Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

by Bernardo Kastrup

As such, insofar as we can know them, the archetypes are defined but abstract, have form but no content, just as the crystal’s lattice structure before the crystal actually forms. They are tendencies, dispositions, even probabilities —as Jung posits when attempting to link the archetypes to the nondeterministic behavior of nature at a quantum scale (cf. AA: 70)—not experiences in and of themselves. Indeed, one could liken the archetypes to the intrinsic natural modes of excitation of a structure: they are the patterns according to which the psyche as a whole—as determined mostly by the structure of the foundational collective unconscious— naturally tends to ‘move,’ ‘vibrate,’ behave or express itself, because of what it intrinsically is. This is analogous to how a guitar string naturally tends to vibrate according to a certain note and not others, given its effective length and elasticity. Just as the notes produced by guitar strings exist only abstractly, in pure potentiality, unless and until the string is actually plucked, the natural, archetypal modes of excitation of the psyche are only discernible in actual experience, not in and of themselves.