Primordial narrative : a new approach to C. G. Jung’s archetype concept

Classical Jungian approaches to the relationship between archetype and narrative have privileged a conception of the former as timeless, symbolic and static. This view positions archetype as an abstract formal principle. Yet, existing scholarship does not adequately explain how archetype so conceived can dynamically drive human experience, which is the claim Jungians also make of the concept. The thesis proposes that when the traditional conception of the relation between archetype and narrative is subverted and the former is understood as itself narratively constituted, one comprehends how a formal principle can drive human experience. Further, the thesis contends that a narrative conception of archetype allows the synthesis of its various conceptualisations, which had been thought incompatible. To support these hypotheses, the thesis proposes a fundamental redescription of narrative to secure the ontological ground for a narrative conception of archetype. This redescription is founded in Aristotle, drawing also on Martin Heidegger’s onto-phenomenology and Alfred North Whitehead’s notion of creativity. It unveils archetype’s various conceptualisations as situated in a mutually supportive structure, founded on a primordial creativity, which brings into relation basic ontological elements. Such creativity is revealed as not only the source of archetype’s universality but also as a primordial cultural phenomenon, which identifies archetype’s relation to human being as one of mutuality. Thus, a narrative conception of archetype clarifies that the latter is properly conceived as formal principle only where such principle is understood as a necessary element in the dynamic of archetype’s unfolding as human experience. The implication is that narrative is never simply a tool of clinical analysis but is the stuff of psyche itself.