Apollo Archetype - Background

Background

Early in the 20th century, Carl Gustav Jung sought to find a word that could describe the innate patterns of behaviour that govern our lives. Thus he introduced the term ‘Archetypes’ into modern psychology. Jung described archetypes as distinct themes manifesting in the fantasies and behaviour of his patients, and found these same themes visibly rendered in the arts, religions, myths, architecture, and social customs of all peoples. Because he did not want the term ‘archetypes’ to become yet another intellectual abstraction, Jung advanced various mythic images to illustrate them. For instance, the Goddess Demeter is a presentation of the archetypal mother; Zeus an archetypal father; Apollo the archetypal intellectual, and so on. Jung went on to personify many archetypes by using general expressions such as 'The Great Mother’, 'Old Wise Man’, 'Shadow archetype’, etc. which have now become standard expressions in the field of Analytical Psychology. Jung writes “The fact that the unconscious spontaneously personifies is the reason why I have taken over these personifications in my terminology and formulated them in names”.