The Spectrum
I cannot
refrain from pointing out that if we delimit the
psyche from the psychological
sphere of instinct at the bottom, so to speak, a similar delimitation imposes
itself at the top. For, with increasing freedom from sheer
instinct the
partie
superieure will ultimately reach a point at which the intrinsic
energy of the function ceases altogether to be oriented by instinct in the
original sense, and attains a so-called "spiritual" form.
Archetype
and instinct are “the most polar opposites imaginable.”
In
has paper “On
the nature of the Psyche,” Jung compares the
psyche to a color
spectrum, with the infrared at one end and the ultraviolet at the other.
He uses this simile to explain the connection between
psyche and body – the
archetypes and the
instincts.
Our
consciousness is like a ray of light, with a nucleus in it to represent the
ego,
a kind of field of light that can shift along the spectrum.
The infrared end would be where things become psychosomatic and finally end in
physical reactions. At the infrared end, the psyche is
somewhat connected (we do not yet know exactly how) with physical processes, so
that it activity loses itself, or slowly enters, physical processes of some kind
– psychosomatic and then somatic. This would be the end
representing the body. At the other end, the ultraviolet end,
would be the archetypes.
From within we do not know what the body in itself is – or from without
either – except to a certain extent. Here there is a big
question: the mystery of the living organism. At the
ultraviolet end is the mystery of that same thing expressed in the
representations, realized as ideas, emotions, fantasies and so on, of which it
is the source. TAoPA 144
(Jung)
compares the realm of the psychic (ego-consciousness and the unconscious)
to the light spectrum. At the infrared end, the psychic
functions change into the instincts and physiological processes, which take on a
more and more compulsive character. At the other, ultraviolet
end of the scale are the archetypes, psychic structures that precondition our
fantasies and ideas by producing symbolic images.
(Consciousness and, with it, freedom of choice and free will prevail only within
the middle range.) The form and the meaning of
instincts are represented in the images produced by the archetypes.
The archetypes, therefore, are collectively present, unconscious
preconditions or innate predispositions that act as regulators and stimulators
of creative fantasy activity. Their effect on the human ego
is numinous-magical and is felt as something spiritual, even – on the primitive
level – as a spirit or spirits.
Using the
analogy of the spectrum, we could compare the lowering of unconscious contents
to a displacement towards the red end of the colour band, a comparison which is
especially edifying in that red, the blood colour, has always signified emotion
and instinct."
Psychologically
… the archetype as an image of
instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the
whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers went their way,
the prize which the hero wrests from the
fight with the dragon.