A Brief Report: Affect and Archetype

IN THIS BRIEF report I am presenting a hypothesis as to the nature and function of the affects, individually and as a system, and in relation to other functions of the psyche. This hypothesis has some novel features in regard to the libido and the self, and sheds new light on the cultural unconscious (HENDERSON 6).

The affects hold a central position in Jung's analytical psychology as ‘energy’, ‘value’, source of ‘feelings’, ‘imagery’ and ‘new consciousness’, and most significantly as the ‘bridge’ between body and psyche, instinct and spirit (JUNG 14, pp. 27-28, 32-33; JUNG 19, p. 177; JUNG 17, p. 96; JUNG 18, p. 257). In clinical practice the affects can never be ignored. They are always present, whether openly expressed, or felt below the surface, or, if seemingly absent, then much in the consciousness of the analyst. For Jung an affect is characterised by a ‘state of feeling’ which includes ‘marked physical innervation’ and ‘a peculiar disturbance of the ideational processes’ due to an abaissement du niveau mental (JUNG 11, pp. 411-412). Naturally a stimulus is assumed. Elsewhere Jung refers to the innate, autonomous nature of the affects, and their capacity to overwhelm the conscious ego (JUNG 13, p. 278). The most comprehensive study of the affects in the Jungian literature is Hillman's Emotion: A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and their Meanings for Therapy, published in 1961, which encompasses the whole range of thought on the subject from antiquity up into the mid-1950s. Using as a method Aristotle's fourfold conception of causality, Hillman arrives at a comprehensive integration of the subject from which he distils a capsule definition of emotion as ‘psyche’ (feeling state), ‘energy’ (physical innervation), ‘symbol’ (stimulus), and ‘transformation’ (abaissement du niveau mental). I have introduced Jung's terms in parentheses to show the close conformity of the two definitions (HILLMAN 8, p. 286).

Yet for all the importance assigned to the