A Theory of Archetypes as Applied to Real Life

When discussing things like stories, psychology, or art it’s common to stumble across the subject of archetypes.

Before I started researching them, my idea was that they are a sort of aggregated version of common motifs, images, and tropes that you find in stories and myths.

As I’ve investigated the concept more deeply it’s clear that the psychologist Carl Jung had something different in mind when he spoke of them and made them central to ideas in his analytical psychology.

Another understanding of archetypes is that they can be seen as part of a mythologizing function within an individual psyche.

When I say function, I’m hoping to invoke a rather obscure metaphor from the mathematical language of set theory.

Simply, a function is something that helps us compare input and outputs of two various sets. In math, the sets include numbers such as whole numbers and real numbers.

In psychology, we can play a game to help us understand archetypes better by defining two psychological sets of experience.

Set 1 (input): All external and internal stimuli including sense data, thoughts, emotions, and feedback from the environment.

Set 2 (output): All instances of interpretation: This set defines our tendency and drive to interpret stimuli and make meaning from them.