The Compassionate Mind (Compassion Focused Therapy)

by Paul A. Gilbert

Now the idea of archetypes has been around for thousands of years, reaching back to Plato and, much later, to Kant. But probably the name most associated with the idea is Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961).6 Jung was the son of a pastor and a contemporary of Freud’s. While Freud focused on flows of libidinal energy, Jung suggested that the human mind is made up of a set of special systems that organize our motives, thinking, feelings, fantasies and behaviour around specific themes. He called these ‘archetypes’. They evolved, he said, because over time they helped us navigate through the basic tasks of life. These tasks included children seeking out and becoming attached to parents and obtaining care from them, and adults forming relationships with peers, joining and defending groups and group boundaries, becoming sexually interested and engaging in procreation, caring for their offspring, growing old, seeking meaning, becoming wise and coming to terms with death. Archetypes are like inner guides that orientate us towards certain things and motivate us in certain ways. So Jung thought that there can be many types of archetypes. For example, the mother archetype can orientate us towards caring figures and to respond to being cared for (mothered). The sexual archetypes, in the form of the anima (in the man) and animus (in the woman), provide a sense of the desires and behaviours towards the opposite sex. The persona influences our social representations and seeks to keep our reputa...