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In this paper I shall discuss Jung's definition of archetypes and put forward some speculations about the nature of archetypal activity. Secondly, I shall criticize Jung's views on the split between ‘spirit’ and ‘instinct’ and between ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’, arguing that at the pre-reflective level of the primal self, bodily and archetypal experience are one. This would roughly correspond with Jung's notion of the ‘psychoid’. Both these themes are related with each other and with the healing of body-mind splitting in ourselves and our patients.
At this point I would like to suggest that the reader should turn for a moment to the summary at the end of this paper before proceeding further.
In his essay ‘The psychological aspects of the Kore’, Jung1 p. 183 wrote that in investigating the products of the unconscious in the widest sense of the word, namely dreams, fantasies, visions and delusions of the insane, he had not been able to avoid recognizing certain regularities, that is, types. There are types of situations and types of figures that repeat themselves frequently and have a corresponding meaning. He employed the term ‘motif’ to designate these repetitions, which may be either situations or figures. Among these latter there are human figures that can be arranged under a series of archetypes, the chief of them being the shadow, the wise old man, the child (including the child hero), the mother (‘primordial mother’ and ‘earth mother’) as a supraordinate