Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Jung: Analytical
Psychology
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Companies, 2009ulate a biologically inherited response tendency. For example, a young mother may
unexpectedly react with love and tenderness to her newborn infant, even though she
previously had negative or neutral feelings toward the fetus. The tendency to respond
was part of the woman’s innate potential or inherited blueprint, but such innate po-
tential requires an individual experience before it will become activated. Humans,
like other animals, come into the world with inherited predispositions to act or react
in certain ways if their present experiences touch on these biologically based predis-
positions. For example, a man who falls in love at first sight may be greatly surprised
and perplexed by his own reactions. His beloved may not resemble his conscious
ideal of a woman, yet something within him moves him to be attracted to her. Jung
would suggest that the man’s collective unconscious contained biologically based
impressions of woman and that these impressions were activated when the man first
saw his beloved.
How many biologically based predispositions do humans have? Jung said that
people have as many of these inherited tendencies as they have typical situations in
life. Countless repetitions of these typical situations have made them part of the
human biological constitution. At first, they are “forms without content,representing
merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action” (Jung, 1937/1959,
p. 48). With more repetition these forms begin to develop some content and to
emerge as relatively autonomous archetypes.
Archetypes
Archetypesare ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective uncon-
scious. They are similar to complexes in that they are emotionally toned collections
of associated images. But whereas complexes are individualized components of the
personal unconscious, archetypes are generalized and derive from the contents of the
collective unconscious.
Archetypes should also be distinguished from instincts. Jung (1948/1960a) de-
fined an instinctas an unconscious physical impulse toward action and saw the ar-
chetype as the psychic counterpart to an instinct. In comparing archetypes to in-
stincts, Jung (1975) wrote:
As animals of the same kind show the same instinctual phenomena all over the
world, man also shows the same archetypal forms no matter where he lives. As
animals have no need to be taught their instinctive activities, so man also
possesses his primordial psychic patterns and repeats them spontaneously,
independently of any kind of teaching. Inasmuch as man is conscious and capable
of introspection, it is quite possible that he can perceive his instinctual patterns in
the form of archetypal representations. (p. 152)In summary, both archetypes and instincts are unconsciously determined, and both
can help shape personality.
Archetypes have a biological basis but originate through the repeated experi-
ences of humans’ early ancestors. The potential for countless numbers of archetypes
exists within each person, and when a personal experience corresponds to the latent
primordial image, the archetype becomes activated.
The archetype itself cannot be directly represented, but when activated, it ex-
presses itself through several modes, primarily dreams, fantasies, and delusions.
Chapter 4 Jung: Analytical Psychology 105