ABSTRACT
Jung’s conceptualization of the structural components of the psyche is often the greatest hurdle for analysts and therapists from other schools of psychoanalysis to assimilate. According to Jacobi, the development of Jung’s concept of the archetype was most influenced by St. Augustine’s ‘principal ideas,’ but Jung also acknowledges being influenced by Lucien Levy-Bruhl’s concept of ‘representations collectives’. Archetypes can be thought of as functional and prefigurative potentials which move experience along certain paths. Jung makes a distinction between the archetype and the archetypal image. For Jung, the most significant archetype is the Self. Two prominent figures in psychoanalysis also proposed concepts which parallel Jung’s concept of the archetype, namely Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion. From within the field of analytical psychology, there has emerged during the past two decades a number of critiques, challenges, and revisioning of Jung’s concepts of archetype and the collective unconscious.
