ABSTRACT
It is not my intention here to review or make use of all of Jung’s ideas about the archetype, since this has been attempted on numerous occasions (e.g. Samuels, 1985). Rather, I have deliberately selected, and occasionally elaborated upon, those elements within his use of the term which are most relevant to a religious approach to the psyche. Jung’s critics make the archetypes sound like very mysterious entities, but in fact as concepts they merely represent the operation of natural law as it expresses itself in the psyche, exactly analogous to the laws of matter. Just as the physicist is not concerned with the origin of the laws of thermodynamics, but is able to observe and understand matter because of them, so, too, the psychologist in our approach to the psyche can discern a set of laws whose origin is unknown. Archetypes operate as deep psychological structures which govern the organization of experience. At the most rudimentary level, in infancy, the baby organizes its perceptual and affective life according to these innate tendencies, needs or categories. Around the archetypal potential for organizing experiences of a particular quality, such as the selfobject needs described earlier, actual childhood events cluster to fulfil these potentials. The memories and images of innumerable similar events, such as interaction with parents, and the affect associated with these experiences, gradually adhere to form relatively stable intrapsychic stuctures known as complexes. These act as templates for patterns of relationship and for the development of a self concept. Eventually complexes become determinants of perception, because they lead to patterns of expectation which govern behaviour in situations with particular thematic associations to childhood.
