Forget About the Archetype - It's the Complex

A good post on Reddit expresses criticism towards people seeking answers to their personal problems in Jung’s archetype theory, arguing that they misunderstand Jung’s fundamental theoretical framework, particularly the process of individuation. The post became popular, receiving many upvotes and quickly garnering several fairly lengthy, often well thought-out responses.

But what struck me was that the writer didn’t mention complexes a single time in the nearly 600-word post, and no one else did either in their comments. This prompted me to write a short post highlighting the point that when people share their thoughts on Jung in relation to their own or others’ psychology, it is actually, in most cases, about complexes—not archetypes.

A couple of days later, the thread had 54 comments and 246 upvotes, which are rather high numbers in this forum for a serious post that sticks to the topic of Jungian psychology. However, my post hadn't received any comments or upvotes. Still no-one else had even mentioned the word “complex,” in this quite active thread which was focused on understanding the individuation process from Jung’s perspective (whereas “archetype” appeared 20 times).

The description of the core topics of the Jung forum includes symbols, myths, dreams, alchemy, archetypes, personality types, the collective unconscious, and synchronicity—but not complexes. This is despite the fact that complexes were such a central part of Jung’s theoretical framework that, for a time after his break with Freud, he called his psychological school "complex psychology." Even much later, in 1934, he stated that the complex is the "royal road to the unconscious," the "architect of our dreams and symptoms" (CW 8, par. 210). Yet, almost no one on public Jung forums talks about complexes or even mentions the phenomenon.

I believe it has to do with impression and attraction. When one first reads or hears about archetypes, there’s an intuitive sense of what it’s about. The term itself is evocative, and its allure grows even stronger when one encounters concepts like the hero archetype, the trickster archetype, the wise old man, and the shadow—it’s almost like the opening to The Lord of the Rings movie. One is drawn into a fantasy world—and imagine having all of that within oneself! Opening the tome Volume 9 of Jung's Collected Works—The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, how can one not tremble a little at what is to come? Add to this ideas like synchronicity and esoteric subjects like alchemy, and it's clear why Jung’s psychology holds such an attraction for young people wanting to understand themselves. In the forum, questions bubble up like, “Which archetype am I?” “Was that the shadow archetype in my dream?” “How do you manifest the hero archetype?” “Was it the trickster archetype that made me do this?” and so on.

In this evocative world of archetypes, of course, there’s no place for the complex. It’s too mundane, too concrete, too embarrassing, and just plain uncomfortable. The complex hurts, it makes us cringe. So we strike it from the record and jump straight to the mystical, alluring archetype—that's the treasure, or so we imagine. The problem is that the complex is the dragon guarding that treasure. While we wander through the fantasy world, searching for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the dark mountain looms behind us, with the dragon guarding the cave where the real treasure lies hidden. For those who wish to understand the process of individuation and perhaps mature a little along the way, there is no alternative but to face their own personal complexes. Not just for purely therapeutic reasons, but also because the complex, by definition, stands in the way of the archetype.

I will choose a particular angle on the question of archetypes to illustrate what I mean by this: One way to view archetypes is as innate expectations. Some examples: when a child is born, there is an expectation of warmth, nourishment, and care; that is, the mother archetype is activated. The son expects guidance and advice from an adult man, the father archetype; later on, the initiation archetype is activated—a desire to be inducted into the mysterious world of men. Sooner or later, the question of life’s meaning arises, a need for rituals and traditions, perhaps, a context that stretches back through history and points to the future; perhaps one is ambushed by a sudden longing for children, and so on. We are born with an inherited, inner pattern that gives rise to expectations and a longing for these to be fulfilled. But in confronting reality, the unconscious longings are often frustrated, and so we become frustrated, depressed, or perhaps feel empty inside; because the archetype's expectation is not manifested in life – the archetypal energy has no where to go.

This is where the complex comes into play—it’s the intersection, so to speak, between the inner expectation and the outer experience. In other words, in the tension between one’s inner archetype and outer experience, this emotionally charged, personal bundle of often negative energy forms.

If we go back to the child, it possesses a mother archetype, which is projected onto an appropriate individual—usually the mother. The child seeks nourishment, safety, and love, later like a harbor to return to between adventures. But let’s suppose that the mother doesn’t provide this. Let’s say she is cold and dismissive. A disturbance then arises between expectation and experience, creating a "negative mother complex." This becomes like an unconscious engine within one’s personal unconscious, causing us to perhaps carry a vague sense of emptiness, a longing, a tendency to overreact in certain situations, to find ourselves stuck in repetitive patterns in relationships with women, and so on. We leave our parental homes as young adults with a whole set of complexes that fundamentally shape our personality but also our experiences. We ruminate, “Why does this always happen to me?” “Why can’t I ever…?” “Why are my friends always like this?”

According to Jung, it is essential to become conscious of our complexes—not the archetypes, but the complexes. These are our inner dragons, toads, and serpents; they represent all our embarrassments and excuses, the reason we "always" say the wrong thing at crucial moments or "never" gets attention, or whatever it is in our life that ”always” or ”never” happens. They are the basis of all our small and big neuroses, which we likely aren’t aware of but which steer our lives. But compared to archetypes, these are everyday, concrete, painful, and—so we tell ourselves—insignificant. We'd rather put on a movie than deal with the hassle of clearing out the garage.

The clutter in the garage is a far cry from The Lord of the Rings; now we are back in our everyday reality, our here and now. But it is exactly here that the adept's opus begins—with the worthless, the crap, right under his nose.

The complex, the negatively charged bundle of energy that governs our lives, arises in the tension between the inner archetype and the external experience, and stays in our personal unconscious, more or less, for the rest of our lives. When we eventually turn to face the dragon, it’s not the mother archetype we see, to return to the example above, but the personal mother complex. As a result of our personal complex, we don’t perceive the archetype directly; instead, we encounter a distorted, personal image of it—the complex that stands between the ego and the archetype. If we want to reach the treasure, we have to pass through the dragon, or the toad, the serpent, the sick one, the pathetic murderer, or whatever symbol best expresses our personal version of it. We must become aware of the complex, understand it, accept it, and then realize our insights in everyday life. This is challenging and painful, particularly because we find it so insignificant and repulsive.

So, to return to the beginning and the Reddit post and all those comments, where in the context of individuation everyone talks about archetypes and no one mentions the elephant in the room—or the insignificant crap under one's nose—one can’t just go directly to the supposed treasure, what in this context is called the “archetype,” without first confronting the complex. We know nothing about the archetype as long as the complex is in the way. We can have a fantasy image of it, imagining what it might be like, just as we can fantasize about the treasure we’re searching for. But as long as we ignore the repulsive little monsters within our personal unconscious, from the perspective of individuation, chasing the archetype is like searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.