For a long time I have had misgivings about the nature of archetypes in Jung's theory of psyche. They seemed to me to be given a depth of reality or substance that intuitively I have never trusted. I think at this point I have reached a kind of critical mass where I can bring this intuition into a much clearer rational description. I think that my perspective will be controversial in Jungian circles because it deflates the value of the idea of a psychoid (non-psychic) aspect of reality to archetypes, but goes a long way to bridge Jungian perspectives on psyche to the harder sciences which continue to pour attention on matters brain and psychic. I believe that Jung might have caught on had he had the opportunity to witness the development of cognitive science, computer technology and complex adapative systems.
Archetypes are constructions of the human mind based on the architecture of the brain which, in short, creates distinct regions in the cerebral cortex as maps and interconnects these maps in ways that allows each map to serve as a field of reference to the other maps. The human brain/mind has adopted this strategy for sensory processing with visual processing taking a large share of available space in the cerebral cortex. Neurons, the basic unit of the brain, have adapted over millenia to become a complex adaptive system with multiple evolutionary influences. As such the rule of multi-purpose and multi-pathway (that is, multiple ways of accomplishing the same functional goal) is generally in evidence.
Jung identified a function of consciousness which he called intuition. Here is the Wikipedia write up of a summary of Jung's definition:
In Carl Jung's theory of the ego, described in 1921 in Psychological Types, intuition was an "irrational function", opposed most directly by sensation, and opposed less strongly by the "rational functions" of thinking and feeling. Jung defined intuition as "perception via the unconscious": using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.
I believe that intuition is a kind of catch-all for a sort of shadow of sense perception. Instead of intuition being involved in the discrimination and integration of information from (and between) the sensory organs, intuition reflects other kinds of order that falls outside of the sensory object "in the world" orientation that the sensation function claims as its own. In fact, intuition and sensation as Jung's so-called "irrational" functions may simply be brain activity that is largely cortical in nature but is not involved in the frontal lobe area as much as the so-called "rational" functions of thinking and feeling. There may be little to distinguish brain activity involved with sensation and intuition except in how we have come to classify it in our folk psychology and in our more sophisticated science of mind.
However, one cognitive production that I believe is assignable to intuition is the perception of archetypal images or symbols. With a sophisticated cultural discrimination of those sensory images that come from within (creatively constructed from acquired knowledge and experience) versus without (that is, identified as sensory stimuli from the environment), we can understand that there is a perception that uses sensory information to construct its products of consciousness but that sensory information is created by the brain not in direct response to external stimuli. Further, these archetypal images embody thoughts and valuations in often complex, creative and logically contradictory ways that go towards filling out the nature of Jung's meaning of symbol. Intuition then is the irrational function that perceives archetypal images.
Archetypal images are created when background libido is low or is cancelled out by mutually conflicting orientations of energy creating a realm in the brain where lower levels of order can prevail over what is usually dominated by inputs associated with waking consciousness and the ego system as it negotiates the needs and incidents of waking life. Archetypal images arise when the visual nervous system's maps provide a template of order on other maps causing visual stimuli to be produced that creatively re-express the current psychic state in terms of an abstract representation that has metaphoric qualities.
Archetypes have a universal aspect in that the order and organization of the visual cortex is generally similar in many details to everyone else and provides an abstract, even geometric order-template to any other mapped psychic content. Ordinarily such maps do not have survival value but in special circumstances when libido is not allowed to flow in an adaptive way it may be that normally unrelated maps may supply a new ordering to mapped content and allow for a creative reconfiguration of lidibic flow.
Like sensation, one can most choose to attend to intuition but not have a sense of control over the products of intuition except in how one seeds the function by choosing types of content to "feed" to it. One can choose to read books or listen to music or experience any number of experiences which have proven in the past to be fruitful for intuition's creative processing. Artists who make use of intuition probably need to isolate themselves from distracting contexts in order to nurture their creative output. Similarly sensation requires choice experiences and environments in order for it to produce contents of consciousness that are not merely recalling memories of past experiences.
So archetypal images themselves do not so much carry the will of an "collective unconscious" except in a poetic sense. They are creative reconstructions derived from brain activity akin to sensory processing that creatively re-connects normally separated cognitive maps. The intuitions that present themselves to consciousness in the midst of a dream, or intense reflection or daydreaming or other circumstance are created by the overall psychic configurations impact on a area of the brain psyche that has through conscious contrivance or unconscious constriction allowed for non-sensory oriented perceptions to come to the fore. As with any psychic content the one that presents itself to consciousness has probably a greater share of libido over other possible psychic contents and represents a kind of snapshot of the current psychic systems concerns and conflicts.
That we interpret symbols or archetypal images as significant stems from an intuition that spontaneous products of the psyche are important because otherwise they would not have occurred. They are barometers of the inner psychic situation which provide useful information about the psyche since any significant psychic content in such a sophisticated and complex system invariable does. They do not represent any higher intentional order except that which applies generally to the entire set of systems which impacts upon that brain/psyche.
