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What is an archetype?  An archetype is a personal energy that is expressed authentically in a social role.  For me this is very exciting.  It means we can be authentically who we are in our relationships.  Many psychotherapies seem to believe that the conflict between the individual and society is inevitable.   (Freud for instance spoke of the ‘reality principle’, that is the individual had to restrain their desires in accord with ‘reality’.  That reality could be transformed so that we lead a joyous life was not contemplated.) 

Archetypes offer the possibility of living a life that is both true to ourselves and to theat benefit of society as well.   Archetypal psychology sees that individuals functioning as they were meant to is part of what makes a healthy society.  For me this experience of who I am flowing into authentic action is the experience of joy.

Alot of archetypal psychology can be quite ‘airy-fairy’.  There is a sense of wizards exploring their power and rescuing the innocent aspect of their psyche, but less sense of doing the washing up.

I was fortunate that I found a book that brought archetypal psychology down to earth.  It is Awakening the Heroes Within by Carol S Peasrson.  It has 12 archetypes: the innocent, the orphan, the caregiver, the warrior, the lover, the destroyer, the seeker, the creator, the sage, the ruler, the magician and the fool.  Each of these archetypal energies is part of us.  However we each have one that tends to stay with us throughout our lives (for me it is the sage).

The book contains a quiz to help you identify which of the archetypes is dominant in your life at the moment.  (There is also a version, slightly up-dated, that you can do on line.)  It also contains a couple of exercises at the end of each chapter to help you get in touch with each archetype (these aren’t terribly good in my opinion.  The strength of the book is in the exploration of each archetype and how it applies in our life.).

I have gone back to this book over and over.  I discovered it more than 20 years ago and it hasn’t gotten stale.  It has offered a framework for my journey through life unlike any other – it combines both personal authenticity and social transformation: rare indeed.

I don’t want to suggest that it’s perfect.  It was written when the author was fairly young.  In the chapter on the sage she traces its development through our life course (as she does for each archetype) and stops at (US) college age.  She suggests that there may be stages of development after this.  (Just possible, don’t you think?)

How can we identify our own archetype?  There are many books that have lists to help you do this.  Awakening the Heroes Within is the best of these that I have found.  But there are other ways.

• Imagine your life as a myth (I have found it worthwhile to write it out – roughly, the point it to gain insight into who we are not produce a work of literature).  What would you name this myth.  Does it remind you of other myths you know of?  What name would you give your role in the myth?  Then reflect on the resources, strengths and weaknesses of this role.  What assistance does this role need?

• What is it that comes naturally to you?  What role or character in a myth or fairytale does this kind of activity.  (For this you may need to find what kind of energy you are using – there aren’t many myths about computer programmers, but there are lots about artists, craftsmen and artificers.)

• What is your dream job?  What would you name this in mythic terms.  The one job could have many archetypal energies.  An architect may be an artisan, building reliable shelter that people feel good about every time they come home.  The architect could be the artist making our world a more beautiful place.  They could be a healer who heals our relationship with the natural world.   They could be a priest making room for the spirit.  Or a community healer building spaces that invite people to come together hospitably.

For me I’m the sage – I tend to watch and observe what goes on.  And my drive is to do something useful with knowledge; while knowledge for its own sake is fun it doesn’t satisfy me for long.  A common problem for the sage is to be too detached and seeming elusive to others.  This is feedback that I have often received – “I want to know who you are Evan!”

When I have the time and space to be just me I love exploring ideas and how these could be used to build a better world.  I tend to teach stuff about thoughts and feelings and in the counselling I’ve done I tend to teach.  This is my natural approach.

My dream job is doing psychotherapy my own way: the emphasis being on understand, allowing the individual to come to their own sense of who they are and, in a sense, just getting out of the way and letting them get on with it.

For me discovering my archetype has given me the labels to communicate easily about what is most important to me.  Please let me know if you find this way of thinking useful for you (I realise it doesn’t appeal to everyone.)  Let me know what you think your archetype may be.  I look forward to your comments.



If you liked this post you may like these other ones.  These talk about specific archetypes.

The healer and the ruler

 The creator and destroyer

And these give a basic introduction to archetypal psychology and its biggest danger.

Introduction to Archetypal Psychology

The biggest danger of archetypal psychology

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Gestalt Therapy excitement and growth in the human personality by Perls, Hefferline and Goodman. First published 1951 (other editions since).

This book changed my life. I discovered it in my mid-twenties and what I learned from it has stayed a significant part of my life for 25 years. The exercises in the first half of the book caused me to examine my own experience in new ways and the theory in the second half of the book I found gripping, insightful and remarkable. This book was written more than fifty years ago and the book is still well in advance of much of the theory and practice in psychotherapy today in my opinion. (This is also true of the practitioners of gestalt therapy in my opinion.)

Gestalt Therapy is a new way of looking at our experience. It gives exercises so that the reader can experience this for themselves (the first half of the book) and the theory that forms the basis of this approach. Both parts make up a book of about 470 pages. I believe it is an adequate theory of psychotherapy and a good introduction to psychotherapy and how it can help you. To do either one of these is an achievement. To do both in the space of 470 pages is, I think, extraordinary.

The first part of the book (volume one) is a series of experiences divided into two sections. The first section, “Orienting the Self” consists of experiments in ‘getting in touch with where you are’. These are experiments in making our sensing and awareness keener. The second section, “Manipulating the Self” is about acting. The experiments are finding how we interfere with spontaneous and effective behaviour.

The experiments are clearly explained so that it is to know what to do. Each one is followed by the comments of a group of students who did the experiments, and the authors’ responses to the students comments. This amounts to a valuable to self-therapy course.

The second part of the book (volume two) lays out the theory gestalt therapy. This is the part that the book is famous for. The main reason being the style that it is written in. It is not an easy read. You need to pay attention to the words and what they are saying. (This style is perhaps the result of reflecting on how a book about awareness should be written.) It is best read in my experience a page (or even a paragraph) at a time. When you do this you are in for a treat I think. This is a book full of value. If you work at it this book provides great rewards. I have found all my efforts with it richly rewarded. All the time I have spent on it has been richly rewarded.

The second part has two major sections. The first being the way a person relates to the situation around them (Part 2 Reality, Human Nature and Society) and the second being a map of experience (called Theory of The Self).

A commonly voiced criticism of this part of the book is that it is patchy or not logically arranged. This is flat out wrong. If you pay attention to the words you will find that it is rigorously argued and is the outworking of the premises laid out in the introduction. I have tried mind-mapping my way through this second part of the book and it is almost impossible – I needed a section for almost every paragraph. It is extremely tightly and rigorously argued in my opinion.

The first section deals with the persons response in their environment. This means the ‘social’ as well as ‘natural’ environment. This puts it well ahead of most of the current theories of psychotherapy (the current revival of the idea that our experience somehow occurs only in our heads and our thinking is dealt with and critiqued on pp.255-289). They also deal with the positive expression of anger (pp.333-352) – it is still usual for a writer to speak of anger as a ‘negative emotion’, often in the same place as people say that emotions are neither good nor bad!

The second section of part two deals lays out a simple map of experience and the problems of neurosis are mapped onto this. For me this is an adequate theory of the therapy of neurosis.

If you are wanting a book that is a theory and practical approach to psychotherapy I think this is the best book. As long as you are willing to put in work. A much more readable book that covers the same kind of experiments is Risking Being Alive by James Oldham and others (it’s major value is as a readable introduction to Gestalt Theory in my opinion).

Over the next few weeks I will be doing a series of posts on what I have learned from this book. So, there’s more to come if this doesn’t give you a good enough idea about this book.

If you are new to my blog, welcome and thanks for visiting. I have posted the text of a free report called “It’s Not About Success” – about finding satisfaction through living from the core of who we are. (It’s fairly long for a blog – 17,000 words – I plan to turn it into a PDF and use it to promote a course I will be running on living an authentic life.) If you would like to read it you can click on this link or click on the link in the side bar under “Site Info”. I would be very grateful for any and all comments that you would like to make.

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