ABSTRACT
The so-called archetypal psychology expands on Carl Jung’s understanding of archetypes, but is rather such a subtle and complex further development, which likewise stands in open confrontation to usual forms of Western thinking. Many of its arguments sound as if they could almost be approaching ideas and practices from the New Age, esotericism, and the like. Archetypal psychology also has a therapeutic practice. Archetypal psychology strives for the ‘entry into the larger radius of the imaginative tradition of the West that leaves the consulting room behind’. The general line in practice is in principle a relativisation of the Ego and places great emphasis on the role of the shadow as that which is marginalised or even rejected by the subjective, rational intellect. At the centre of this is naturally the engagement with images and how they emerge, for example, in the dreams of patients.
