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object:4.01 - Introduction
book class:The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter




IV



THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
OF THE KORE



[These two studies were first published, under the respective titles "Zur Psycho-
logic des Kind-Archetypus" and "Zum psychologischen Aspekt dcr Kore-Figur," in
two small volumes-: Das gottliche Kind (Albae Vigiliae VI/VII, Amsterdam and
Leipzig, 1940) and Das gottliche Mddchen (same series, VIII/IX, 1941). Each vol-
ume contained a companion essay by K. Kerenyi. The two volumes were united,
with additional material by Professor Kerenyi, under the title Einfiihrung in das
Wesen der Mythologie (Amsterdam, Leipzig, and Zurich, 1941). This combined
volume was translated by R. F. C. Hull as Essays on a Science of Mythology (Bol-
lingen Series XXII; New York, 1949), of which the London (1950) edition was
titled Introduction to a Science of Mythology; the text of the two studies here
presented is a revision of that of 1949/50. The complete German volume was
published in a new edition in 1951. In 1963, the English version appeared in
Harper Torchbooks (New York; paperback), with the present Jung translation
and a revised Kerenyi translation Editors.]



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE



I. INTRODUCTION

*59 The author of the companion essay 1 on the mythology of
the "child" or the child god has asked me for a psychological
commentary on the subject of his investigations. I am glad to
accede to his request, although the undertaking seems to me no
small venture in view of the great significance of the child motif
in mythology. Kerenyi himself has enlarged upon the occur-
rence of this motif in Greece and Rome, with parallels drawn
from Indian, Finnish, 'and other sources, thus indicating that
the presentation of the theme would allow of yet further exten-
sions. Though a comprehensive description would contri bute
nothing decisive in principle, it would nevertheless produce an
overwhelming impression of the world-wide incidence and fre-
quency of the motif. The customary treatment of mythological
motifs so far in separate departments of science, such as phi-
lology, ethnology, the history of civilization, and comparative
religion, was not exactly a help to us in recognizing their uni-
versality; and the psychological problems raised by this univer-
sality could easily be shelved by hypotheses of migration. Con-
sequently Adolf Bastian's 2 ideas met with little success in their
day. Even then there was sufficient empirical material available
to permit far-reaching psychological conclusions, but the neces-
sary premises were lacking. Although the psychological knowl-
edge of that time included myth-formation in its province-
witness Wundt's Volkerpsychologie it was not in a position to
demonstrate this same process as a living function actually pres-
ent in the psyche of civilized man, any more than it could under-
stand mythological motifs as structural elements of the psyche.
True to its history, when psychology was metaphysics first of

1 Kerenyi, "The Primordial Child in Primordial Times."

2 Der Mensch in der Geschichte (i860).

151



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

all, then the study of the senses and their functions, and then of
the conscious mind and its functions, psychology identified its
proper subject with the conscious psyche and its contents and
thus completely overlooked the existence of a nonconscious
psyche. Although various philosophers, among them Leibniz,
Kant, and Schelling, had already pointed very clearly to the
problem of the dark side of the psyche, it was a physician who
felt impelled, from his scientific and medical experience, to
point to the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche.
This was C. G. Carus, 3 the authority whom Eduard von Hart-
mann followed. In recent times it was, once again, medical psy-
chology that approached the problem of the unconscious with-
out philosophical preconceptions. It became clear from many
separate investigations that the psychopathology of the neuroses
and of many psychoses cannot dispense with the hypothesis of a
dark side of the psyche, i.e., the unconscious. It is the same with
the psychology of dreams, which is really the terra intermedia
between normal and pathological psychology. In the dream, as
in the products of psychoses, there are numberless interconnec-
tions to which one can find parallels only in mythological asso-
ciations of ideas (or perhaps in certain poetic creations which
are often characterized by a borrowing, not always conscious,
from myths). Had thorough investigation shown that in the
majority of such cases it was simply a matter of forgotten knowl-
edge, the physician would not have gone to the trouble of mak-
ing extensive researches into individual and collective parallels.
But, in point of fact, typical mythologems were observed among
individuals to whom all knowledge of this kind was absolutely
out of the question, and where indirect derivation from re-
ligious ideas that might have been known to them, or from
popular figures of speech, was impossible. 4 Such conclusions
forced us to assume that we must be dealing with "autochtho-
nous" revivals independent of all tradition, and, consequently,
that "myth-forming" structural elements must be present in the
unconscious psyche. 5

3 Psyche (1846).

4 A working example in "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious," pars. 105ft.,
above.

5 Freud, in his Interpretation of Dreams (p. 261), paralleled certain aspects of
infantile psychology with the Oedipus legend and observed that its "universal

152



26o



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE

These products are never (or at least very seldom) myths
with a definite form, but rather mythological components
which, because of their typical nature, we can call "motifs,"
"primordial images," types or as I have named them arche-
types. The child archetype is an excellent example. Today we
can hazard the formula that the archetypes appear in myths and
fairytales just as they do in dreams and in the products of psy-
chotic fantasy. The medium in which they are embedded is, in
the former case, an ordered and for the most part immediately
understandable context, but in the latter case a generally unin-
telligible, irrational, not to say delirious sequence of images
which nonetheless does not lack a certain hidden coherence. In
the individual, the archetypes appear as involuntary manifesta-
tions of unconscious processes whose existence and meaning can
only be inferred, whereas the myth deals with traditional forms
of incalculable age. They hark back to a prehistoric world
whose spiritual preconceptions and general conditions we can
still observe today among existing primitives. Myths on this
level are as a rule tribal history handed down from generation
to generation by word of mouth. Primitive mentality differs
from the civilized chiefly in that the conscious mind is far less
developed in scope and intensity. Functions such as thinking,
willing, etc. are not yet differentiated; they are pre-conscious,
and in the case of thinking, for instance, this shows itself in
the circumstance that the primitive does not think consciously,
but that thoughts appear. The primitive cannot assert that he
thinks; it is rather that "something thinks in him." The sponta-
neity of the act of thinking does not lie, causally, in his con-
scious mind, but in his unconscious. Moreover, he is incapable
of any conscious effort of will; he must put himself beforeh and

validity" was to be explained in terms of the same infantile premise. The
real working out of mythological material was then taken up by my pupils (A.
Maeder, "Essai d'interpr^tation de quelques reves," 1907, and "Die Symbolik in den
Legenden, Marchen, Gebrauchen, und Traumen," 1908; F. Riklin, "Ober Gefang-
nispsychosen," 1907, and Wish fulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales, orig. 1908);
and by K. Abraham, Dreams and Myths, orig. 1909. They were succeeded by Otto
Rank of the Viennese school {The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, orig. 1922). In
the Psychology of the Unconscious (orig. 1911; revised and expanded as Symbols
of Transformation), I presented a somewhat more comprehensive examination of
psychic and mythological parallels. Cf. also my essay in this volume, "Concerning
the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept."

153



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

into the "mood of willing," or let himself be put hence his
rites d 'entree et de sortie. His consciousness is menaced by an
almighty unconscious: hence his fear of magical influences
which may cross his path at any moment; and for this reason,
too, he is surrounded by unknown forces and must adjust him-
self to them as best he can. Owing to the chronic twilight state
of his consciousness, it is often next to impossible to find out
whether he merely dreamed something or whether he really ex-
perienced it. The spontaneous manifestation of the unconscious
and its archetypes intrudes everywhere into his conscious mind,
and the mythical world of his ancestors for instance, the alchera
or bugari of the Australian aborigines is a reality equal if not
superior to the material world. 6 It is not the world as we know it
that speaks out of his unconscious, but the unknown world of
the psyche, of which we know that it mirrors our empirical
world only in part, and that, for the other part, it moulds this
empirical world in accordance with its own psychic assump-
tions. The archetype does not proceed from physical facts, but
describes how the psyche experiences the physical fact, and in
so doing the psyche often behaves so autocratically that it denies
tangible reality or makes statements that fly in the face of it.
261 The primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experi-
ences them. Myths are original revelations of the preconscious
psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic hap-
penings, and anything but allegories of physical processes. 7 Such
allegories would be an idle amusement for an unscientific intel-
lect. Myths, on the contrary, have a vital meaning. Not merely
do they represent, they are the psychic life of the primitive tribe,
which immediately falls to pieces and decays when it loses its
mythological heritage, like a man who has lost his soul. A tribe's
mythology is its living religion, whose loss is always and every-
where, even among the civilized, a moral catastrophe. But re-
ligion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and
beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterl and of the psyche.
Many of these unconscious processes may be indirectly occa-
sioned by consciousness, but never by conscious choice. Others
appear to arise spontaneously, that is to say, from no discernible
or demonstrable conscious cause.

6 This fact is well known, and the relevant ethnological literature is too extensive
to be mentioned here. 7 Cf. "The Structure of the Psyche," pars. 33off.

154



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE

262 Modern psychology treats the products of unconscious fan-
tasy-activity as self-portraits of what is going on in the uncon-
scious, or as statements of the unconscious psyche about itself.
They fall into two categories. First, fantasies (including dreams)
of a personal character, which go back unquestionably to per-
sonal experiences, things forgotten or repressed, and can thus be
completely explained by individual anamnesis. Second, fantasies
(including dreams) of an impersonal character, which cannot
be reduced to experiences in the individual's past, and thus can-
not be explained as something individually acquired. These
fantasy-images undoubtedly have their closest analogues in
mythological types. We must therefore assume that they corre-
spond to certain collective (and not personal) structural elements
of the human psyche in general, and, like the morphological
elements of the human body, are inherited. Although tradition
and transmission by migration certainly play a part, there are,
as we have said, very many cases that cannot be accounted for
in this way and drive us to the hypothesis of "autochthonous
revival." These cases are so numerous that we are obliged to as-
sume the existence of a collective psychic substratum. I have
called this the collective unconscious.

263 The products of this second category resemble the types of
structures to be met with in myth and fairytale so much that
we must regard them as related. It is therefore wholly within
the realm of possibility that both, the mythological types as well
as the individual types, arise under quite similar conditions. As
already mentioned, the fantasy-products of the second category
(as also those of the first) arise in a state of reduced intensity of
consciousness (in dreams, delirium, reveries, visions, etc.). In all
these states the check put upon unconscious contents by the con-
centration of the conscious mind ceases, so that the hitherto un-
conscious material streams, as though from opened side-sluices,
into the field of consciousness. This mode of origination is the
general rule. 8

* 6 4 Reduced intensity of consciousness and absence of concen-
tration and attention, Janet's abaissement du niveau mental,
correspond pretty exactly to the primitive state of consciousness

8 Except for certain cases of spontaneous vision, automatism.es teUologiques
(Flournoy), and the processes in the method of "active imagination" which I have
described [e.g., in "The Transcendent Function" and Mysterium Coniunctionis,
pars. 706, 753L Editors].

155



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

in which, we must suppose, myths were originally formed. It is
therefore exceedingly probable that the mythological arche-
types, too, made their appearance in much the same manner as
the manifestations of archetypal structures among individuals
today.

* 6 5 The methodological principle in accordance with which psy-
chology treats the products of the unconscious is this: Contents
of an archetypal character are manifestations of processes in the
collective unconscious. Hence they do not refer to anything that
is or has been conscious, but to something essentially uncon-
scious. In the last analysis, therefore, it is impossible to say what
they refer to. Every interpretation necessarily remains an "as-if."
The ultimate core of meaning may be circumscribed, but not
described. Even so, the bare circumscription denotes an essen-
tial step forward in our knowledge of the pre-conscious struc-
ture of the psyche, which was already in existence when there
was as yet no unity of personality (even today the primitive is
not securely possessed of it) and no consciousness at all. We can
also observe this pre-conscious state in early childhood, and as
a matter of fact it is the dreams of this early period that not in-
frequently bring extremely remarkable archetypal contents to
light. 9

266 U } then, we proceed in accordance with the above principle,
there is no longer any question whether a myth refers to the
sun or the moon, the father or the mother, sexuality or fire or
water; all it does is to circumscribe and give an approximate
description of an unconscious core of meaning. The ultimate
meaning of this nucleus was never conscious and never will be.
It was, and still is, only interpreted, and every interpretation
that comes anywhere near the hidden sense (or, from the point
of view of scientific intellect, nonsense, which comes to the same
thing) has always, right from the beginning, laid claim not only
to absolute truth and validity but to instant reverence and re-
ligious devotion. Archetypes were, and still are, living psychic
forces that demand to be taken seriously, and they have a strange
way of making sure of their effect. Always they were the bringers

9 The relevant material can be found in the unpublished reports of the seminars
I gave at the Federal Polytechnic Institute (ETH) in Zurich in 1936-39, and in
Michael Fordham's book The Life of Childhood.

156



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE

of protection and salvation, and their violation has as its conse-
quence the "perils of the soul" known to us from the psychology
of primitives. Moreover, they are the unfailing causes of neu-
rotic and even psychotic disorders, behaving exactly like neg-
lected or maltreated physical organs or organic functional sys-
tems.
267 An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in
metaphors. If such a content should speak of the sun and iden-
tify with it the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the
dragon, or the power that makes for the life and health of man,
it is neither the one thing nor the other, but the unknown third
thing that finds more or less adequate expression in all these
similes, yet to the perpetual vexation of the intellect remains
unknown and not to be fitted into a formula. For this reason
the scientific intellect is always inclined to put on airs of en-
lightenment in the hope of banishing the spectre once and for
all. Whether its endeavours were called euhemerism, or Chris-
tian apologetics, or Enlightenment in the narrow sense, or Pos-
itivism, there was always a myth hiding behind it, in new and
disconcerting garb, which then, following the ancient and ven-
erable pattern, gave itself out as ultimate truth. In reality we
can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal founda-
tions unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any
more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs with-
out committing suicide. If we cannot deny the archetypes or
otherwise neutralize them, we are confronted, at every new
stage in the differentiation of consciousness to which civiliza-
tion attains, with the task of finding a new interpretation ap-
propriate to this stage, in order to connect the life of the past
that still exists in us with the life of the present, which threatens
to slip away from it. If this link-up does not take place, a kind of
rootless consciousness comes into being no longer oriented to
the past, a consciousness which succumbs helplessly to all man-
ner of suggestions and, in practice, is susceptible to psychic epi-
demics. With the loss of the past, now become "insignificant,"
devalued, and incapable of revaluation, the saviour is lost too,
for the saviour is either the insignificant thing itself or else
arises out of it. Over and over again in the "metamorphosis of
the gods" he rises up as the prophet or first-born of a new

157



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

generation and appears unexpectedly in the unlikeliest places
(sprung from a stone, tree, furrow, water, etc.) and in ambiguous
form (Tom Thumb, dwarf, child, animal, and so on).
268 This archetype of the "child god" is extremely widespread
and intimately bound up with all the other mythological aspects
of the child motif. It is hardly necessary to allude to the still
living "Christ-child," who, in the legend of Saint Christopher,
also has the typical feature of being "smaller than small and big-
ger than big." In folklore the child motif appears in the guise of
the dwarf or the elf as personifications of the hidden forces of
nature. To this sphere also belongs the little metal man of late
antiquity, the aydpurrdpcov, 10 who, till far into the Middle Ages,
on the one hand inhabited the mine-shafts, 11 and on the other
represented the alchemical metals, 12 above all Mercurius reborn
in perfect form (as the hermaphrodite, filius sapientiae, or in-
fans noster). 13 Thanks to the religious interpretation of the
"child," a fair amount of evidence has come down to us from
the Middle Ages showing that the "child" was not merely a tra-
ditional figure, but a vision spontaneously experienced (as a so-
called "irruption of the unconscious"). I would mention Meister
Eckhart's vision of the "naked boy" and the dream of Brother
Eustachius. 14 Interesting accounts of these spontaneous expe-
riences are also to be found in English ghost-stories, where we
read of the vision of a "Radiant Boy" said to have been seen
in a place where there are Roman remains. 15 This apparition
was supposed to be of evil omen. It almost looks as though we
were dealing with the figure of a puer aeternus who had become
inauspicious through "metamorphosis," or in other words had
shared the fate of the classical and the Germanic gods, who have
all become bugbears. The mystical character of the experience
is also confirmed in Part II of Goethe's Faust, where Faust him-

10 Berthelot, Alchimistes grecs, III, xxv.

HAgricola, De animantibus subterraneis (1549); Kircher, Mundus subterraneus
(1678), VIII, 4.

12 Mylius, Philosophia reformata (1622).

13 "Allegoria super librum Turbae" in Artis auriferae, I (1572), p. 161.

14 Texte aus der deutschen Mystik des 14. und 75. Jahrhunderts, ed. Spamer, pp.
143, 150.

15 Ingram, The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, pp. 43ft.

158



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE

self is transformed into a boy and admitted into the "choir of
blessed youths," this being the "larval stage" of Doctor Mari-
anus. 16

* 6 9 In the strange tale called Das Reich ohne Raum, by Bruno
Goetz, a puer aeternus named Fo (= Buddha) appears with
whole troops of "unholy" boys of evil significance. (Contempo-
rary parallels are better let alone.) I mention this instance only
to demonstrate the enduring vitality of the child archetype.

27 The child motif not infrequently occurs in the field of psy-
chopathology. The "imaginary" child is common among women
with mental disorders and is usually interpreted in a Christian
sense. Homunculi also appear, as in the famous Schreber case, 17
where they come in swarms and plague the sufferer. But the
clearest and most significant manifestation of the child motif in
the therapy of neuroses is in the maturation process of personality
induced by the analysis of the unconscious, which I have termed
the process of individuation. 18 Here we are confronted with pre-
conscious processes which, in the form of more or less well-
formed fantasies, gradually pass over into the conscious mind,
or become conscious as dreams, or, lastly, are made conscious
through the method of active imagination. 19 This material is
rich in archetypal motifs, among them frequently that of the
child. Often the child is formed after the Christian model; more
often, though, it develops from earlier, altogether non-Christian
levels that is to say, out of chthonic animals such as crocodiles,
dragons, serpents, or monkeys. Sometimes the child appears in
the cup of a flower, or out of a golden egg, or as the centre of a
mandala. In dreams it often appears as the dreamer's son or
daughter or as a boy, youth, or young girl; occasionally it seems
to be of exotic origin, Indian or Chinese, with a dusky skin, or,
appearing more cosmically, surrounded by stars or with a starry

16 An old alchemical authority variously named Morienes, Morienus, Marianus
("De compositione alchemiae," Manget, Biblio theca chemica curiosa, I, pp. 5ogff.).

In view of the explicitly alchemical character of Faust, Part II, such a connection
would not he surprising.

17 Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.

18 For a general presentation see infra, "Conscious, Unconscious, and Individua-
tion." Special phenomena in the following text, also in Psychology and Alchemy,
Part II.

19 "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious," Part II, ch. 3 [also
"The Transcendent Function" Editors].

159



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

coronet; or as the king's son or the witch's child with daemonic
attri butes. Seen as a special instance of "the treasure hard to
attain" motif, 20 the child motif is extremely variable and as-
sumes all manner of shapes, such as the jewel, the pearl, the
flower, the chalice, the golden egg, the quaternity, the golden
ball, and so on. It can be interchanged with these and similar
images almost without limit.




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