Chapter 4 Jung: Analytical Psychology 113fantasy figures were actually archetypes, these experiences took on a completely
new meaning (Jung, 1961).
Dreams are the main source of archetypal material, and certain dreams offer
what Jung considered proof for the existence of the archetype. These dreams pro-
duce motifs that could not have been known to the dreamer through personal
experience. The motifs often coincide with those known to ancient people or to
natives of contemporary aboriginal tribes.
Jung believed that hallucinations of psychotic patients also offered evidence
for universal archetypes (Bair, 2003). While working as a psychiatric assistant at
Burghöltzli, Jung observed a paranoid schizophrenic patient looking through a
window at the sun. The patient begged the young psychiatrist to also observe.
He said I must look at the sun with eyes half shut, and then I could see the
sun’s phallus. If I moved my head from side to side the sun-phallus would
move too, and that was the origin of the wind. (Jung, 1931/1960b, p. 150)Four years later Jung came across a book by the German philologist Albrecht
Dieterich that had been published in 1903, several years after the patient was com-
mitted. The book, written in Greek, dealt with a liturgy derived from the so-called
Paris magic papyrus, which described an ancient rite of the worshippers of Mithras,
the Persian god of light. In this liturgy, the initiate was asked to look at the sun
until he could see a tube hanging from it. The tube, swinging toward the east and
west, was the origin of the wind. Dieterich’s account of the sun-phallus of the
Mithraic cult was nearly identical to the hallucination of the mental patient who,
almost certainly, had no personal knowledge of the ancient initiation rite. Jung
(1931/1960b) offered many similar examples as proof of the existence of arche-
types and the collective unconscious.
As noted in Chapter 2, Freud also believed that people collectively inherit
predispositions to action. His concept of phylogenetic endowment, however, dif-
fers somewhat from Jung’s formulation. One difference was that Freud looked
first to the personal unconscious and resorted to the phylogenetic endowment
only when individual explanations failed—as he sometimes did when explaining
the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1933/1964). In contrast, Jung placed primary
emphasis on the collective unconscious and used personal experiences to round
out the total personality.
The major distinction between the two, however, was Jung’s differentiation
of the collective unconscious into autonomous forces called archetypes, each with
a life and a personality of its own. Although a great number of archetypes exist
as vague images, only a few have evolved to the point where they can be concep-
tualized. The most notable of these include the persona, shadow, anima, animus,
great mother, wise old man, hero, and self.
Persona
The side of personality that people show to the world is designated as the persona.
The term is well chosen because it refers to the mask worn by actors in the early
theater. Jung’s concept of the persona may have originated from experiences with
his No. 1 personality, which had to make accommodations to the outside world.
Each of us, Jung believed, should project a particular role, one that society dictates