The Essence of Archetypes

ABSTRACTJung’s notion of the archetype remains an equivocal concept, so much so that Jungians and post-Jungians have failed to agree on its essential nature. In this essay, I wish to argue that an archetype may be understood as an unconscious schema that is self-constitutive and emerges into consciousness from its own a priori ground, hence an autonomous self-determinative act derived from archaic ontology. After offering an analysis of the archetype debate, I set out to philosophically investigate the essence of an archetype by examining its origins and dialectical reflections as a process system arising from its own autochthonous parameters. I offer a descriptive explication of the inner constitution and birth of an archetype based on internal rupture and the desire to project its universality, form, and patternings into psychic reality as self-instantiating replicators. Archetypal content is the appearance of essence as the products of self-manifestation, for an archetype must appear in order to be mad...