A Primer on Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious for Fiction Writers by Carolyn Kaufman, Psy.D. owner - Archetype Writing: The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Psychology Part I of the Archetypes Series A lot of modern theory on what makes a good story is based on the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, both of whom were fascinated with mythology and religion. Several writing books have capitalized the Jung/Campbell concepts, most notably Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Others include Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters and The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes and Heroines by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, and Sue Viders. So where did Jung come up with this archetype stuff, anyhow? Jung was Sigmund Freud’s protege, but when Freud, who was Jewish, fled to London after the Nazi occupation, Jung realized that he didn’t agree with a lot of what Freud had taught him. While Freud was obsessed with sexual development and fantasies, Jung was noticing that people around the world told stories about the same kinds of heroes fighting the same kinds of battles with the same kinds of villains. In an attempt to understand what could possibly link societies that had had no contact for thousands and more likely millions of years, Jung developed the concept of the collective unconscious. The Collective Unconscious and Quantum Physics The collective unconscious is like psychic DNA: it contains “inherited” psychic material that links us not only to other humans in the present but also to our ancestors from the past. According to Jung’s theory, though each of us appears to function independently, in actuality we’re all tapped into the same global mind. Part of what makes the idea so intriguing is that other people have come up with similar concepts, albeit from different perspectives. For example, neurologist Karl Pribram and Manhattan Project physicist David Bohm’s holonomic brain theory is rooted in quantum physics. Holonomic Brain Theory: The Collective Unconscious as a Hologram Essentially, if a holographic image is cut up into pieces, each of the pieces still holds the whole hologram. (So if you had a hologram of an apple and cut it into pieces, you’d just have a bunch of smaller apples. Information about the image is in all different parts of the hologram.) Empirical research has demonstrated that the brain is the same way: memories aren’t localized (stored in one place); rather, they’re spread across the associative areas of the brain. Associative areas aren’t set aside for particular functions like speech production, language comprehension, and memory encoding; instead, they’re responsible for all “miscellaneous” tasks. If you cut out a piece of the brain (don’t try this at home, even if your name is Hannibal), say because you’re removing a tumor, the patient never forgets Aunt Cindy but remembers Uncle Dave. The patient may temporarily or permanently lose certain functions, since some functions are dependent on a particular part of the brain, but assuming you don’t remove the entire cerebral cortex (the gray stuff most people think of as the brain), knowledge can’t be cut out. Each associative area seems to contain echoes of all of the information. So if your brain acts like a self-contained hologram, the reasoning goes, then isn’t it possible your consciousness is actually a piece of a much larger hologram of overall human consciousness; that is, of the collective unconscious? The Archetypes Jung believed that the way to learn what was in the collective unconscious was to watch for the appearance of archetypes: patterns that spontaneously appear over and over around the world. The most obvious place to find archetypes is in stories. The righteous warrior, the smart-cracking sidekick, the villain who must be overcome, and the love interest are all archetypes. Plot patterns can also be archetypal

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