The crisis “Archetypogram” – of prisoners, soldiers, sages and jesters

Abstract

Introduction: Archetypes in psychology are complete models of behaviours, thoughts and feelings, representative of universal experiences. From Plato’s description of Forms to Jung’s analytical introduction to archetypes in psychology, to common use of Moore’s masculine archetypes in popular culture, we use such “complete representations” to enable change. Methods: In examining psychologically driven responses to the recent and ongoing pandemic crisis, the use of a graphic representation of interacting archetypes is proposed—the ‘archetypogram’. Results: Drawing on concepts from psychodynamic therapy practise, including Transactional Analysis and Jungian theory, four main archetypes are proposed for their interdependence—the prisoner, the soldier, the sage and the jester/trickster, and a model describing their interactions is presented with the intention of enabling helpful behaviours in response to crisis. The model further proposes positive and negative positions within each archetype, labelled as ‘creating’ and ‘consuming’ behaviours respectively. The ‘archetypogram’ thus is a visual representation of three main components - the four archetypes, creating vs consuming behaviours, and movement between the various positions. Use of the ‘archetypogram’ is aimed at enabling individuals in crisis to move from consuming to creating behaviours. Conclusion: The ‘archetypogram’ is a model of change which may be applied to persons distressed in crisis, and is able to move behaviours towards positive and creating self-states.

Keywords

• archetypes
• psychology
• crisis
• distress