Though it sounds like a big, fancy word, an “archetype” is something we all experience and know intimately from the inside. Archetypes are living entities, psychological instincts or informational fields of influence that pattern human perception and experience. Psychic organs of the pre-rational psyche, archetypes are the invisible, form-less “ground plan” which in-form and give shape to both individual and collective human behavior. Called by Jung “typical modes of apprehension,” an archetype is like the underlying grid-line or blue print which informs and structures how we perceive, interpret and respond to our experience. The determining power underlying both individual and mass psychology, the archetypes of the collective unconscious are the formative templates that give breath (inspire) and depth (materiality) to events in both the inner and outer worlds. Indefinable, the archetypes are the eternally inherited possibilities of ideas which initially have no specific content. They are the psychic skeleton upon which the individual and collective body politic is formed. Archetypes are the structural forms that underlie consciousness, just as the crystal lattice underlies the crystallization process. Archetypes, like the crystal lattice, are empty of concrete, material existence, yet they shape consciousness and events in the world just like the crystal lattice patterns the form of the individual crystal. Just like the smallest particles in physics, the archetypes themselves are non-perceptible and irrepresentable, yet are experienced through their effects in the world. The archetypes precede all representation, while simultaneously re-presenting themselves through in-forming and giving shape to the perceptible universe. Jung writes, “The archetypes are therefore exceedingly important things with a powerful effect, meriting out closest attention.” The complexes are the inner, psychological vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face.
Archetypes are of a “transcendental” nature, meaning they exist in a realm outside of space and time. Archetypes nonlocally exert their in-forming influence through the frictionless and super-fluid medium of the collective unconscious itself. They irrupt, unfold and bleed into, over and through linear time so as to incarnate and reveal themselves. Archetypes become visible by arranging and magnetically attracting events into their field-of-force so as to give shape to themselves. Archetypes are atemporal, self-organizing fields, which is to say that they organize, in-form and give shape to both the outer and inner dimensions, the world and our experience. Archetypes nonlocally configure events in the outer world so as to synchronistically express what is going on inside of us, as well as vice versa. When the archetypal dimension is emerging, the boundary between the inner and the outer begins to dissolve, as the inner experience of the archetype becomes synchronistically enacted in the outer world.
The destructive world events that have played out from time immemorial are the effects of an archetype getting constellated and being unconsciously acted out as human history. The archetype is continually creating novel iterations of the exact same underlying invariant process, which is to say “itself,” like an eternally self-generating fractal unfolding over linear, historical time. The archetypal dimension is continually unveiling and revealing itself to us as it actualizes and materializes itself on the stage of history. Until the archetype is consciously recognized and related to, however, instead of unconsciously acted out, we are doomed to endlessly and compulsively re-create its negative, destructive aspect as if having a recurring nightmare.
When something is said to be nonlocal, it is not bound or localized to one particular place or time, but on the contrary, transcends the conventional, third-dimensional rules of space and time. Nonlocal interaction is characterized by instant informational exchange, where one part of the universe, in no-time whatsoever (i.e., outside of time), appears to interact, affect and communicate with another part of the universe in an immediate and unmediated way. Imagine, in baseball terminology, a throw from deep centerfield to home plate, only the outfielder is halfway around the planet, and the throw takes zero seconds to arrive. The interaction involved in a nonlocal universe is not any known form of interaction we are familiar with, as it occurs infinitely faster than the speed of light can travel through the medium of space, while at the same time doesn’t involve any expenditure of energy. Nonlocality’s action-at-a-distance is an expression of an underlying and out-flowing information-filled field which connects and inextricably links every part of the universe with every other part in no time. In a nonlocal universe such as ours, no part of the universe is or can be fundamentally separate from any other part, which is to say that nonlocality is an expression of the indivisible wholeness of the universe. This linking, according to the quantum theoretician Henry Stapp, could be the “most profound discovery in all of science.”
Thematically organized (such as the power-complex, savior-complex, mother-complex, inferiority complex, etc.), the complexes are the vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face. Having complexes is not pathological, as everyone has them. What is pathological, however, is thinking we don’t have complexes. Jung clarifies, “Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes.’ What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.” We don’t need to get rid of our complexes, rather, we need to become consciously aware of them. What is important is what we do with our complexes. Complexes are the psychic agencies which flavor and determine our psychological view of the world. To quote Jung, “The via regia [royal road] to the unconscious, however, is not the dream…but the complex, which is the author of dreams and of symptoms.” Complexes are the living elemental units of the psyche, acting like the focal or nodal points of psychic life, in which the energy charge of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious are concentrated. An emotionally-charged complex acts like the epicenter of a magnetic field, attracting and potentially assimilating everything that has any resonance, relevance or is related to itself in any way into itself. This inner process can be seen as it en-acts itself in the outer world when we come in contact with someone who has an activated complex and we find ourselves drafted into their process, picking up a role in their psyche. This is an outer reflection of how a complex can attract, co-opt and subsume other parts of the environment, both inner and outer, into itself. Complexes, when split-off from consciousness, develop a seeming independent, autonomous will and quasi-life of their own (called autonomous complexes), which can potentially engulf and possess the total personality.
“Autonomous complexes” are parts of the psyche which have split-off due to shock, trauma, or breach of our boundaries, and have developed a seemingly autonomous life and apparently independent will of their own. Though we are unconsciously identified with them, autonomous complexes are subjectively experienced as other than ourselves. Besides their inherent obscurity and strangeness, our unconscious identification with autonomous complexes is the essential reason why it is so hard to get a handle on them. Autonomous complexes act upon us, feel like our most intimate self, eventually need to be owned, but paradoxically, don’t belong to us. The seeming autonomy of the archetypes and complexes is what gives rise to the idea of supernatural beings. Endowed with a numinous energy, autonomous complexes are what our ancestors used to call “demons.” Autonomous complexes are a psychological name for the demons in the archetypal process of addiction that animate us to compulsively act out our addictive behavior. A demon or autonomous complex, to quote Jung, “behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed, with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.” Due to their lack of association with the conscious ego, autonomous complexes are arche-typically not open to being influenced, educated, nor corrected by “reality.” An intruder from the unconscious and a disturber of the peace, an autonomous complex, Jung points out, “behaves exactly like a goblin that is always eluding our grasp.” If left un-reflected upon, these demons or autonomous complexes wreak havoc for everyone within their sphere of influence.
Jung writes, “…any autonomous complex not subject to the conscious will exerts a possessive effect on consciousness proportional to its strength and limits the latter’s freedom.” As it takes over and becomes in charge of a person, a complex incorporates a seemingly autonomous regime within the greater body politic of the psyche. Writing about autonomous complexes, Jung says “…the complex forms something like a shadow government of the ego,” in that the autonomous complex dictates to the ego. When we are taken over by and in internal conflict with and because of an autonomous complex, it is as if we, as natural rulers of our own psychic landscape, have been deposed, and are living in an occupied country. We are allowed our seeming freedom as long as it doesn’t threaten the sovereignty and dominance of the ruling power. Jung comments, “…a man does not notice it when he is governed by a demon; he puts all his skill and cunning at the service of his unconscious master, thereby heightening its power a thousandfold.” Being nonlocal, this inner, psychological situation can manifest both within our psyche and out in the world at the same time.
Demons or autonomous complexes can be likened to the rabies virus, which travels to the part of a person’s brain controlling the whole person. It causes them to reject water, for example, so that the virus cannot be spit out of the mouth. The rabies virus ultimately controls and enslaves its victims, taking away their creativity, spontaneity and mental freedom, as it forces them compulsively, like a vampire, to further the propagation of the virus.
Commandeering and colonizing our psyche, a split-off, autonomous complex is, potentially, like a “vampiric virus,” in that it is fundamentally “dead” matter; it is only in a living being that it acquires a quasi-life. Just like a vampire re-vitalizes itself by sucking our life-force, when we unconsciously identify with an activated autonomous complex, we are literally animating the undead. Complicit in our own victimization, we then unwittingly give away our freedom, power, and life-force in the process.
Like cancer cells ravaging the body, an autonomous complex propagates itself within the psyche, consuming, devouring, and cannibalizing the healthy aspects of the psyche. Compelling one-sidedness, autonomous complexes draw and attract all of the wholesome parts of the psyche into itself, warping and destroying the psyche of the person (or nation) so afflicted, infecting the surrounding field in the process.
An autonomous complex can't stand to be seen, however, in much the same way that a vampire detests the light. A demon or autonomous complex will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being illumined, for once it is seen, its autonomy and omnipotence are taken away. Anchored and connected to consciousness, the demon or autonomous complex can then no longer vaporize back into the unconscious, which is to say it is no longer able to possess us from behind and beneath our conscious awareness so as to compel us to unwittingly act it out and do its bidding.
Inflation is when the ego unconsciously identifies with the archetype of the Self (the wholeness and totality of our being). Inflation is when something small (the ego), instead of being in conscious relation to something larger than itself (the Self), has arrogated to itself its qualities. As a result, the ego is blown up beyond its proper human limits. In unconsciously identifying with the archetype, the ego appropriates it power, while simultaneously forfeiting its humanity, which is to truly “miss the mark.” Inflated personalities are filled with hubris, becoming “full of themselves,” a legend in their own mind, feeling they are not bound by the laws of the third-dimensional universe.
Being caught up in an inflation is like being sucked up by a cyclone, as there is literally no getting through to the person who is inflated, who has been taken over and lifted off the ground by a more powerful energy. Jung pointed out that “Inflation magnifies the blind spot of the eye… A clear symptom of this is our growing disinclination to take note of the reactions of the environment and pay heed to them.” When we are inflated, we don’t accept any reflection, feedback or in-forming influence from the outer universe that contradicts our puffed up image of ourselves. Instead of being open, receptive, in relationship with and learning from the outer world, when we are inflated we continually interpret everything so as to support our delusional, grandiose self-image. We see the world through the filter of our own narcissistically self-serving image, which is a form of psychic blindness.
Speaking about an inflated consciousness, Jung says that it “…is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it [and others within its sphere of influence] dead.”
Just as the unconscious always compensates a one-sidedness, inflation inevitably results in all of the air (life, breath, spirit) being taken out of the person who is inflated. Inflation is ultimately self-destructive, and if not consciously reflected upon, always results in disaster. Talking about inflation, Jung said that it “…can be damped down only by the most terrible catastrophe to civilization, another deluge let loose by the gods upon inhospitable humanity.”