An
archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated. Archetypes are often used in myths and
storytellingStorytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...
across different cultures.
In
psychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.
In
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, archetypes since
PlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
at least, refer to ideal forms of the perceived or sensible
thingsAn object in philosophy is a technical term often used in contrast to the term subject. Consciousness is a state of cognition that includes the subject, which can never be doubted as only it can be the one who doubts, and some object or objects that may or may not have real existence without...
or types.
In the analysis of personality, the term
archetype is often broadly used to refer to
- a stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
—personality type observed multiple times, especially an oversimplificationThe fallacy of the single cause, also known as causal oversimplification, is a fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.Often after a tragedy...
of such a type,
- an epitome
An epitome is a summary or miniature form; an instance that represents a larger reality, also used as a synonym for embodiment....
—personality type exemplified, especially the "greatest" such example, or
- a literary term to express details.
Archetype refers to a generic version of a personality. In this sense "mother figure" may be considered an archetype and may be identified in various characters with otherwise distinct (non-generic) personalities.
Archetypes are likewise supposed to have been present in
folkloreFolklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and literature for thousands of years, including prehistoric artwork. The use of archetypes to illuminate personality and literature was advanced by
Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
early in the 20th century, who suggested the existence of universal contentless forms that channel experiences and emotions, resulting in recognizable and typical patterns of behavior with certain probable outcomes. Archetypes are cited as important to both ancient mythology and modern narratives, as argued by
Joseph CampbellJoseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
in works such as
The Hero With a Thousand FacesThe Hero with a Thousand Faces is a non-fiction book, and seminal work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell...
.
Etymology
First attested in English in 1540s, the word
archetype derives from the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
archetypum, the
latinisationLatinisation is the practice of rendering a non-Latin name in a Latin style. It is commonly met with for historical personal names, with toponyms, or for the standard binomial nomenclature of the life sciences. It goes further than Romanisation, which is the writing of a word in the Latin alphabet...
of the
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
noun ἀρχέτυπον (
archetupon) and
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
ἀρχέτυπος (
archetupos), meaning "first-moulded", which is a compound of ἀρχή (
archē,) "beginning, origin" + τύπος (
tupos), amongst others "pattern, model, type".
Pronunciation note: The "ch" in archetype is a
transliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
of the Greek chi and is most commonly articulated in English as a "k".
Origins
The origins of the archetypal hypothesis date back as far as
PlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
.
JungCarl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...
himself compared archetypes to Platonic
ideasPlato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...
. Plato's
ideas were pure mental forms, that were imprinted in the soul before it was born into the world. They were collective in the sense that they embodied the fundamental characteristics of a thing rather than its specific peculiarities.
The Platonist
JewishJudaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
philosopher
PhiloPhilo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria....
of
AlexandriaAlexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
used the term to describe the
Imago DeiThe Image of God is a concept and theological doctrine within the Abrahamic religions which asserts that human beings are created in God's image and therefore have inherent value independent of their utility or function.-Biblical description:...
, and the
GallicGaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
Christian theologian
IrenaeusSaint Irenaeus , was Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire . He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology...
of
LyonLyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
s used the term to describe the act of
CreationCreationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
.
Jungian archetypes
The concept of psychological archetypes was advanced by the Swiss psychiatrist
Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, c. 1919. In Jung's psychological framework archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a
complexA complex is a core pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme, such as power or status...
, e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through
evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
.
Jung outlined five main archetypes;
- The Self
The Self in Jungian theory is one of the archetypes. It signifies the coherent whole, unified consciousness and unconscious of a person - 'the totality of the psyche'. The Self, according to Jung, is realised as the product of individuation, which in Jungian view is the process of integrating one's...
, the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuationIndividuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...
- The Shadow
In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. It is one of the three most recognizable archetypes, the others being the anima and animus and the persona...
, the opposite of the egoThe four ego functions postulated by C.G. Jung in Psychological Types are Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, and Intuition.Jung suggested that people start life developing one of these four ego functions, and at various stages throughout their life may develop others, the undeveloped ones having less...
image, often containing qualities with which the ego does not identify, but which it possesses nonetheless
- The Anima
The anima and animus, in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, as opposed to both the theriomorphic and inferior-function of the shadow archetypes, as well as the abstract symbol sets that formulate the archetype of the...
, the feminine image in a man's psyche; or:
- The Animus, the masculine image in a woman's psyche
- The Persona
The Persona, for Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world - 'a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual'....
, how we present to the world, is another of 'the subpersonalities, the complexes' and usually protects the Ego from negative images (acts like a mask)
Although archetypes can take on innumerable forms, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images:
- The Child
The Child archetype, is an important Jungian archetype in Jungian psychology, first suggested by Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Recently, author Caroline Myss suggested Child, amongst four the Survival Archetypes , present in all of us...
- The Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
- The Great Mother
The Great Mother refers to the concept of the mother goddess, including:*Great Mother, in the Mahayana and Vajrayana refers to Prajnaparamita, and the wisdom of the Madhyamaka...
- The Wise old man
The wise old man is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character...
or Sage
- The Wise Old Woman/Man
The Wise Old Woman and the Wise Old Man are archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. 'The "wise old woman"...[or] helpful "old woman" is a well-known symbol in myths and fairy tales for the wisdom of the eternal female nature'...
, archetypes of the collective unconsciousCollective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience...
- The Trickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
or Fox
- The Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
or SatanSatan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
- The Scarecrow
A scarecrow is, essentially, a decoy, though traditionally, a human figure dressed in old clothes and placed in fields by farmers to discourage birds such as crows or sparrows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.-History:In Kojiki, the oldest surviving book in Japan...
- The Mentor
In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.When Athena visited Telemachus she...
- Rebirth
-Spiritual:* Reincarnation, the migration of a deceased person's spirit to a newborn body** Rebirth * Baptism, a Christian ritual representing spiritual cleansing* Resurrection of the Dead-Music:* Rebirth Brass Band* Rebirth...
Jung also outlined what he called
archetypes of transformation. Not personality constructs, they are situations, places, ways and means that symbolize the transformation in question. These archetypes exist primarily as energy - and are useful in organizational development, personal and organizational change management, and extensively used in place branding.
In pedagogy
Clifford MayesClifford Mayes is an American professor in the Brigham Young University McKay School of Education.A Jungian scholar, Mayes has produced the first book-length studies in English on the pedagogical applications of Jungian and neo-Jungian psychology, which is based on the work of Carl Gustav Jung ....
(born July 15, 1953), professor in the
Brigham Young UniversityBrigham Young University is a private university located in Provo, Utah. It is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and is the United States' largest religious university and third-largest private university.Approximately 98% of the university's 34,000 students...
McKay School of Education, has developed what he has termed
archetypal pedagogyArchetypal pedagogy is a theory of education which was developed Clifford Mayes. It is in the Jungian tradition and directly related to analytical psychology.- History :...
. Mayes' work also aims at promoting what he calls archetypal reflectivity in teachers; this is a means of encouraging teachers to examine and work with psychodynamic issues, images, and assumptions as those factors affect their pedagogical practices. Archetypal reflectivity, which draws not only upon Jungian psychology but
transpersonalThe term transpersonal is often used to refer to psychological categories that transcend the normal features of ordinary ego-functioning. That is, stages of psychological growth, or stages of consciousness, that move beyond the rational andprecede the mystical...
psychology generally, offers an avenue for teachers to probe the spiritual dimensions of teaching and learning in non-dogmatic terms.
In USA, Mayes' two most recent works,
Inside Education: Depth Psychology in Teaching and Learning (2007) and
The Archetypal Hero's Journey in Teaching and Learning: A Study in Jungian Pedagogy (2008), incorporate the psychoanalytic theories of
Heinz KohutHeinz Kohut was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches.-Early life:Kohut was born...
(particularly Kohut's notion of the selfobject) and the
object relations theoryObject relations theory is a psychodynamic theory within psychoanalytic psychology. The theory describes the process of developing a mind as one grows in relation to others in the environment....
of
Ronald FairbairnWilliam Ronald Dodds Fairbairn was a Scottish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and a central figure in the development of the object relations theory of psychoanalysis.-Life:He was born in Edinburgh in 1889...
and D.W. Winnicott. Some of Mayes' work in
curriculum theoryCurriculum theory is the theory of the development and enactment of curriculum. Within the broad field of curriculum studies, it is both a historical analysis of curriculum and a way of viewing current educational curriculum and policy decisions...
, especially
Seven Curricular Landscapes: An Approach to the Holistic Curriculum (2003) and
Understanding the Whole Student: Holistic Multicultural Education (2007), is concerned with
holistic educationHolistic education is a philosophy of education based on the premise that each person finds identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to humanitarian values such as compassion and peace. Holistic education aims to call forth from people...
.
Archetypes in literature and art
Archetypes can be found in nearly all forms of
literatureLiterature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, with their motifs being predominantly rooted in
folkloreFolklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
.
William Butler YeatsWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
completed an automatic writing with his wife (Georgie) Hyde-Lees. This book
A VisionA Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka, privately published in 1925, was a book-length study of various philosophical, historical, astrological, and poetic topics by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats...
contains an interesting mapping and list of 28 archetypes by these characters' will and fate.
TarotThe tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
cards depict a system of archetypes used for divination of a persons' fate or story.
Also the No plays of Japan, the characters skillfully depicted with exaggerated expression and elaborate costume clearly portray a system of archetypes.
William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
is known for creating many archetypal characters that hold great social importance in his native land.
FalstaffSir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
, the bawdy, rotund comic knight;
RomeoRomeo is one of the fictional protagonists in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Romeo is the son of old Montague and his wife, who secretly loves and marries Juliet, a member of the rival House of Capulet...
and
JulietJuliet is one of the title characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the other being Romeo. She is the daughter of old Capulet, head of the house of Capulet. The story has a long history that precedes Shakespeare himself....
, the ill-fated ("
star-crossed"Star-crossed" or "star-crossed lovers" is a phrase describing a pair of lovers whose relationship is often thwarted by outside forces. The term encompasses other meanings, but originally means the pairing is being "thwarted by a malign star" or that the stars are working against the relationship...
") lovers;
Richard IIKing Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...
, the hero who dies with honor; and many others. Although Shakespeare based many of his characters on existing archetypes from
fableA fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s and
mythThe term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
s (e.g., Romeo and Juliet on Arthur Brooke's
Romeus and Juliet), Shakespeare's characters stand out as original by their contrast against a complex, social literary landscape. For instance, in
The TempestThe Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
, Shakespeare borrowed from a manuscript by William Strachey that detailed an actual shipwreck of the
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
-bound 17th-century English sailing vessel
Sea VentureThe Sea Venture was a 17th-century English sailing ship, the wrecking of which in Bermuda is widely thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest...
in 1609 on the islands of Bermuda. Shakespeare also borrowed heavily from a speech by Medea in
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's
Metamorphoses in writing
ProsperoProspero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
's renunciative speech; nevertheless, the unique combination of these elements in the character of Prospero created a new interpretation of the sage magician as that of a carefully plotting hero, quite distinct from the wizard-as-advisor archetype of
MerlinMerlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in the Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures...
or
GandalfGandalf is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In these stories, Gandalf appears as a wizard, member and later the head of the order known as the Istari, as well as leader of the Fellowship of the Ring and the army of the West...
. Both of these are likely derived from priesthood authority archetypes, such as Celtic
DruidA druid was a member of the priestly class in Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, and possibly other parts of Celtic western Europe, during the Iron Age....
s, or perhaps Biblical figures like
AbrahamAbraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
,
MosesMoses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
, etc.; or in the case of Gandalf, the
NorseNorse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...
figure
OdinOdin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....
.
Certain common methods of character depiction employed in dramatic performance rely on the pre-existence of literary archetypes.
Stock characterA Stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes,...
s used in theatre or film are based on highly generic literary archetypes. A
pasticheA pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
is an imitation of an archetype or prototype in order to pay
homageHomage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
to the original creator.
Sheri Tepper's novel
Plague of Angels contains archetypical villages, essentially human zoos where a wide variety of archetypal people are kept, including heroes, orphans, oracles, ingénues, bastards, young lovers, poets, princesses, martyrs, and fools.
Similarly, the song "Atlantis" by
DonovanDonovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
(a 1960 singer/songwriter) mentions twelve archetypal characters leaving the sinking Atlantis and spreading to the far corners of the world to bring civilization, though only five of the twelve are mentioned in the song:
Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist, the magician,
And the other so-called Gods of our legends,
Though Gods they were.
The superhero genre is also frequently cited as emblematic of archetypal literature.
The young, flawed, and brooding antihero [Spider-Man] became the most widely imitated archetype in the superheroA superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
genre since the appearance of Superman.
—Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The transformation of Youth Culture in America 212
—Superman on the Couch by Danny FingerothDaniel "Danny" Fingeroth is an American comic book writer and editor, better known for a long stint as group editor of the Spider-Man books at Marvel Comics.-Career:...
151
See also
- Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism
For the Ascending reticular activating system, see Reticular activating systemThe Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism is an encyclopedic collection of archetypal images consisting of photographs of works of art, ritual images, and artifacts of sacred traditions and contemporary art from...
- Character (arts)
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
- Cliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...
- Mental model
A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about his or her own acts and their consequences...
- Ostensive definition
An ostensive definition conveys the meaning of a term by pointing out examples. This type of definition is often used where the term is difficult to define verbally, either because the words will not be understood or because of the nature of the term...
- Perennial philosophy
Perennial philosophy is the notion of the universal recurrence of philosophical insight independent of epoch or culture, including universal truths on the nature of reality, humanity or consciousness .-History:The idea of a perennial philosophy has great...
- Personification
- Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
- Simulacrum
Simulacrum , from the Latin simulacrum which means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god...
- Theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...
- Wounded healer
Wounded healer is an archetypal dynamic that psychologist Carl Jung used to describe a phenomenon that may take place in the relationship between analyst and analysand: 'Jung...warned of its dangers as well as its necessity'....