ABSTRACT
Among the concepts commonly associated with C.G. Jung, few are more widely recognized, nor more poorly understood, than the theory of archetypes. This state of affairs leads many, both within the Jungian community and among Jung’s critics, to speak with confidence about this central concept while talking past one another. Leading Jungian and post-Jungian theorists such as Anthony Stevens, James Hillman and Jean Knox can thus assume radically divergent positions such as Stevens’s deeply biological and evolutionary interpretation (Stevens 1982, 2003) of archetypes that stands in stark contrast to the essentially literary or intuitive use of the concept by Hillman and his followers (Hillman 1983, 1994). Similarly, Knox uses a sophisticated grasp of recent findings in developmental psychology and the cognitive sciences to present a picture of archetypes as developmentally derived properties within a more general theory of mind (Knox 2001, 2003). At some remove from these theories, one encounters an almost cosmically mystical view of the archetypes held by some of Jung’s original followers, who draw heavily on Jung’s correspondence with the physicist, Wolfgang Pauli for inspiration (Gieser 2004). In recent years the diversity of opinion on the nature of archetypes, combined with a variety of new discoveries and theories in the sciences concerned with the nature of mind, has led to still other interpretations of Jung’s theory (Van Eenwyk 1997; Saunders and Skar 2001; Rosen, et al. 1991; Robertson 1987; Pietikainen 1998; Noll 1985; Jung and von Franz 1980). Once again, however, consensus eludes the commentary, and while a rich and instructive discourse has developed around the topic of archetypes, it is not clear that Jungian theory is any closer to realizing a unified point of view on this central organizing concept.
