#four archetypes

The four types are trickster, genius, martyr and savior, and there’s a lot of nuance when it comes to classifying already-written characters, but when I’m using it as a character development tool, I tend to focus on a character’s primary archetype and use it to answer a simple question about a character’s personality. .

I think of this category as answering the question of: How does the character deal with their problems?

Savior: Takes action to solve their problems, and probably other people’s problems, according to what they value and what they think is best. 

Martyr: Endures problems. Their goal isn’t necessarily to stop the source of the problems (and it may not even be the kind of problem it’s possible to solve). They just power through the problems life throws at them.

Genius: Deals with problems by relying on their area of expertise/competence (or sometimes just ignores problems and hides in their area of special interest).

Trickster: Deals with problems by manipulating or subverting the rules of society or the people around them. (Or sometimes just by working with the people around them).

These can often roughly line up with a character’s temperament (savior as choleric, martyr as phlegmatic, genius as melancholic, and trickster as sanguine), but the two don’t always match, and this archetype classification seems to have a more specific focus on a character’s story role that I find very helpful in story planning--it basically tells you how the character approaches the plot.

Knowing an archetype can be helpful in sketching a basic character arc. There are lots of possibilities, but here are a few basic ones that come to mind.

A savior takes firm, decisive action, but tends to think they know best and may not care about the feelings or input of the people around them, so their arc can be learning to consider the people around them.

A genius may be confident in their skills but need to learn to value the skills of others. They may withdraw from others and need to learn to let other people into their life. They may need to learn to quit hiding in their area of special interest and face their problems more directly.

A trickster can be manipulative or self-centered and need to consider others as people rather than pawns. They may be hiding who they really are and need to learn to be more honest with the people around them.

A martyr may be too passive and need to learn to take more decisive action against their problems. They may be trying to take on too much themselves and need to ask for help. They may blame others for their problems and need to learn to take responsibility.

It gets extra fun when you start having different characters with different archetypes playing off of each other.The strengths of one character’s archetype can help another character learn how to overcome the weaknesses of their own archetype. They can all use their problem-solving strengths to overcome problems in unique and creative ways.

It’s even possible for one character to embody multiple archetypes in the same story--a character who fits all of them can be extra complex because they have lots of different problems and lots of different ways to approach them. But for the purposes of character planning, I tend to focus on a character’s primary archetype and only throw in other archetypes after I know more about their role in the story.

Not infrequently she assumes the attributes of wisdom as well as those of a witch. For the further the archetype recedes from consciousness and the clearer the latter becomes, the more distinctly does the archetype assume mythological features. The transition from mother to grandmother means that the archetype is elevated to a higher rank. This is clearly demonstrated in a notion held by the Bataks. The funeral sacrifice in honour of a dead father is modest, consisting of ordinary food. But if the son has a son of his own, then the father has become a grandfather and has con sequently attained a more dignified status in the Beyond, and very important offerings are made to him.

As the distance between conscious and unconscious increases, the grandmother’s more exalted rank transforms her into a “Great Mother,” and it frequently happens that the opposites contained in this image split apart. We then get a good fairy and a wicked fairy, or a benevolent goddess and one who is malevo lent and dangerous! In Western antiquity and especially in Eastern cultures the opposites often remain united in the same figure, though this paradox does not disturb the primitive mind in the least. The legends about the gods are as full of contradic tions as are their moral characters. In the West, the paradoxical behaviour and moral ambivalence of the gods scandalized people even in antiquity and gave rise to criticism that led finally to a devaluation of the Olympians on the one hand and to their philosophical interpretation on the other. The clearest expres sion of this is the Christian reformation of the Jewish concept of the Deity: the morally ambiguous Yahweh became an exclusively good God, while everything evil was united in the devil. It seems as if the development of the feeling function in Western man forced a choice on him which led to the moral splitting of the divinity into two halves. In the East the predominantly intuitive intellectual attitude left no room for feeling values, and the gods—Kali is a case in point—could retain their original para doxical morality undisturbed. Thus Kali is representative of the East and the Madonna of the West. The latter has entirely lost the shadow that still distantly followed her in the allegories of the Middle Ages. It was relegated to the hell of popular imagination, where it now leads an insignificant existence as the devil’s grandmother.3 Thanks to the development of feeling-values, the splendour of the “light” god has been enhanced beyond meas ure, but the darkness supposedly represented by the devil has localized itself in man. This strange development was precipi tated chiefly by the fact that Christianity, terrified of Manichaean dualism, strove to preserve its monotheism by main force. But since the reality of darkness and evil could not be denied, there was no alternative but to make man responsible for it. Even the devil was largely, if not entirely, abolished, with the result that this metaphysical figure, who at one time was an integral part of the Deity, was introjected into man, who thereupon became the real carrier of the mysterium iniquitatis: “omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine.” In recent times this development has suf fered a diabolical reverse, and the wolf in sheep’s clothing now goes about whispering in our ear that evil is really nothing but a misunderstanding of good and an effective instrument of pro gress. We think that the world of darkness has thus been abol ished for good and all, and nobody realizes what a poisoning this is of man’s soul. In this way he turns himself into the devil, for the devil is half of the archetype whose irresistible power makes even unbelievers ejaculate “Oh God!” on every suitable and unsuitable occasion. If one can possibly avoid it, one ought never to identify with an archetype, for, as psychopathology and certain contemporary events show, the consequences are terrifying.

Western man has sunk to such a low level spiritually that he even has to deny the apotheosis of untamed and untameable psychic power—the divinity itself—so that, after swallowing evil, he may possess himself of the good as well. If you read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra with attention and psychological under standing, you will see that he has described with rare con sistency and with the passion of a truly religious person the psychology of the “Superman” for whom God is dead, and who is himself burst asunder because he tried to imprison the divine paradox within the narrow framework of the mortal man. Goethe has wisely said: “What terror then shall seize the Superman!”—and was rewarded with a supercilious smile from the Philistines. His glorification of the Mother who is great enough to include in herself both the Queen of Heaven and Maria Aegyptiaca is supreme wisdom and profoundly significant for anyone willing to reflect upon it. But what can one expect in an age when the official spokesmen of Christianity publicly announce their inability to understand the foundations of religious experience! I extract the following sentence from an article by a Protestant theologian: “We understand ourselves— whether naturalistically or idealistically—to be homogeneous crea tures who are not so peculiarly divided that alien forces can intervene in our inner life, as the New Testament supposes.”4 (Italics mine.) The author is evidently unacquainted with the fact that science demon strated the lability and dissociability of consciousness more than half a century ago and proved it by experiment. Our conscious intentions are continually disturbed and thwarted, to a greater or lesser degree, by unconscious intrusions whose causes are at first strange to us. The psyche is far from being a homogeneous unit—on the contrary, it is a boiling cauldron of contradictory impulses, inhibitions, and affects, and for many people the con flict between them is so insupportable that they even wish for the deliverance preached by theologians. Deliverance from what? Obviously, from a highly questionable psychic state. The unity of consciousness or of the so-called personality is not a reality at all but a desideratum. I still have a vivid memory of a certain philosopher who also raved about this unity and used to consult me about his neurosis: he was obsessed by the idea that he was suffering from cancer. I do not know how many special ists he had consulted already, and how many X-ray pictures he had had made. They all assured him that he had no cancer. He himself told me: “I know I have no cancer, but I still could have one.” Who is responsible for this “imaginary” idea? He certainly did not make it himself; it was forced on him by an “alien” power. There is little to choose between this state and that of the man possessed in the New Testament. Now whether you believe in a demon of the air or in a factor in the unconscious that plays diabolical tricks on you is all one to me. The fact that man’s imagined unity is menaced by alien powers remains the same in either case. Theologians would do better to take account for once of these psychological facts than to go on “demythologiz ing” them with rationalistic explanations that are a hundred years behind the times.

[…]

But for a man the mother typifies something alien, which he has yet to experience and which is filled with the imagery latent in the unconscious. For this reason, if for no other, the mother-image of a man is essentially different from a woman’s. The mother has from the outset a decidedly symbolical significance for a man, which probably accounts for his strong tendency to idealize her. Idealization is a hidden apo tropaism; one idealizes whenever there is a secret fear to be exorcized. What is feared is the unconscious and its magical influence.

[…]

When, in 1938, I originally wrote this paper, I naturally did not know that twelve years later the Christian version of the mother archetype would be elevated to the rank of a dogmatic truth. The Christian “Queen of Heaven” has, obviously, shed all her Olympian qualities except for her brightness, goodness, and eternality; and even her human body, the thing most prone to gross material corruption, has put on an ethereal incorrupt ibility. The richly varied allegories of the Mother of God have nevertheless retained some connection with her pagan prefigura tions in Isis (Io) and Semele. Not only are Isis and the Horus child iconological exemplars, but the ascension of Semele, the originally mortal mother of Dionysus, likewise anticipates the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Further, this son of Semele is a dying and resurgent god and the youngest of the Olympians. Semele herself seems to have been an earth-goddess, just as the Virgin Mary is the earth from which Christ was born. This being so, the question naturally arises for the psychologist: what has become of the characteristic relation of the mother-image to the earth, darkness, the abysmal side of the bodily man with his animal passions and instinctual nature, and to “matter” in gen eral? The declaration of the dogma comes at a time when the achievements of science and technology, combined with a rationalistic and materialistic view of the world, threaten the spiritual and psychic heritage of man with instant annihilation. Humanity is arming itself, in dread and fascinated horror, for a stupendous crime. Circumstances might easily arise when the hydrogen bomb would have to be used and the unthinkably frightful deed became unavoidable in legitimate self-defence. In striking contrast to this disastrous turn of events, the Mother of God is now enthroned in heaven; indeed, her Assumption has actually been interpreted as a deliberate counterstroke to the materialistic doctrinairism that provoked the chthonic powers into revolt. Just as Christ’s appearance in his own day created a real devil and adversary of God out of what was originally a son of God dwelling in heaven, so now, conversely, a heavenly figure has split off from her original chthonic realm and taken up a counter-position to the titanic forces of the earth and the underworld that have been unleashed. In the same way that the Mother of God was divested of all the essential qualities of materiality, matter became completely de-souled, and this at a time when physics is pushing forward to insights which, if they do not exactly “de-materialize” matter, at least endue it with properties of its own and make its relation to the psyche a prob lem that can no longer be shelved. For just as the tremendous advancement of science led at first to a premature dethronement of mind and to an equally ill-considered deification of matter, so it is this same urge for scientific knowledge that is now attempt ing to bridge the huge gulf that has opened out between the two Weltanschauungen. The psychologist inclines to see in the dogma of the Assumption a symbol which, in a sense, anticipates this whole development. For him the relationship to the earth and to matter is one of the inalienable qualities of the mother arche type. So that when a figure that is conditioned by this archetype is represented as having been taken up into heaven, the realm of the spirit, this indicates a union of earth and heaven, or of matter and spirit. The approach of natural science will almost certainly be from the other direction: it will see in matter itself the equiva lent of spirit, but this “spirit” will appear divested of all, or at any rate most, of its known qualities, just as earthly matter was stripped of its specific characteristics when it staged its entry into heaven. Nevertheless, the way will gradually be cleared for a union of the two principles.

[…]

Cosmic tree

The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree, and it is therefore not surprising that the unconscious of present-day man, who no longer feels at home in his world and can base his existence neither on the past that is no more nor on the future that is yet to be, should hark back to the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven—the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible. It seems as if it were only through an experience of symbolic reality that man, vainly seeking his own “existence” and making a philosophy out of it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger.

The mother archetype forms the foundation of the so-called mother-complex. It is an open question whether a mother complex can develop without the mother having taken part in its formation as a demonstrable causal factor. My own experience leads me to believe that the mother always plays an active part in the origin of the disturbance, especially in infantile neuroses or in neuroses whose aetiology undoubtedly dates back to early childhood. In any event, the child’s instincts are disturbed, and this constellates archetypes which, in their turn, produce fantasies that come between the child and its mother as alien and often frightening elements. Thus, if the children of an overanxious mother regularly dream that she is a terrifying animal or a witch, these experiences point to a split in the child’s psyche that predisposes it to a neurosis.

The mother-complex in the son

The effects of the mother-complex differ according to whether it appears in a son or a daughter. Typical effects on the son are homosexuality and Don Juanism, and sometimes also impotence. In homosexuality, the son’s entire heterosexuality is tied to the mother in an unconscious form; in Don Juanism, he unconsciously seeks his mother in every woman he meets. The effects of a mother-complex on the son may be seen in the ideology of the Cybele and Attis type: self-castration, madness, and early death. Because of the difference in sex, a son’s mother complex does not appear in pure form. This is the reason why in every masculine mother-complex, side by side with the mother archetype, a significant role is played by the image of the man’s sexual counterpart, the anima. The mother is the first feminine being with whom the man-to-be comes in contact, and she cannot help playing, overtly or covertly, consciously or unconsciously, upon the son’s masculinity, just as the son in his turn grows increasingly aware of his mother’s femininity, or unconsciously responds to it by instinct. In the case of the son, therefore, the simple relationships of identity or of resistance and differentiation are continually cut across by erotic attraction or repulsion, which complicates matters very considerably. I do not mean to say that for this reason the mother-complex of a son ought to be regarded as more serious than that of a daughter. The investigation of these complex psychic phenomena is still in the pioneer stage. Comparisons will not become feasible until we have some statistics at our disposal, and of these, so far, there is no sign.

[…]

Since a “mother-complex” is a concept borrowed from psychopathology, it is always associated with the idea of injury and illness. But if we take the concept out of its narrow psychopathological setting and give it a wider connotation, we can see that it has positive effects as well. Thus a man with a mother-complex may have a finely differentiated Eros instead of, or in addition to, homosexuality. (Something of this sort is suggested by Plato in his Symposium.) This gives him a great capacity for friendship, which often creates ties of astonishing tenderness between men and may even rescue friendship between the sexes from the limbo of the impossible. He may have good taste and an aesthetic sense which are fostered by the presence of a feminine streak. Then he may be supremely gifted as a teacher because of his almost feminine insight and tact. He is likely to have a feeling for history, and to be conservative in the best sense and cherish the values of the past. Often he is endowed with a wealth of religious feelings, which help to bring the ecclesia spiritualis into reality; and a spiritual receptivity which makes him responsive to revelation.

In the same way, what in its negative aspect is Don Juanism can appear positively as bold and resolute manliness; ambitious striving after the highest goals; opposition to all stupidity, narrow-mindedness, injustice, and laziness; willingness to make sacrifices for what is regarded as right, sometimes bordering on heroism; perseverance, inflexibility and toughness of will; a curiosity that does not shrink even from the riddles of the universe; and finally, a revolutionary spirit which strives to put a new face upon the world.