ABSTRACT
The archetypes are the sources of the typical actions, reactions, and experiences that characterize the human species. The archetypes are the primordial roots of those complexes which structure behaviour, images, affects, and thoughts as these emerge in the typical situations of human life. Steele's and Hillman's attempts to deconstruct the notion of the archetype as a 'hypothesis' about an empirical, reified 'entity' were discussed and endorsed. It was argued, however, that their critiques were compatible with the hermeneutic aspect of Jung's thought regarding the archetypes as cores of meaning, historically situated, and manifest as images requiring repeated interpretation. However, it was argued that a purely hermeneutic approach to the archetypes was inadequate to their existential density, or facticity. it was argued that to recognise the archetypes in the everyday world is to deepen one's sense of that world. This moment of deepening constitutes a recognition of the imaginal autonomy of the world's disclosure.
