WRITTEN REPORT OF GROUP 5

Archetype: Origin and Definition

From the Greek word arkhetupon ‘something moulded first
as a model’, from arkhe- ‘primitive’ + tupos ‘a model’.

Have you ever pondered the existence of similarities

between events, characters, and situations in movies or other
literary works, despite seemingly impossible factors such as
geographical differences? The concept of archetypes plays a
significant role as it is a universal model that has a profound
impact on human behavior.

According to Jung, the human mind has innate

characteristics “imprinted” on it as a result of evolution. These
universal predispositions stem from our ancestral past. Fear of
the dark, or of snakes and spiders might be examples, and it is
interesting that this idea has recently been revived in the theory
of prepared conditioning (Seligman, 1971).

However, more important than isolated tendencies are those

aspects of the collective unconscious that have developed into
separate sub-systems of the personality. Jung (1947) called these
ancestral memories and images, archetypes.
Carl Gustav Jung
Swiss psychologist

Carl Jung was an early supporter of Freud because of their

shared interest in the unconscious. He was a member of the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (formerly known as the Wednesday
Psychological Society).

However, in 1912, Jung publicly criticized Freud’s theory of

the Oedipus complex and his emphasis on infantile sexuality. The
following year this led to an irrevocable split between them and
Jung went on to develop his own version of psychoanalytic theory.

Theory of the Libido

Jung (1948) disagreed with Freud regarding the role of sexuality.

He believed the libido was not just sexual energy, but instead
generalized psychic energy.

Theory of the Unconscious

1. The Ego - it represents the conscious mind as it comprises

the thoughts, memories, and emotions a person is aware of.
The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and
continuity.
2. The Unconscious Mind - Jung (1921, 1933) emphasized the
importance of the unconscious in relation to personality.
However, he proposed that the unconscious consists of two
layers.

● The personal unconscious contains temporality forgotten

information and well as repressed memories (same as
Freud’s).

An important feature of the personal unconscious are

called complexes, which is a collection of thoughts, feelings,
attitudes, and memories that focus on a single concept.

- The more elements attached to the complex, the

greater its influence on the individual.
- The personal unconscious was much nearer the surface
than Freud suggested.
- Less concerned with repressed childhood experiences.
It is the present and the future, which in his view was
the key to both the analysis of neurosis and its
treatment.
 3. The Collective unconscious is a universal version of the
personal unconscious, holding mental patterns, or memory
traces, which are shared with other members of the human
species (Jung, 1928). These ancestral memories, which Jung
called archetypes, are represented by universal themes in
various cultures, as expressed through literature, art, and
dreams.

The Four Carl Jung Archetypes

Carl Jung identified four main archetypes—the persona, the

shadow, the anima or animus, and the self. These are a result of
collective, shared ancestral memories that may persist in art,
literature, and religion but aren’t evident to the eye. These
recurring themes help us understand the Jungian archetypes.

These Jungian archetypes represent a journey from an

unconscious state to individuation—a merging of the conscious
and the unconscious.

1. The Persona

The Jungian persona defines the different masks we wear in

a social context. Who we are with our family is different from who
we are at work. Our persona takes different forms based on our
culture, upbringing, and general environment. The word ‘persona’
has been adopted by various groups. In literature, a persona
refers to fictional characters and in marketing, a persona is the
ideal user of an organization’s offerings. Social media has willed
us to create different personas to appeal to different audiences.
With its origin in theatrical masks, a persona reflects how we
adapt to our surroundings—whether to fit in or protect ourselves.

In simple terms, the persona (or mask) is the outward face

we present to the world. It conceals our real self and Jung
describes it as the “conformity” archetype. This is the public face
or role a person presents to others as someone different to who
we really are (like an actor).

2. The Shadow

Jung believed that humans had a light side and a dark side. The
dark side is what we choose to repress—this is our shadow. There
are aspects of our personality we don’t appreciate or aren’t even
aware of. They reside in our unconscious state—this was built on
Sigmund Freud’s ‘unconscious mind’ based on repressed
memories and thoughts realized in the form of automatic
responses. Biases and prejudices stem from our shadows. They
arise unconsciously, without warning. For example, in the
workplace, we may think we’re better than most, unintentionally
looking down on others.
 3. The Anima Or The Animus

Culture, upbringing, and experiences shape our perception of the

world. Jung believed that these perceptions give way to the ideal
man or woman within us. The anima or woman and the animus or
man are reflections of the opposite gender—the ideal. The anima
represents femininity in a man’s psyche while the animus
represents masculinity in a woman’s psyche. Society often forces
us to suppress these opposing constructs.

In other words, the mirror image of our biological sex, that

is, the unconscious feminine side in males and the masculine
tendencies in women.

Each sex manifests the attitudes and behavior of the other

by virtue of centuries of living together. The psyche of a woman
contains masculine aspects (the animus archetype), and the
psyche of a man contains feminine aspects (the anima
archetype).

Some examples of anima and animus are Eve from the

Garden of Eden and Tarzan as the robust male archetype,
respectively.
 4. The Self

The self provides a sense of unity in experience. For Jung,

the ultimate aim of every individual is to achieve a state of
selfhood (similar to self-actualisation), and in this respect, Jung
(like Erikson) is moving in the direction of a more humanist
orientation.

The ego merges with the conscious and unconscious states

to give rise to the self. The self is the whole representing Jungian
individuation. Individuation is similar to individuality, in which
each person is unique and there are no two personalities that are
the same. Unique experiences throughout a person’s life lead to
individuation. Respecting the individual, weighing each person’s
strengths and weaknesses in isolation, and customizing marketing
efforts to suit individual users is a reflection of this.

Other Archetypes

Jung suggested that the number of existing archetypes was

not static or fixed. Instead, many different archetypes may
overlap or combine, creating new archetypes such as the father
(a stern, powerful authority figure), the hero (a champion,
defender, or rescuer), and the trickster (a deceiver, liar, and
troublemaker).
Archetypical Figures

Jung acknowledged that the four main archetypes can

intermingle and give rise to 12 archetypical figures (also known
as archetypical images). These include:

● Ruler-The Ruler wants control and wants to create a

successful community/society.
● Creator/artist-The creator is a kind of creative and
imaginative character. They can be an artist, inventor, writer,
or musician, and are generally visionary. They seek to
express themselves, their visions.
● Sage-is a truth seeker who uses their intelligence to analyze
the world.
● Innocent-is an optimistic character whose worst fear is doing
something bad.
● Explorer-wants to experience new things and be free. They
often seek self discovery through a physical journey.
● Rebel-the line from rebellion to crime, rebel believes the
rules are meant to be broken wants to change something
that's isn't working.
● Hero-They are a warrior, rescuer, soldier, team player.
● Wizard-is a visionary who understands the way the world
works. They fear accidental negative consequences and love
finding win solutions to problems.
 ● Jester-is a character who wants to enjoy their life and have a
good time, They might also be portrayed as a fool, a
trickster, or a comedian.
● Everyman- is meant to serve as a reminder of the
importance of leading a virtuous life and seeking in the face
of death.
● Lover-is a loyal companion who fears being unwanted or
unloved. They’re passionate and committed, They might be
portrayed as a partner, friend.
● Caregiver-typically a parent character who cares for the
protagonist in some way. They desire to protect and care.

The Jungian Archetypes in Harry Potter and the

Sorcerer’s Stone.

Archetype characteristics

•Unusual circumstances of birth; sometimes in danger

• Leaves family or land and lives with others
• An event, sometimes traumatic, leads to adventure or quest
• Hero has a special weapon only he can wield
•Hero always has supernatural help
•Hero must prove himself many times while on an adventure
•The Journey and Unhealable Wound
The Hero: Harry Potter

He displays many heroic qualities throughout the series – bravery,

courage, endurance, strength, determination, morality and a
determination to fight for the cause of good no matter the cost.

The Jester: Fred And George Weasley

The Jester or Trickster is often the comic relief. They make the
audience laugh and relieve the tension otherwise felt in the Hero's
Journey. In the case of Fred and George, that means playing
pranks, cracking jokes, and developing Weasley's Wizarding
Wheezes, all while encouraging their peers to rebel against an
oppressive authority.

The Ruler: Cornelius Fudge

Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic for much of Harry's

formative years is just that. His influence on the community
forces denial of Voldemort's existence and sees those who believe
in Harry act in secret.
The Rebel/Villain: Voldemort

He is the antagonist to Harry’s protagonist. In many ways, this

archetype makes him the opposite of the hero character – where
the hero acts for good he acts for evil, where the hero represents
the light he represents the darkness.

The Mentor/Sage: Albus Dumbledore

One of the richest mentor characters in the history of

middle-grade fiction must be Albus Dumbledore, whose steady
guiding hand is a powerful argument for the premise mentioned
above. When all the wizards around him refuse to speak
Voldemort's name in favor of the much darker "He who must not
be named," Dumbledore counsels Harry to do differently,
recognizing both the power of fear and the need for Harry to not
give in to it.

The Caregiver: Molly Weasley

Molly is not an active participant in the Hero's journey until about
halfway into the series, but she is there to provide Harry with a
comforting environment, and a family in which everyone gets
fairly disciplined instead of targeted. She helps give Harry hope
and purpose, giving him a window into what he's fighting for.

ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM

Based on Jung’s psychology, searches texts for collective

motifs of the human psyche, which are held to be common to
different historical periods and languages. These archetypes
represent primordial images of the human unconscious which
have retained their structures in various cultures and epochs. It is
through primordial images that universal archetypes are
experienced and more importantly, that the unconscious is
revealed. Archetypes such as shadow, fire, snake, paradise
garden, hell, mother figure, etc. constantly surface in myth and
literature as a limited number of basic patterns of psychic images
which lend themselves to a structural model of explanation.
Various cultures, religions, myths, and literature have recourse to
primordial images or archetypes which like a subconscious
language express human fears and hopes. A Jungian analysis
perceives the death-rebirth archetype (Frazer’s) as a symbolic
expression of a process taking place not in the world but in the
mind. That process is the return of the go to the unconscious – a
kind of temporary death of the ego – and its re-emergence, or
rebirth, from the unconscious.

Northrop Frye
Canadian literary critic and mythologist

According to Frye, the whole body of literary works of any

society constitutes a self-contained, autonomous universe. He
classifies this literary universe into four categories or mythoi,
which are the plot forms or organizing structural principles. These
mythoi correspond to the four seasons of the natural world”
comedy corresponds to spring, romance to summer, a tragedy to
autumn, and satire to winter. His view of life and of literature are
one and the same: life, structured as concrete universals, is made
available in a heightened form in literature.

Frye’s view of literature is that it is a ‘reservoir of potential

values.’ He holds myths as the conventional structures in
literature. Myths are the units that form the organizing principle
of literary work. In other words, literature is reconstructed
mythology. In using the term ‘structure’ in several related senses,
Frye anticipated structuralism in literary criticism. The concept of
‘vraisemblablisation’ of the structuralists has close affinities with
Frye’s theory. Frye’s view of literature ‘as a total order of words’
and that works of literature are created out of literature
anticipates the structuralist view of intertextuality. Only in the
case of Frye, coherence is to be achieved by conformity, whereas
for the structuralists it is through a play of difference. Frye
restricts the association with other texts to mythological images
by which analogies and identities are established.

Claude Levi Strauss

French social anthropologist

Levi- Strauss looks at the similarity of myths from cultures

all over the world. He notices that cultures widely separated by
geography or time still have distinctly similar myths. He finds an
answer to this by looking not at the content of each myth, but at
its structure. While the specific characters and actions differ
greatly, Levi-Strauss argues that their structures are almost
identical.

Levi-Strauss insists that myth is a language because it has

to be told in order to exist. Myth, as language, consists of both
langue and parole, both the synchronic, ahistorical structure and
the specific diachronic details within that structure. Parole is a
specific unit or instance or event, that can only exist in linear
time. Langue, on the other hand, is the structure itself, which
doesn’t ever change, and can exist in the past, present, or future.
A myth can be altered, expanded, reduced, and paraphrased
without losing its basic shape or structure: (princess, prince,
stepmother, etc. ). No matter what details are added to the story,
the structure of relations among the units remains the same.

Levi-Strauss argues that, while myth as structure looks like

language as structure, it is actually different- it operates on a
higher and more complex level. Myth differs from language as
Saussure describes it because the basic units of myth are not
phonemes but what Levi-Strauss calls ‘mythemes’. A mytheme is
the ‘atom’ of a myth – the smallest irreducible unit that conveys
meaning. A structuralist would lay the mythemes out so that they
can be read both horizontally and vertically, diachronically and
synchronically, for the plot and for the theme. The story of the
myth exists on a vertical left-to-right axis; the themes of the
myth exist on a horizontal up-and-down axis. The relations
formed by any two of the mythemes in this array constitute the
basic structure of the myth. According to Levi-Strauss, the
significance of the myth is that it presents certain structural
relations, in the form of binary oppositions that are universal
concerns in all cultures.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
J.K Rowling

Ten-year-old Harry Potter is an orphan who lives in the

fictional London suburb of Little Whinging, Surrey, with the
Dursleys: his uncaring Aunt Petunia, loathsome Uncle Vernon,
and spoiled cousin Dudley. The Dursleys barely tolerate Harry,
and Dudley bullies him. One day Harry is astonished to receive a
letter addressed to him in the cupboard under the stairs (where
he sleeps). Before he can open the letter, however, Uncle Vernon
takes it. Letters for Harry subsequently arrive each day, in
increasing numbers, but Uncle Vernon tears them all up, and
finally, in an attempt to escape the missives, the Dursleys go to a
miserable shack on a small island. On Harry’s 11th birthday, a
giant named Hagrid arrives and reveals that Harry is a wizard and
that he has been accepted at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry. He also sheds light on Harry’s past, informing the
boy that his parents, a wizard and a witch, were killed by the evil
wizard Voldemort and that Harry acquired the lightning-bolt scar
on his forehead during the fatal confrontation.

Upon arrival at the school, the students are sorted into one
of four houses—Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin.
Harry ends up in Gryffindor, and during his eventful first year at
Hogwarts he becomes close friends with two other members of
the house, Ron Weasley, who comes from an old wizarding family,
and Hermione Granger, whose parents are Muggles (those who
are not magical). Harry also finds that he has an enemy in Draco
Malfoy (Slytherin). In addition, Harry’s prowess in flying on a
broomstick makes him a star of Gryffindor’s Quidditch team.
Hoping to get Harry and his friends into trouble, Draco tricks
them into leaving their rooms one night, a violation of school
rules. While trying to avoid being caught, they discover a
three-headed dog guarding a trapdoor. Harry gradually comes to
the conclusion that Professor Snape, who teaches Potions, dislikes
him intensely and is trying to get hold of whatever is behind the
trapdoor. Harry receives his father’s cloak of invisibility as a
Christmas gift, and, while exploring under the cloak’s cover, he
finds the Mirror of Erised, where he can see his parents. Later,
headmaster Albus Dumbledore explains that the mirror shows the
viewer’s deepest desire.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione deduce that the treasure under

the trapdoor is the Philosopher’s Stone, which can transform
metal into gold and can also confer immortality. They later
discover that Voldemort has been killing unicorns in the Forbidden
Forest and drinking their blood, another way to achieve
immortality. The trio comes to believe that Snape is in league
with the evil wizard. After learning that Hagrid revealed the secret
way to lull the three-headed dog to sleep to a suspicious stranger,
whom they believe to be either Snape or Voldemort, they are
certain that the Philosopher’s Stone is in danger. The three
classmates use the cloak of invisibility on a secret mission to get
the Stone themselves to keep it from Voldemort. After getting
past the dog and defeating various protective spells, Harry
reaches the room in which the Stone is hidden and is surprised to
find the perpetually nervous Professor Quirrell there. Quirrell fails
to figure out how to retrieve the Stone from the Mirror of Erised
(the final protective measure) and forces Harry to try. When
standing in front of the mirror, wishing only to protect the Stone
and not use it for himself, Harry feels the Stone’s weight in his
pocket but refuses to tell Quirrell that he has it. Quirrell unwraps
his turban, revealing Voldemort’s face on the back of his head.
Voldemort explains that he has been sharing Quirrell’s body until
he can get to the Stone and become fully alive again, and
Voldemort/Quirrell and Harry fight for possession of the Stone,
until Harry blacks out. He awakens in the infirmary and learns
that Dumbledore saved him, the Stone is to be destroyed, and
Voldemort escaped.