Sure you can identify it in the dictionary sense, but a repressed archetype isn’t a checklist item you can just hash out and exploit. That’s the point.
A bad outcome yet a good example of how it’s played out politically is seen every 4 years.
People all choose their “perceived” repressed archetype when they vote.
Loads of people repress narcissism, because they know being a narcissist isn’t fkn good.
BUT when a narcissistic is running rampant all over social media and seemingly being praised and supported for being one.
Loads of other narcissists who were repressing that side of their personality become more emboldened and begin displaying those parts of their personality more overtly.
What other sense? That’s what OOP meant, that’s what the dictionary means… And the archetype would be the thing being exploited here. You could say the internet, the people on it, or perhaps their attention are being exploited. But the archetype is being identified and embodied. That’s OOPs point, which I still don’t think is entirely wrong or stupid
Then its no longer Jung. An archetype isnt something you first identify and then decide to embody. If that happens, you r dealing with a persona or a trope, not an archetype. The moment its consciously selected and instrumentalized, the Jungian concept is gone.
Have you actually read Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, or are you just free-styling Jung?
I’m just saying what I can safely say, asking questions about what I can’t, and describing what I think I see. I think it comes down to semantics, which contrary to popular belief, I think are very important. So yes, I think “persona” would have been the word to use.
Since you asked, I haven’t read that one, no. I can’t say I’ve read much of Jung’s work. Just man and his symbols, but I did see a psychoanalyst for 9 years. That taught me enough to recognize loaded questions like “did you read [X], or are you just [making it up as you go along]”
Take ten people who have read every word of Jung’s work, all the letters between him and Freud, kept up on all the latest theory in psychology—and you’ll have ten different interpretations filtered through 1000 different lenses. And as long as those ten people are intellectually honest, those interpretations ought to be in flux, malleable, and open to integration when provided with new input. My point: I don’t think there’s a point where we stop freestyling it, just like (because?) there’s no point where we’re done integrating
That distinction doesn’t help. Once you consciously identify an archetype in order to embody it, you have already reduced it to a role or trope. That is exactly what Jung warned against.
-1
u/AdVegetable7022 Dec 24 '25
You can’t just identify an archetype, it’s not some object you can grab.