Before
returning to school to pursue my master’s degree in Education, I wanted to keep
honing my creative writing skills and hopefully break through my months of
writer’s block so I decided to take some online classes to keep my mind churning with ideas. In one
of my classes, we studied literary archetypes, and although we are all familiar
with the universally recognized hero, devil, trickster, and damsel in distress,
my professor suggested advanced psychological archetypes that can help improve
the character development in your novels, short stories, or even your poetry.
Jung
outlined these five main archetypes:
The Self, which is the core of the psyche and facilitates
individualism. This is your character’s basic personality. This is the
unification of the subconscious and conscious self in addition to the ego.
Through these three characteristics you can create three different conflicts
within a person. While the subconscious of a person wishes to behave
irrationally and angrily, the ego will keep the person in check and will
portray a composed person. An interesting character in your stories will have
severe conflict between these three sections of their personality and will
allow for development both externally and internally as the plot progresses.
The Shadow, which can be portrayed as an alter ego of a
character. This can be the aspects of the personality that are not exposed to
others, but exist beneath the surface subconsciously and can effect the way
your character feels, acts and struggles through decisions and temptations when
their inhibitions fall. For example, a character around other may appear
normal, but under the influence of alcohol, their actions in dreams, or being
pushed to the limit psychologically, this shadow can present itself and create
conflict for the character himself, or others in the story.
The Anima, or the feminine image in a man’s psyche can make
for very interesting character development as a man may empathize with a female
character over a male character and show that a man, who traditionally should
be callous and refuse to cry, can expose emotion to others around him, or just
in his mind.
The Animus, by comparison is the masculine image in a
woman’s psyche. This, along with the Anima can also be considered a part of the
Shadow as well, something that is kept beneath the surface or only actualized
in dreams, or in their mind.
The Persona is the image presented to the world by our
character. This person may appear normal or boring, but in truth it is
protecting the ego from the negativity of the outside world. While you want to
make sure that your main characters and supporting characters receive ample
attention when you are writing towards their shadow, and the other Jungian
archetypes, you can’t underestimate the importance of developing the characters
for the face they show to the world. Be
sure that these characters aren’t plagued by an archetype such as anima or the
shadow, without it having any affect on their actions and judgments.
If you
are diving deeper, Jung suggested that these archetypes could also lead to
further development such as complexes, which are the memories and
interpretations of the character. For example a mother complex is associated
with the mother archetype, and a character’s preoccupation with associated
current events and temptation with memories of their mother. These complexes
and archetypes can affect the social and physical aspects of the character’s
development as well as the psychological aspects and can make for intriguing
characters for your story.
Guest post by Lucy Markham. Lucy
Markham has a Bachelor’s Degree in English: creative writing from the University of Florida
