The Existential Processing of Archetypes: Some Prospects for Recognition and Elaboration in Existential Therapy

Modern neurosciences have now undermined the notion that so-called archetypes, as conceived of by C. G. Jung in his Analytical Psychology, are innate or preexistent to the psychic development of the individual. Most existential therapists today similarly dismiss the theory of archetypes as being overly deterministic and phenomenologically inaccurate. Nonetheless, archetypes as psychological “models” nonetheless exert a powerful influence on human existence. Thus, existential therapists cannot merely minimize the archetype’s central role in basic human experience and behavior. From an existential perspective, the archetype develops in the relationship between the individual and the information she or he receives from the world. The archetype itself changes over time and across different cultures, although it self-maintains quite uniformly due to the inextricable linkage it has with the most profound aspects of instinctual human behaviors, such as common emotional responses to specific situations. Therefore, there is undeniably a deep and abiding nexus between our emotions, our instincts, and our archetypes. In this article, the author, a psychiatrist and existential therapist, affirms that the analysis during existential therapy of how the individual has interpreted and elaborated the subjective significance of his or her own archetypes promotes the expansion of the client’s “internal maps,” and facilitates the creative search for new possibilities in life.