Archetype Carriers

You don't understand why, but you always seem to attract the worst people in your life. You were abused as a child and it seems like there's no way out for you. Abusive people just follow you around.

Your friends and your therapist tell you "Think positive!" So, you think "Okay, this time he's going to be someone who respects me, loves me, takes care of me." You don't anticipate bad things. You look for the good. 

When the first incident happens, you ask yourself what you did to cause it. You know you must have done something. Your friends say you should look at yourself and not blame others.

But nothing fixes the problem.

This person is enacting the victim archetype. Along with the victim archetype, she is "carrying" the perpetrator archetype. In this particular combination, it's easy to see the pair: where there's a victim, there's an abuser/perpetrator. But even in this case, it is not easy to find the point of origin, to see where the dance begins. And in most other archetype pairs, it is not as easy to identify the pair.

Despite the fact that victim and abuser are on opposite poles, archetypes pairs are not opposites, per se. They are simply tongue and groove. They fit together.

Can you think of any examples from you life? (Post in comments.)

Arkhelogy Institute

Recently, I was told about the Summerhill School, where kids and adults work together to create the curriculum. Kids are not required to attend classes at all, if they don't want to, and can spend all their days playing. Rather an unusual and interesting concept, I thought. I wish I had known about it when my kids were little, because I really got a lot of criticism for taking them out of school and home-schooling them.

In any event, can the Summerhill School be a model for an Arkhelogy Institute? Possibly. The idea of self-constructed learning is close to my heart and beliefs. However, arkhelogy -- "working at the archetypal level" -- is a specific discipline. It "happens" naturally under the right conditions, but those conditions must exist in the environment first.

The question, then, is how can that environment be created so that people can come into it and immerse themselves in it?

Any ideas? Post them here. Anyone whose ideas I decide to adopt will get one free private session with me. :-)

Why YOU Should Become an Arkhelogian!

What is Arkhelogy?

Arkhelogy is the innate human ability to discern the patterns of human behavior that make up what Jung called archetypes. It is a kind of second sight, an ability to see further into people than society today requires or even allows us to see.

Arkhelogy is a word adapted from the obsolete English word archelogy, which Webster's defines as: Ar*chel"o*gy\, n. [Gr. ? an element or first principle + -logy.] The science of, or a treatise on, first principles. --Fleming.

Many readers will be familiar with the Jungian definition of archetypes. The American Heritage Dictionary: "In Jungian psychology, an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience and present in the individual unconscious." According to the Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT), "people go through life drawing from a repertoire of instinctive roles: father, mother, child, lover, creator, warrior, caregiver, and an untold number of others." CAPT offers a test of 12 different archetypes: Lover, Warrior, Innocent, Orphan, Caregiver, Destroyer, Creator, Ruler, Magician, Sage, Seeker, and Jester.

However, in arkhelogy, we do not rely on pre-defined, cookie-cutter archetypes. We discover the archetypes from the root up, in the context of their origins inside of us.

That arkhelogy is a skill, not just the superimposition of types, was one of my major discoveries and is an incredibly important fact. It means that the skill, while inherent, can be developed and taught.

Why Should You Become an Arkhelogian?

Aside from being able to impress your friends by telling them, "I'm an Arkhelogian!" and having them respond "You're a WHAT?" (or be afraid to ask), being an arkhelogian will bring you great rewards.

Will you publish a best-selling novel or sell the movie rights for a huge sum? Will you become a celebrity? I don't know.

What I do know is that you will start to see the world differently. You will see MORE. You will see what I call "the secret lives" of people. And when you get really good at arkhelogy, you will begin to discern "the invisible world" they live and move in -- the world where all the action really takes place.

On top of this, you will gradually develop your Author Self. This is not just the part of you that does the writing. It is a unique and rare thing -- and really quite amazing, because the Author Self already knows the beginning, the middle, and the end of all of your stories! That's all the stories that you carry inside of you and the lives of all your characters. These are not just those that you would imagine or make up, but the ones that actually live inside of you: the ones that, in every sense, are you.

And if you think about that for a moment, you will realize that what that means is that you will, in a sense, transcend linear time, as we know it. The lives and destinies of your characters (who, after all, are just the people in your life who are in a special relation to you) will be known to you.

It's a tremendous power to have. That's why you should become an Arkhelogian.