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USING ARCHETYPES IN YOUR STORIES
Writing Better Romantic Relationships
This series looks at the Anima/Animus archetype, which is most often seen in romantic relationships, and how to use it to create more compelling romantic relationships, regardless of genre. Looks at what the anima and animus are, how they’re formed, and why fiction writers need to understand them. There’s also some and what makes love grow - and how happily ever afters really work.
Creating Better Antagonists
FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
INDIVIDUATION. Jung believed that a human being is inwardly whole, but that most of us have lost touch with important parts of our selves. Through listening to the messages of our dreams and waking imagination, we can contact and reintegrate our different parts. The goal of life is individuation, the process of coming to know, giving expression to, and harmonizing the various components of the psyche. If we realize our uniqueness, we can undertake a process of individuation and tap into our true self. Each human being has a specific nature and calling which is uniquely his or her own, and unless these are fulfilled through a union of conscious and unconscious, the person can become sick.
STORY. Jung concluded that every person has a story, and when derangement occurs, it is because the personal story has been denied or rejected. Healing and integration comes when the person discovers or rediscovers his or her own personal story.
NEUROSIS. Jung had a hunch that what passed for normality often was the very force which shattered the personality of the patient. That trying to be “normal”, when this violates our inner nature, is itself a form of pathology. In the psychiatric hospital, he wondered why psychiatrists were not interested in what their patients had to say.
MYSTERY. For Jung life was a great mystery. We know and understand very little of it. He never hesitated to say, “I don’t know.” Always admitted when he came to the end of his understanding.
THE UNCONSCIOUS. A basic tenet: All products of the unconscious are symbolic and can be taken as guiding messages. What is the dream or fantasy leading the person toward? The unconscious will live, and will move us, whether we like it or not.
Once quoted as Freud’s ‘spiritual heir’, Carl Jung was primed to become one of the leading men within the Psychoanalytical movement. After working extensively with Freud, Jung decided he could no longer support Freud’s sexual theories regarding the unconscious. Carl Jung would take his own path and form his own theories regarding the unconscious. Taking elements from religion, history and mythology, Carl Jung was able to form the basis for Analytical Psychology.
Carl Jung was born in 1875 in Switzerland. Jung father, a priest, worked in the Swiss Reformed Church, while his mom was from a wealthy family. Jung was estranged from his mother, who was eccentric and spent much of her time alone. As a young child, Jung felt he has two distinct personalities; one as a young child of his era, the other as a personality from the 18th century. Jung started to study psychiatry, where he decided he wanted to focus his life. He became friends in Freud and worked with him, but fell out of favor for not embracing Freud’s sexual components in his theories. Jung Analytical Psychology would include components not otherwise seem from the other theorists of his time.
As a child, Jung felt humans were a part of a larger unconscious which gave each person knowledge not otherwise gathered through learning. This unconscious was a collective network all people are a part of. Jung coined the term Collective Unconscious, where future and past events influence a person’s present. As humans, we are always learning and growing, thus we must look towards the past as well as future to fully develop our potential. Jung stated the collective unconscious as, “the deepest level of the psyche containing the accumulation of inherited experiences of human and prehuman species”.
While it is important to focus on the positive aspects of personality, Jung felt the dark side of the personality must also be explored. This dark side, known as the shadow, includes all the negative and self centered portions of our personality. By understanding the shadow, and realizing the impact it has, one can understand all aspects of their personality to come to a complete whole. One must not embrace the shadow, but understand it.
The collective unconscious is divided into different parts called archetypes. These archetypes include the persona, animus, anima and the shadow. The persona is the mask worn in public situations. This is the person we present to the world. The animus and the anima represent the male and female aspects of personality and occur in both sexes. The shadow, as discussed earlier, is all the negative aspects of the personality, and is also the strongest.
Jung believed, like Freud, dreams are methods of viewing the unconscious. However, Jung felt dreams had two functions, to prepare people for future possibilities and to balance the opposite forces within a person. By looking at one’s dreams, a person can see where they wish to go in the future. Dreams also help people come to terms with darker aspects of their personality.
Carl Jung offered a different take on classical psychoanalysis which included spiritual and historic components. Jung allowed psychologists to look at greater aspects of a person besides impulses, drives, and past events. Jung’s Analytical Psychology is still in use today.
