The concept of the Great Mother belongs to the field of comparative religion and embraces widely varying types of mother-goddess. The concept itself is of no immediate concern to psychology, because the image of a Great Mother in this form is rarely encountered in practice, and then only under very special conditions. The symbol is obviously a derivative of the mother archetype. If we venture to investigate the background of the Great Mother image from the standpoint of psychology, then the mother archetype, as the more inclusive of the two, must form the basis of our discussion. Though lengthy discussion of the concept of an archetype is hardly necessary at this stage, some preliminary remarks of a general nature may not be out of place.
the ‘archetypal light,’ it expresses the idea
that he is the prototype of all light; that is to say, pre-existent and
supraordinate to the phenomenon “light.” Were I a philosopher, I should
continue in this Platonic strain and say: Somewhere, in “a place beyond the
skies,” there is a prototype or primordial image of the mother that is
pre-existent and supraordinate to all phenomena in which the “maternal,” in the
broadest sense of the term, is manifest. But I am an empiricist, not a
philosopher; I cannot let myself presuppose that my peculiar temperament, my
own attitude to intellectual problems, is universally valid. Apparently this is
an assumption in which only the philosopher may indulge, who always takes it
for granted that his own disposition and attitude are universal, and will not
recognize the fact, if he can avoid it, that his “personal equation” conditions
his philosophy. As an empiricist, I must point out that there is a temperament
which regards ideas as real entities and not merely as nomina.
It so happens—by the merest accident, one might say—that for the past two hundred
years we have been living in an age in which it has become unpopular or even
unintelligible to suppose that ideas could be anything but nomina.
Anyone who continues to think as Plato did must pay for his anachronism by
seeing the “supracelestial,” i.e., metaphysical, essence of the Idea relegated
to the unverifiable realm of faith and superstition, or charitably left to the
poet. Once again, in the age-old controversy over universals, the nominalistic
standpoint has triumphed over the realistic, and the Idea has evaporated into a
mere flatus vocis. This change was accompanied—and,
indeed, to a considerable degree caused—by the marked rise of empiricism, the
advantages of which were only too obvious to the intellect. Since that time the
Idea is no longer something a priori, but is
secondary and derived. Naturally, the new nominalism promptly claimed universal
validity for itself in spite of the fact that it, too, is based on a definite
and limited thesis coloured by temperament. This thesis runs as follows: we
accept as valid anything that comes from outside and can be verified. The ideal
instance is verification by experiment. The antithesis is: we accept as valid
anything that comes from inside and cannot be verified. The hopelessness of
this position is obvious. Greek natural philosophy with its interest in matter,
together with Aristotelian reasoning, has achieved a belated but overwhelming
victory over Plato.
Yet every victory contains the
germ of future defeat. In our own day signs foreshadowing a change of attitude
are rapidly increasing. Significantly enough, it is Kant’s doctrine of
categories, more than anything else, that destroys in embryo every attempt to
revive metaphysics in the old sense of the word, but at the same time paves the
way for a rebirth of the Platonic spirit. If it be true that there can be no
metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no
empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition. During the century and a
half that have elapsed since the appearance of the Critique
of Pure Reason, the conviction has gradually gained ground that
thinking, understanding, and reasoning cannot be regarded as independent
processes subject only to the eternal laws of logic, but that they are psychic functions co-ordinated with the personality and
subordinate to it. We no longer ask, “Has this or that been seen, heard,
handled, weighed, counted, thought, and found to be logical?” We ask instead, “Who saw, heard, or thought?” Beginning with “the personal
equation” in the observation and measurement of minimal processes, this
critical attitude has gone on to the creation of an empirical psychology such
as no time before ours has known. Today we are convinced that in all fields of
knowledge psychological premises exist which exert a decisive influence upon
the choice of material, the method of investigation, the nature of the
conclusions, and the formulation of hypotheses and theories. We have even come
to believe that Kant’s personality was a decisive conditioning factor of his Critique of Pure Reason. Not only our philosophers, but our
own predilections in philosophy, and even what we are fond of calling our
“best” truths are affected, if not dangerously undermined, by this recognition
of a personal premise. All creative freedom, we cry out, is taken away from us!
What? Can it be possible that a man only thinks or says or does what he himself
is?
Provided that we do not again
exaggerate and so fall a victim to unrestrained “psychologizing,” it seems to
me that the critical standpoint here defined is inescapable. It constitutes the
essence, origin, and method of modern psychology. There is
an a priori factor in all human activities, namely
the inborn, preconscious and unconscious individual structure of the psyche.
The preconscious psyche—for example, that of a new-born infant—is not an empty
vessel into which, under favourable conditions, practically anything can be
poured. On the contrary, it is a tremendously complicated, sharply defined
individual entity which appears indeterminate to us only because we cannot see
it directly. But the moment the first visible manifestations of psychic life
begin to appear, one would have to be blind not to recognize their individual character,
that is, the unique personality behind them. It is hardly possible to suppose
that all these details come into being only at the moment in which they appear.
When it is a case of morbid predispositions already present in the parents, we
infer hereditary transmission through the germ-plasm; it would not occur to us
to regard epilepsy in the child of an epileptic mother as an unaccountable
mutation. Again, we explain by heredity the gifts and talents which can be
traced back through whole generations. We explain in the same way the
reappearance of complicated instinctive actions in animals that have never set
eyes on their parents and therefore could not possibly have been “taught” by
them.
Nowadays we have to start with
the hypothesis that, so far as predisposition is concerned, there is no
essential difference between man and all other creatures. Like every animal, he
possesses a preformed psyche which breeds true to his species and which, on
closer examination, reveals distinct features traceable to family antecedents.
We have not the slightest reason to suppose that there are certain human
activities or functions that could be exempted from this rule. We are unable to
form any idea of what those dispositions or aptitudes are which make instinctive
actions in animals possible. And it is just as impossible for us to know the
nature of the preconscious psychic disposition that enables a child to react in
a human manner. We can only suppose that his behaviour results from patterns of
functioning, which I have described as images. The
term “image” is intended to express not only the form of the activity taking
place, but the typical situation in which the activity is released.1
These images are “primordial” images in so far as they are peculiar to whole
species, and if they ever “originated” their origin must have coincided at
least with the beginning of the species. They are the “human quality” of the
human being, the specifically human form his activities take. This specific
form is hereditary and is already present in the germ-plasm. The idea that it
is not inherited but comes into being in every child anew would be just as
preposterous as the primitive belief that the sun which rises in the morning is
a different sun from that which set the evening before.
Since everything psychic is
preformed, this must also be true of the individual functions, especially those
which derive directly from the unconscious predisposition. The most important
of these is creative fantasy. In the products of fantasy the primordial images
are made visible, and it is here that the concept of the archetype finds its
specific application. I do not claim to have been the first to point out this
fact. The honour belongs to Plato. The first investigator in the field of
ethnology to draw attention to the widespread occurrence of certain “elementary
ideas” was Adolf Bastian. Two later investigators, Hubert and Mauss,2
followers of Dürkheim, speak of “categories” of the imagination. And it was no
less an authority than Hermann Usener3 who first recognized unconscious
preformation under the guise of “unconscious thinking.” If I have any share in
these discoveries, it consists in my having shown that archetypes are not
disseminated only by tradition, language, and migration, but that they can
rearise spontaneously, at any time, at any place, and without any outside
influence.
The far-reaching implications
of this statement must not be overlooked. For it means that there are present
in every psyche forms which are unconscious but nonetheless active—living
dispositions, ideas in the Platonic sense, that preform and continually
influence our thoughts and feelings and actions.
Again and again I encounter the
mistaken notion that an archetype is determined in regard to its content, in
other words that it is a kind of unconscious idea (if such an expression be
admissible). It is necessary to point out once more that archetypes are not
determined as regards their content, but only as regards their form and then
only to a very limited degree. A primordial image is determined as to its
content only when it has become conscious and is therefore filled out with the
material of conscious experience. Its form, however, as I have explained
elsewhere, might perhaps be compared to the axial system of a crystal, which,
as it were, preforms the crystalline structure in the mother liquid, although
it has no material existence of its own. This first appears according to the
specific way in which the ions and molecules aggregate. The archetype in itself
is empty and purely formal, nothing but a facultas
praeformandi, a possibility of representation which is given a priori. The representations themselves are not inherited,
only the forms, and in that respect they correspond in every way to the
instincts, which are also determined in form only. The existence of the
instincts can no more be proved than the existence of the archetypes, so long
as they do not manifest themselves concretely. With regard to the definiteness
of the form, our comparison with the crystal is illuminating inasmuch as the
axial system determines only the stereometric structure but not the concrete
form of the individual crystal. This may be either large or small, and it may
vary endlessly by reason of the different size of its planes or by the growing
together of two crystals. The only thing that remains constant is the axial
system, or rather, the invariable geometric proportions underlying it. The same
is true of the archetype. In principle, it can be named and has an invariable
nucleus of meaning—but always only in principle, never as regards its concrete
manifestation. In the same way, the specific appearance of the mother-image at
any given time cannot be deduced from the mother archetype alone, but depends
on innumerable other factors.
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