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Judy Brown Poem Series: Trough
Great News: A new blog series by my colleague and friend Judy Brown, who has agreed to be the poet laureate for this site.
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“The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure — be it a daemon, a human being, or a process — that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. . . . In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history...”
— Carl Jung
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Patterns in nature help us predict what is likely to happen and give us a sense of assurance of what will always happen. Water will always run downhill, gravity will keep us from floating away, water evaporation will form clouds, and rain eventually will fall.
On the personal level, you might hypothesize that a friend who is being wonderfully helpful may be expressing the virtues of the Caregiver archetype. That may help you know what to expect in your future interactions with that person, since he or she may consistently live out a Caregiver narrative, gaining a sense of satisfaction from giving. However, because most people will possess more than one active archetype, you might notice that your friend also is studious, which looks, on the surface at least, like an expression of the Sage archetype. Thus, your friend may not want to help you out if it interferes with her or his studies, success, and fulfillment.
One or more archetypes may be related to your core identity, while others can shift over time. Some archetypes may not be so positive, such as in the archetypal relationship between a Victim and Oppressor. Those you will be introduced to in the 12-Archetype System were selected because they help us in the task of being fully realized and mature human beings. For example, the Warrior helps us to say no, to fight for ourselves, and to have boundaries; the Caregiver, to be generous and nurturing and, overall, a nice, caring person; and the Sage, to possess a continuing desire to learn and grow. Each also has a downside that we can learn to avoid: the Warrior may be ruthless; the Caregiver can be a suffering martyr; the Sage can be a dogmatist or ideologue.
Whatever archetypes are active in you and in others provide the lenses through which you and they interpret the world, and hence determine what is noticed and what gets filtered out. For instance, when a Caregiver is active in you, you may enter a room and immediately scan for who seems uncomfortable, lost, or otherwise in need of something. If the Jester is active, you might look for potential for fun, or if the Warrior is active, for chances to debate or compete, and also whether any kind of danger needs to be faced.
“There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the forms of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action.”
— Carl Jung
From the observable aspects of what you or others are doing, it is possible for the conscious mind to figure out what archetype might be motivating someone. Recognizing the behaviors and attitudes that are typical for that archetype allows you to predict the story lines that a person or group in which that archetype is dominant is likely to experience. In your own life, once you notice what archetypes are present, you can try to live the version of that story that has a happy ending, rather than one that ends badly.
Archetypes, then, are universal human ways of being that are deeper than culture (but reflect cultural mindsets in their diverse images and narratives), and that are as important to you today as they were to the ancients who personified them as gods and goddesses. Through understanding the archetypal stories that shape our values, character, culture, and capacities—and those of other people and groups—we, as individuals and organizations, can realize our unique potential and experience greater success and fulfillment.
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Shop millions of items for every style and budget, top brands, and commercially rated products.
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Shop millions of items for every style and budget, top brands, and commercially rated products.
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If you're not sure where to start, take a look at a few up-and-coming home influencers who are making a name for themselves in the design world, according to H, the mobile app created to provide shoppable inspiration to lifestyle fanatics.
If you're not sure where to start, take a look at a few up-and-coming home influencers who are making a name for themselves in the design world, according to H, the mobile app created to provide shoppable inspiration to lifestyle fanatics.
If you're not sure where to start, take a look at a few up-and-coming home influencers who are making a name for themselves in the design world, according to H, the mobile app created to provide shoppable inspiration to lifestyle fanatics.
It is wise to clarify intents for a new year, yet resolutions often don’t work. Learn why. Learn about 12 archetypal narratives that can help you achieve authentic desires by living their plotlines. Gain insight into four steps in the process of discovering your current archetypal motivations, recognizing those that now call to you through your desires and interests, and developing a vision for the next year.
In polarized times, unconscious moral certainty is the hunger that drives leaders mad,and weakens us all by feeding our fears. The stories we live, and the archetypes that energize them, get twisted into distinctions of Us/Them,Right/Wrong, and Good/Evil. There’s no better example than the Dracula Syndrome.
I’m very pleased to publish this guest blog from pioneering educator Katherine Culpepper. Her work with high school students provides a model that I would love to see replicated widely in schools today—especially, but not exclusively,with students coming from challenging circumstances. An earlier blog on Katherine’s work can be found in the archives on this site. The foundational ideas in this important blog could also be used by parents, families, and others to support and assist children and adolescents in seeing themselves as heroes and heroines, discovering their values and gifts, and making positive choices going forward so that they can fulfill their potential.
What Stories Are YouLiving? guides you through the journey of discovering and understanding the archetypes active in your life. These universal themes may be invisible to you now but through this book you will learn how they inspire the behaviors and relationships that drive your life story. As you become conscious of your archetypal potential, you can cultivate the hero or heroine within you by living your stories consciously, in your own unique way. This book provides a roadmap for achieving deeper self-understanding, and includes clear steps for reshaping your life stories, awakening your authenticity, and finding meaning, direction, and purpose.
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This initial work was a grassroots HarperSanFrancisco best seller about the heroic journey that any of us may be taking in today’s world. I began writing it because its archetypes were talking to me, demanding that I capture what they were communicating in an accessible book. Now in its 3rd edition, The Hero Within remains timely and makes a great gift to anyone seeking purpose and meaning, whether they are starting out or in transition.
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The 12-Archetype System began with this book and is the basis for the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator® (PMAI®) assessment and many follow-up applied works. It links archetypes to the hero’s journey to offer an accessible, gender-balanced human development theory, updating the work of C.G. Jung, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and Erik Erikson to reflect changing attitudes and roles.
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The heroine in the subtitle refers to women and to the feminine within both men and women. The plot shows how psychological balance is restored through greater gender equity and partnership. Each of the four mythological characters matures with the aid of three of the 12 archetypes, thus providing models for how you might live the three reported in your PMAI results as most active in you.
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This assessment does for Jung’s work on archetypes what the Myers-Briggs does for type. The featured book, What Stories Are You Living?, supports the PMAI instrument by helping you to fully understand your results and use these insights in your life journey. For additional information beyond this site, see the instrumentation website, www.storywell.com.
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