Archetype and matrix image (potential forms of an image)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of potential forms of the image in culture and the development of the Jungian concept of an archetype in Wunenburger, Bachelard, Durand and modern cultural studies. The notion of archetype in Carl Jung’s concept is related to the distinction between the archetype in itself, noumenon and archetype image conceived as a phenomenal manifestation of archetypal forms in the space-time, historical and social reality. This distinction has a Kantian lineage, which Jung was clearly conscious of. He provides a reference to the conception of Kant, calling it “a school of philosophical criticism” several times in his writings. In the studies of Jung’s concept, his approach to transcendentalism (Z. Rosińska) is at times present, and a certain type of its specific, evolutionary interpretation is used. The archetype, being a “thing in itself ”, determines the appearance of phenomenal forms in the space-time, historical and social world, while remaining outside the direct entanglement and referring to the evolutionally active sphere of the unconscious as an  anthropological datum. The archetypal image expresses the permanent approximation of manifestation of the semantic core of the archetype itself. The notion of an archetype has evolved in contemporary understandings and conceptions; it was conceived as a psychological expression of the evolutionary pattern of behavior, as an affective-representative node and ante rem of an idea, as a hermeneutic pattern of meaning or as a kind of matrix image. The archetype can be understood in connection with anthropological structures or with a cultural image; one way of comprehension does not exclude the other.

Keywords:

archetype, matrix image, primordial image, anthropological structures, epithetic archetypes, substantial archetypes, Jung, Bachelard, Durand, Wunenburger