thin Air

2. The Archetypes in Young Goodman Brown

3. Archetypes of Mother and Crone in the Novel Everyday Use by Alice Walker, A Worn Path’ by Eudora Welty, and Mothers Tongue by Amy Tan

4. The Depth Psychology of Carl Jung and the Complexity of Carl Jung’s Archetypes

5. Analysis of The Archetypal Villain in The Odyssey

6. The Tragic Downfall of Heroes: Aristotelian Tragic Hero Archetypes in The Illiad and Million Dollar Baby

7. Implementation of Business Strategies and Archetypes by Brands

8. Literary Hero Archetypes in Brown’s Prose

9. The Darker Aspects of the Human in British Literature

10. How To Read Literature Like A Professor By Thomas C. Foster: Archetype Symbols

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What is an Archetype — Definition & Examples in Storytelling

W hat is an archetype? Archetypes play an integral role in how people understand each other – but what are they? We’re going to answer that question as we define archetype, then we’ll look at some archetype examples from classic literature and film. By the end, you’ll know why archetypes are so important for storytellers – and why they might explain something innate about the human condition.

Archetype Definition

First, let’s define archetype.

Archetypes may not have been formally defined until the 20th century, but they existed far before then. Archetypes are simply patterns that connect us across time and place. We’re going to look at some archetype examples in a bit – but first let’s formally outline an archetype definition.

ARCHETYPE DEFINITION

What is an archetype.

An archetype is a pattern that connects the people of the world across time and culture. The idea of the archetype was conceived by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. In writing, archetypes are characters or symbols that are recognizable irrespective of their place or time of origin. 

Iconic Archetypes

• The Wise Old Man

For more on the foundation of archetypes, check out the video that asks, “What is an Archetype?” below.

What is an Archetype?

So, is an archetype simply a pattern? Well, yes and no.

It is a pattern, but it’s also something more than that. Many argue archetypes are intrinsic to human nature. Now let's look at some examples of these archetypal patterns in characters and symbols.

WHAT IS AN ARCHETYPE CHARACTER

Guide to archetypal characters .

As storytellers, we rely on archetypal characters to bridge the gap between people of different cultures. Take the hero for example: the hero is a character archetype that’s existed in stories all over the world for thousands of years.

And it existed in spite of the fact that there was little possibility that some communities were privy to the stories created by other communities. Take Gilgamesh for example – the character many historians regard as the first hero, and a direct inspiration for  Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey .

The Epic of Gilgamesh  established a stereotypically flawed hero that subsequently influenced Egyptian mythology and other river valley civilizations, via oral tradition. But why were other “Gilgamesh-esh” characters conceived in other parts of the world irrespective of the knowledge of their origin? Largely because they were archetypical – aka universally relatable.

Through a historical lens, we can see that heroic characters were conceived by Asian, European, African, and communities irrespective of one another. The hero is actually a subset of “the leader” archetype. For more on “the leader,” check out our video essay below.

Walter White is an Example of an Archetype  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Other subsets of the leader character type include: the antihero and the villain. In our video essay, we argue that “conflict is drama, drama is interesting, and leaders are conflict machines.” Thus, the leader is the perfect archetypal character for communicating drama. 

There are a lot of character types though. For more on this subject, check out our article on Character Archetypes Examples in Lit. & Film . 

Definition of Symbolic Patterns

Guide to archetypal symbols.

Archetypes aren’t just characters, they can be symbols or situations too. Anthropologists study patterns from different places and eras, to better understand world history. On a more micro level, this video looks at how symbols can influence cognition standards.

What is an Archetype? by Casual Cognition

Essentially, archetypes can affect the world on a macro and micro level. They can also explain innate aspects of the human mind. Think about it: if a star symbol that was discovered in different cultures around the world, is it possible that alien civilizations could use the same star symbol too? Or is the symbol simply a product of human creation? It’s fascinating stuff – and useful to think about for storytellers and anthropologists.

Archetypal Uses

What is the purpose of archetypes.

These archetypal patterns are universal and repeated ideas/symbols that unite the people of the world across time and space. We often focus on things that make us different from one another – but these patterns remind us that there’s an innateness of the human condition that makes us the same. 

Just take what writer/director Bong Joon-Ho had to say after he won out at the Golden Globes for Parasite :

I think we use only just one language: the cinema.

— Boog Joon-Ho

Cinema is just one medium through which we communicate the patterns that bind us together – there are dozens more. And whether you know it in the moment or not, you’re likely perpetuating archetypes everyday.

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Archetype Examples in Lit. & Movies

We briefly touched on some of the different types of archetypal patterns, but there’s a lot more to characters than what we went over here. Up next, we break down a variety of examples from literature and movies. Follow along as we examine characters in Breaking Bad , The Lord of the Rings , and more.

Up Next: Character Types Explained →

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Archetypal Criticism › Archetypal Criticism

Archetypal Criticism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 22, 2020 • ( 0 )

Archetypal theory and criticism, although often used synonymously with Myth theory and crticism, has a distinct history and process. The term “archetype” can be traced to Plato ( arche , “original”; typos , “form”), but the concept gained currency in twentieth-century literary theory and criticism through the work of the Swiss founder of analytical psychology, C. G. Jung (1875-1961). Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious (1916, B. M. Hinkle’s translation of the 1911-12 Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido ) appeared in English one year after publication of the concluding volume with bibliography of the third edition of J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (2 vols., 1890,3d ed., 12 vols., 1911-15). Frazer’s and Jung’s texts formed the basis of two allied but ultimately different courses of influence on literary history.

Jung most frequently used “myth” (or “mythologem”) for the narrative expression, “on the ethnological level” ( Collected 9, pt. 1: 67), of the “archetypes,” which he described as patterns of psychic energy originating in the collective unconscious and finding their “most common and most normal” manifestation in dreams (8:287). Thus criticism evolving from his work is more accurately named “archetypal” and is quite distinct from “myth” criticism.

For Jung, “archetype is an explanatory paraphrase of the Platonic eidos ” (9, pt. 1: 4), but he distinguishes his concept and use of the term from that of philosophical idealism as being more empirical and less metaphysical, though most of his “empirical” data were dreams. In addition, he modified and extended his concept over the many decades of his professional life, often insisting that “archetype” named a process, a perspective, and not a content, although this flexibility was lost through the codifying, nominalizing tendencies of his followers.

At mid-century, Canadian critic Northrop Frye (1912-91) introduced new distinctions in literary criticism between myth and archetype. For Frye, as William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks put it, “archetype, borrowed from Jung, means a primordial image, a part of the collective unconscious, the psychic residue of numberless experiences of the same kind, and thus part of the inherited response-pattern of the race” ( Literary Criticism 709). Frye frequently acknowledged his debt to Jung, accepted some of Jung’s specifically named archetypes—” persona and anima and counsellor and shadow” —and referred to his theory as Jungian criticism (Anatomy 291), a practice subsequently followed in some hand books of literary terms and histories of literary criticism, including one edited by Frye himself, which obscured crucial differences and contributed to the confusion in terminology reigning today. Frye, however, notably in Anatomy of Criticism , essentially redefined and relocated archetype on grounds that would remove him unequivocally from the ranks of “Jungian” critics by severing the connection between archetype and depth psychology: “This emphasis on impersonal content has been developed by Jung and his school, where the communicability of archetypes is accounted for by a theory of a collective unconscious—an unnecessary hypothesis in literary criticism, so far as I can judge” (m-12). Frye, then, first misinterprets Jungian theory by insisting on a Lamarckian view of genetic transmission of archetypes, which Jung explicitly rejected, and later settles on a concept of “archetype” as a literary occurrence per se, an exclusively intertextual recurring phenomenon resembling a convention (99).

Northrope Frye/Pinterest

On a general level, Jung’s and Frye’s theorizings about archetypes, however labeled, overlap, and boundaries are elusive, but in the disciplines of literature the two schools have largely ignored each other’s work. Myth criticism grew in part as a reaction to the formalism of New Criticism , while archetypal criticism based on Jung was never linked with any academic tradition and remained organically bound to its roots in depth psychology: the individual and collective psyche, dreams, and the analytic process. Further, myth critics, aligned with writers in comparative anthropology and philosophy, are said to include Frazer, Jessie Weston, Leslie Fiedler, Ernst Cassirer, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Richard Chase, Joseph Campbell, Philip Wheelwright, and Francis Fergusson. But Wheelwright, for example, barely mentions Jung ( The Burning Fountain , 1954), and he, Fergusson, and others often owe more to Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, Oedipus Rex, and the Oedipus complex than to anything taken from Jung. Indeed, myth criticism seems singularly unaffected by any of the archetypal theorists who have remained faithful to the origins and traditions of depth, especially analytical, psychology—James Hillman, Henri Corbin, Gilbert Durand, Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, Evangelos Christou. This article, then, treats the only form of literary theory and criticism consistent with and derived directly from the psychological principles advanced by Jung. Other forms previously labeled “Jungian” are here subsumed under the term “archetypal” because whatever their immediate specific focus, these forms operate on a set of assumptions derived from Jung and accept the depth-psychological structure posited by Jung. Further, Jung termed his own theory “analytical psychology,” as it is still known especially in Europe, but Jungian thought is more commonly referred to today in all disciplines as “archetypal psychology.”

The first systematic application of Jung’s ideas to literature was made in 1934 by Maud Bodkin in Archetypal Patterns in Poetry : “An attempt is here made to bring psychological analysis and reflection to bear upon the imaginative experience communicated by great poetry, and to examine those forms or patterns in which the universal forces of our nature there find objectification” (vii). This book established the priority of interest in the archetypal over the mythological.

The next significant development in archetypal theory that affected literary studies grew out of the effort made by U.S.-born, Zurich-trained analyst James Hillman (b. 1924) “to move beyond clinical inquiry within the consulting room of psychotherapy” to formulate archetypal theory as a multidisciplinary field ( Archetypal 1). Hillman invokes Henri Corbin (1903-78), French scholar, philosopher, and mystic known for his work on Islam, as the “second father” of archetypal psychology. As Hillman puts it, Corbin’s insight that Jung’s “mundus archetypalis” is also the “mundus imaginalis” that corresponds to the Islamic “alam al-mithl” (3) was an early move toward “a reappraisal of psychology itself as an activity of poesis” (24). Hillman also discovers archetypal precursors in Neoplatonism, Heraclitus, Plotinus, Proclus, Marsilio Ficino, and Giambattista Vico . In Re-Visioning Psychology , the published text of his 1972 Yale Terry Lectures (the same lecture series Jung gave in 1937), Hillman locates the archetypal neither “in the physiology of the brain, the structure of language, the organization of society, nor the analysis of behavior, but in the processes of imagination” (xi).

Archetypal theory then took shape principally in the multidisciplinary journal refounded by Hillman in 1970 in Zurich, Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought . According to Hillman, that discourse was anticipated by Evangelos Christou’s Logos of the Soul (1963) and extended in religion (David L. Miller’s New Polytheism , 1974), philosophy (Edward Casey’s Imagining: A Phenomenological Study , 1976), mythology (Rafael Lopez-Pedraza’s Hermes and His Children , 1977), psycholinguistics (Paul Kugler’s Alchemy of Discourse: An Archetypal Approach to Language , 1982), and the theory of analysis (Patricia Berry’s Echo’s Subtle Body , 1982).

These archetypalists, focusing on the imaginal’and making central the concept that in English they call “soul,” assert their kinship with Semiotics and Structuralism but maintain an insistent focus on psychoid phenomena, which they characterize as meaningful. Their discourse is conducted in poetic language; that is, their notions of “soul-making” come from the Romantics , especially William Blake and John Keats. “By speaking of soul as a primary metaphor , rather than defining soul substantively and attempting to derive its ontological status from empirical demonstration or theological (metaphysical) argument, archetypal psychology recognizes that psychic reality is inextricably involved with rhetoric” (Hillman, Archetypal 19).

Carl Jung’s Contribution to Psychoanalytic Theory

This burgeoning theoretical movement and the generally unsatisfying nature of so much early “Jungian literary criticism” are both linked to the problematic nature of Jung’s own writing on literature, which comprises a handful of essays: “The Type Problem in Poetry,” “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry,” “Psychology and Literature,” “ Ulysses : A Monologue,” and “Is There a Freudian Type of Poetry?” These essays reveal Jung’s lack of awareness as a reader despite his sense that they “may show how ideas that play a considerable role in my work can be applied to literary material” ( Collected 15:109^. They also attest to his self-confessed lack of interest in literature: “I feel not naturally drawn to what one calls literature, but I am strangely attracted by genuine fiction, i.e., fantastical invention” ( Letters 1:509). This explains his fascination with a text like Rider Haggard’s novel She: The History of an Adventure (1886-87), with its unmediated representation of the “anima.” As Jung himself noted: “Literary products of highly dubious merit are often of the greatest interest to the psychologist” ( Collected 15:87-88). Jung was also more preoccupied with dreams and fantasies, because he saw them as exclusively (purely) products of the unconscious, in contrast to literature, which he oddly believed, citing Joyce’s Ulysses as an example, was created “in the full light of consciousness” (15:123).

Issues of genre, period, and language were ignored or subjected to gross generalization as Jung searched for universals in texts as disparate as the fourth-century Shepherd of Hermas, the Divine Comedy, Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), E. T. A. Hoffman’s tales, Pierre Benoit’s L’Atlantide (1919-20), and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” as well as works by Carl Spitteler and William Blake. But the great literary text for Jung’s life and work was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust , not because of its literary qualities but because he sensed that the drama expressed his own personal myth ( Letters 1:309-10). Further, the text offered confirmation (and poetic representation) of the only direct contribution Jung made to literary theory: a distinction between “psychological” and “visionary” texts ( Collected 15:89-90). This heuristic distinction was formed, however, solely on psychobiographical grounds: Did the text originate in, and remain principally shaped by, the author’s experience of consciousness and the personal unconscious or his or her experience at the level of the archetypal collective unconscious? And concomitantly, on which of these levels was the reader affected? Confirmation of this theory was Jung’s reading of Faust: part 1 was “psychological”; part 2, “visionary.”

Thus Jungian theory provided no clear avenue of access for those outside of psychology, and orthodox Jungians were left with little in the way of models for the psychological analysis of literature. Many fell prey to Jung’s idiosyncrasies as a reader, ranging widely and naively over genres, periods, and languages in search of the universal archetypes, while sweeping aside cultureand text-specific problems, ignoring their own role in the act of reading and basing critical evaluation solely on a text’s contribution to the advancement of the reader’s individuation process, a kind of literature-astherapy standard. This way of proceeding had the effect of putting, and keeping, archetypal criticism on the margins of academic discourse and outside the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines and departments.

Bettina Knapp’s 1984 effort at an authoritative demonstration of archetypal literary criticism exemplified this pattern. Her Jungian Approach to Literature attempts to cover the Finnish epic The Kalevala , the Persian Atar’s The Conference of the Birds , and texts by Euripides, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Michel de Montaigne, Pierre Corneille, Goethe, Novalis, Rabbi ben Simhah Nachman, and W. B. Yeats. And despite frequently perceptive readings, the work is marred by the characteristic limitless expansionism and psychological utilitarianism of her interpretive scheme.

Given this background, it is not surprising to find in a 1976 essay entitled “Jungian Psychology in Criticism: Theoretical Problems” the statement that “no purely Jungian criticism of literature has yet appeared” (Baird 22). But Jos van Meurs’s critically annotated 1988 bibliography, Jungian Literary Criticism, 1920-1980, effectively challenges this claim. Despite his deliberately selective focus on critical works written in English on literary texts that are, for the most part, also written in English, van Meurs, with the early assistance of John Kidd, has collected 902 entries, of which he identifies slightly over 80 as valid and valuable literary criticism.

While acknowledging the grave weaknesses of much Jungian writing on literature as “unsubtle and rigid application of preconceived psychological notions and schemes” resulting in “particularly ill-judged or distorted readings,” van Meurs still finds that “sensitively, flexibly and cautiously used, Jungian psychological theory may stimulate illuminating literary interpretations” (14-15). The critical annotations are astute and, given their brevity, surprisingly thorough and suggestive. Van Meurs also does a service by resurrecting successful but neglected early studies, such as Elizabeth Drew’s of T. S. Eliot (1949), and discovering value even in reductionist and impressionistic studies, such as June Singer’s of Blake. He notes that Singer’s Unholy Bible: A Psychological Interpretation of William Blake (1970), though oversimplified in its psychobiographical approach and its treatment of characters as psychological projections of the author, does make original use in a literary context of such Jungian techniques of dream interpretation as “amplification” and of such fantasy-evoking procedures as “active imagination.”

Van Meurs’s bibliography conveys the great variety of Jungian writings on literature even within one language, the increasingly recognized potential for further development and use of Jung’s ideas, and the growth in numbers of literary scholars falling under the influence of Jung. A few names form a core of writers in English (including many Canadians)—Martin Bickman, Albert Gelpi, Elliott Gose, Evelyn Hinz, Henry Murray, Barton L. St. Armand, Harold Schechter, and William Stein— though no single figure has attracted the attention of academic literary specialists, and no persistent commonalities fuse into a recognizable school critics who draw on Jung’s theories. To date, the British Journal of Analytical Psychology and the retitled American Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture are the best resources for archetypal criticism of literature and the arts even though only a small percentage of their published articles treat such topics.

Thus, with the archetypal theorists multiplying across disciplines on the one hand and the clinically practicing followers serving as (generally inadequate) critics on the other, archetypal literary theory and criticism flourished in two independent streams in the 1960s and 1970s. From the theorists, dissertations, articles, and books, often traditionally academic in orientation, appeared; the productions of the practitioners are chronicled and critiqued in van Meurs’s bibliography. And the 1980s saw a new, suggestive, and controversial direction in archetypal studies of literature: the feminist. With some of its advocates supported through early publication of their work in the journal Spring , feminist archetypal theory and criticism of literature and the arts emerged fullblown in three texts: Annis Pratt’s Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction (1981), which self-consciously evoked and critiqued Maud Bodkin’s 1934 text; Estella Lauter’s Women as Mythmakers: Poetry and Visual Art by Twentieth Century Women (1984); and Estella Lauter and Carol Schreier Rupprecht’s Feminist Archetypal Theory: Interdisciplinary Re-Visions of Jungian Thought (1985). This last text explicitly named the movement and demonstrated its appropriation of archetypal theory for feminist ends in aesthetics, analysis, art, and religion, as well as in literature.

Feminist archetypal theory, proceeding inductively, restored Jung’s original emphasis on the fluid, dynamic nature of the archetype, drawing on earlier feminist theory as well as the work of Jungian Erich Neumann to reject absolutist, ahistorical, essentialist, and transcendentalist misinterpretations. Thus “archetype” is recognized as the “tendency to form and reform images in relation to certain kinds of repeated experience,” which may vary in individual cultures, authors, and readers (Lauter and Rupprecht 13-14). Considered according to this definition, the concept becomes a useful tool for literary analysis that explores the synthesis of the universal and the particular, seeks to define the parameters of social construction of gender, and attempts to construct theories of language, of the imaginal, and of meaning that take gender into account.

Ironically, as in the feminist revisioning of explicitly male-biased Jungian theory, the rise in the 1980s of Reader-response theory and criticism and the impetus for canon revision have begun to contribute to a revaluation of Jung as a source of literary study. New theoretical approaches appear to legitimize orthodox Jungian ways of reading, sanction Jung’s range of literary preferences from She to Faust , and support his highly affective reaction to Ulysses , which he himself identified (positively) as a “subjective confession” (i5:io9n). And new theories increasingly give credence to the requirement, historically asserted by Jungian readers, that each text elicit a personal, affective, and not “merely intellectual” response. Even French feminist Julia Kristeva has been brought to praise a Jungian contribution to feminist discourse on the maternal: recognition that the Catholic church’s change of signification in the assumption of the Virgin Mary to include her human body represented a major shift in attitude toward female corporaiity (113). In addition, many powerfully heuristic Jungian concepts, such as “synchronicity,” have yet to be tested in literary contexts.

Archetypal criticism, then, construed as that derived from Jung’s theory and practice of archetypal (analytical) psychology, is a fledgling and much misconstrued field of inquiry with significant but still unrealized potential for the study of literature and of aesthetics in general. Two publishing events at the beginning of the 1990s in the United States may signal the coming of age of this kind of archetypal criticism through its convergence with postmodern critical thought, along with a commensurate insistence on its roots in the depth psychology of Jung: the reissue of Morris Philipson’s 1963 Outline of a Jungian Aesthetic and the appearance of Karin Barnaby and Pellegrino D’Acerino’s multidisciplinary, multicultural collection of essays, C. G. Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of Culture.

Myth Criticism of Northrop Frye

Bibliography James Hillman, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account (1983), Re-Visioning Psychology (1975); C. G. Jung, Collected Works (ed. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler, 20 vois., 1953-79), Letters (trans. R. F. C. Hull, 2 vois., 1973-75). James Baird, “Jungian Psychology in Criticism: Theoretical Problems,” Literary Criticism and Psychology (ed. Joseph P. Strelka, 1976); Karin Barnaby and Pellegrino D’Acerino, eds., C. G. Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of Culture (1990); Martin Bickman, The Unsounded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Romanticism (1980); Maud Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies in Imagination (1934); Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957); Albert Gelpi, The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet (1975); Naomi Goldenberg, “Archetypal Theory after Jung,” Spring (1975); Julia Kristeva, “Stabat Mater” (1977, The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi, trans. Léon S. Roudiez, 1986); Estella Lauter and Carol Schreier Rupprecht, Feminist Archetypal Theory: Interdisciplinary Re-Visions of Jungian Thought (1985); Erich Neumann, Art and the Creative Unconscious: Four Essays (trans. Ralph Manheim, 1974); Morris Philipson, Outline of a Jungian Aesthetic (1963, reprint, 1991); Annis Pratt et al., Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction (1981); Jos van Meurs and John Kidd, Jungian Literary Criticism, 1920-1980: An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Works in English (with a Selection of Titles after 1980) (1988); William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (1957). Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

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A Library Guide to Jung's Collected Works

• Find an essay within the Collected Works
• The Red Book (Liber Novus )
• The Black Books
• Jung seminars
• Jung compilations
• Jung's correspondence
• Jung interviews
• Jungian reference books
• Jungian journals
• Active imagination
• Amplification

Reference publications on Archetypes

Jung on archetypes, additional resources on archetypes.

• Collective unconscious
• Individuation
• Synchronicity
• Transcendent function
• Transference
• Anima/Animus
• Hero/Heroine
• Kore/Maiden
• Puer/Puella (Divine Child)
• Wise Man/Woman
• New additions
• Dictionary definitions
• Encyclopedic overviews
• Guides & Handbooks

Archetypes are systems of readiness for action, and at the same time images and emotions. They are inherited with the brain structure-indeed they are its psychic aspect. They represent, on the one hand, a very strong instinctive conservatism, while on the other hand they are the most effective means conceivable of instinctive adaptation. They are thus, essentially, the chthonic portion of the psyche . . . that portion through which the psyche is attached to nature. ["Mind and Earth," CW 10, para. 53 ]

Jung's essays on Archetypes from the Collected Works :

Jung, C. G. (1966). The relations between the ego and the unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 7. Two essays on analytical psychology (2nd ed., pp. 121–241). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1928) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850891.121

Jung, C. G. (1968). The concept of the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9 pt. 1. Archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed., pp. 42-53). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1936/37) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850969.42

Jung, C. G. (1968). Conscious, unconscious, and individuation (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9 pt. 1. Archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed., pp. 275-289). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1939) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850969.275

Jung, C. G. (1968). Archetypes of the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9 pt. 1. Archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed., pp. 3-41). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1954) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850969.3

Jung, C. G. (1969). On the nature of the psyche (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 8. Structure and dynamics of the psyche (2nd ed., pp. 159-234). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1954) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850952.159

• Books & book chapters

Book Chapters:

Goodwyn, E. (2019). Comments on the 2018 IAAP Conference on Archetype Theory: Defending a non‐reductive biological approach . Journal of Analytical Psychology, 64 (5), 720-737. Abstract: Comments on the 2018 IAAP Conference on Archetype Theory. During the course of the 2018 IAAP conference, a criticism of Jung’s idea of the archetype as inherited predisposition was raised that involved examining a number of dreams and visions and assessing them through developments in genetics and neuroscience. From this comparison it was argued that archetypes cannot be inherited and could more reasonably be argued to derive from early experiences. In this essay, the author responds by showing how this conclusion is flawed due to being based on reductive errors. An alternative, non‐reductive but inherited and biological position on the archetype is defended.

Hogenson, G. B. (2019). The controversy around the concept of archetypes . Journal of Analytical Psychology, 64 (5), 682–700. Related video: George Hogenson on archetypes Abstract: The paper reviews the course of the controversy surrounding Jung's theory of archetypes beginning in the mid 1990s and continuing to the present. Much of this controversy was concerned with the debate between the essentialism of the evolutionary position of Anthony Stevens as found in his 1983 book Archetypes: A Natural History of the Self, and the emergence model of the archetypes proposed in various publications by Hogenson, Knox and Merchant, among others. The paper then moves on to a consideration of more recent developments in theory, particularly as derived from an examination of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who introduces Bergson's somnambulistic unconscious into the discussion of Jung's theories. It is suggested that this largely unexamined influence on Jung may provide answers to some of the unanswered questions surrounding his theorizing. The paper concludes by suggesting that the notion of the somnambulistic unconscious may resemble Atmanspacher's argument for a dual‐aspect monism interpretation of Jung.

Lewis, R. C. (1989). The historical development of the concept of the archetype. Quadrant, 22 (1), 41–53. Abstract: Traces the development of Jung's concept of the archetype from its earliest antecedents in his early writings to its final form. A discussion of Jung's early notions of complexes and the intellectual influences on these notions is followed by a description of Freud's major influences on Jung, along with the development of the concept of the imago. The most mature view of the archetype expressed was that of a durable pattern that manifests itself through the image, idea, or physical event; a dynamic organizer of psyche and matter; a structure associated with strong affects; and an entity associated with synchronistic occurrences that meaningfully connect particular psychic and physical events.

Mills, J. (2020). On the origins of archetypes . International Journal of Jungian Studies, 12 (2), 201–206. https://doi-org.pgi.idm.oclc.org/10.1163/19409060-01201008 Abstract: The question of archetypes and their origins remains an ongoing debate in analytical psychology and post-Jungian studies. The contemporary discussion has historically focused on privileging one causal factor over another, namely, whether archetypes are attributed more to biology than culture and vice versa. Erik Goodwyn offers a mesotheory of archetypal origins that displaces the radical bifurcation as a false dichotomy. I offer my own reflections on the origins of archetypes and argue that this discussion can be further advanced by addressing the question of unconscious agency.

Rossi, E. L. (1989). Archetypes as strange attractors . Psychological Perspectives: A Semiannual Journal of Jungian Thought, 20 (1), 4–15.

Merchant, J. (2019). The controversy around the concept of archetypes and the place for an emergent/developmental model . Journal of Analytical Psychology, 64 (5), 701-719. Abstract: This paper addresses two key controversial questions to do with the concept of archetypes—do they operate autonomously without connection to an individual's personal life experience? Does their biological base mean they are genetically determined, innate and thus a priori inherited psychic structures? These questions are addressed through the case of a person who began life as an unwanted pregnancy, was adopted at birth and as an adult, experienced profound waking visions. An emergent/developmental model of archetype is outlined which stresses developmental start‐points through this infant's engagement via response and reaction to the affective and material world of the infant/birth mother matrix and from which emergence later occurs by way of participation in a socio‐cultural and material context. The emergentism aspect of this model rescues it from being reductionist since it allows for cultural and socialisation inputs. The model's explanatory power is vastly enlarged by combining this with the developmental component. Critically, once developmentally produced mind/brain (image schema) structures are in place, they have the capacity to generate psychological life. Imagery can then appear as if it is innately derived when that is not the case. The contemporary neuroscience which supports this model is both outlined and related back to the case example.

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• Literary Terms
• When & How to Write Archetypes
• Definition & Examples

How to write Archetypes

If you write stories, you’re probably already using archetypes without realizing it. These characters , symbols , and situations seem to bubble up from every human being’s subconscious mind when we create stories. That’s why so many of the world’s mythologies have similar plot lines and characters . Once you understand the concept of archetypes, you can look through your own writing to see which archetypes are most compelling to you. Perhaps you frequently write archetypal heroes (ordinary people called to adventure who are then transformed by that adventure). Or maybe there are symbolic archetypes, such as trees or rivers, that appear more frequently in your writing.

When to use Archetypes

Archetypes make for some of the best inspiration. When you’re writing a story, it’s often helpful to think about which archetypes you’d like to throw into it. Is your main character a hero? Or an anti-hero? Is there a trickster somewhere in the story? If so, does he/she ultimately end up being evil, or good? You can select archetypes the way a chef selects spices – experimenting with new combinations to see how the archetypes interact with each other within the story.

Although archetypes usually appear in fictional stories and myths , they may also have a place in non-fiction writing, especially biographies. If you’re writing a biography of a historical figure, say, you may gain insight into the story by thinking about which archetype the person best fits. If you were writing about Napoleon, for example, you might write him as an archetypal hero (emphasizing his ordinary upbringing and his call to adventure), or you might write him as a trickster (emphasizing the way that he embodied self-contradictions and appeared to have different attributes in different situations).

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

Home / Essay Samples / Psychology / Behavior / Archetype

Archetype Essay Examples

The impact of carl jung’s development on the development of archetypes.

The Archetype, at first, may seem to be a concept purely derived from literature. With labels such as The Hero, The trickster, and The wise old man, archetypes may seem to be more of a plot device rather than a scientific phenomenon – yet revered...

Analysis of the Archetypes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Every piece of literature has an emotional meaning behind the text. Taking a look through the archetypal lens, allows the audience to interpret the meaning through a different perspective. An archetype is a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought or image universally present in...

Three Archetypes in the Greek Myth "Prometheus and Io"

An archetype is an image, a descriptive detail, a plot pattern, or a character type that repeatedly appears in all genres of literature over all time periods and all people groups. They are found in a variety of stories, including Greek mythology classic, “Prometheus and...

Analysis of an Archetype of the Caregiver

Archetypes are cultural patterns that define specific ways of being in the world. They're stereotypes are so ingrained in pop culture that as soon as a specific character walks in the scene, everyone knows exactly how they will respond. The caregiver has been developed into...

The Meaning of the Archetype in the Fates of People

Myths are one of the aspects that contributed to the origin of the humanities. They use symbols such as archetypal that is deeply rooted in cultural perspectives that make people have a strong belief in myths. The mythological symbols have their meaning that explains the...

Manifestations of Jung’s Shadow Archetype in Potter’s Dreams

Do you have a permanent relationship with an enemy you can’t avoid him? Do you have a feeling that you should ring him and can’t stop thinking about him? Are there psychological reasons for this strange connection? This magical correlation is created by one person:...

Analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet as an Archetype

Shakespeare's literary works are notorious for being complex in nature and with many layers of meaning hidden within characters actions, motifs, and the nature of the genre. Reality, like Shakespeare’s works but on an elevated level, is likewise very complicated and difficult to understand, because...

"On the Rainy River": Archetypal Theories in Tim O'brien's Short Story

Archetypes such as the hero’s journey, mentors, and rivers are used significantly to acquaint the reader to the story. So let's research with archetypes in the "On The Rainy River - Archetypal Essay" paper. O’Brien’s journey represents his uncertainty and the resulting voyage where he...

The Jungian Shadow Archetype in Star Wars

Carl Jung is known for his analytical psychology. He believed all people were connected by their collective unconsciousness, which is populated by archetypes. Archetypes are hidden forms and patterns which every human being experiences. Since they are hidden, it is best to look at mythology...

American Born Chinese: Archetypes and Cultural Identities in the Graphic Novel

American Born Chinese is a graphic novel written by Gene Yang that focuses on the characters Jin Wang, the Monkey King, and Chin-Kee. Throughout the story, the focus switches between these characters after each chapter. Jin has low self-esteem and cares excessively about what others...

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