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Archetypes and the Soul : the Conscious Complex
Archetypes like instincts have their basis in natural order, and hence are genetically inherited. But it should be recognised that they behave very differently depending on whether they are related to consciousness or not. If they were reducable to a genetically determined pathway, they would simply go round and round like an old record. Now this is in fact more or less what happens all the while the archetype remain unconscious as a complex of obsessive ideas or behaviour. We can get stuck in the closed orbit of a complex, from which we cannot really free ourselves until the complex itself is brought to consciousness. While the reverse is still operating, ie a powerful complex is pulling consciousness into unconsciousness, it remains a sterile circle like the dog chasing its own tail. For this reason a strong ego needs to be built up, which can stand its ground and not be sucked down, and this may take many years to achieve.
At a certain level of conscious constellation however semi-autonomous complexes tend towards a personification and a dramification of themselves that is more than simply a manner of speech. They take on a life of their own because they have the dynamic or motivating power of an autonomous archetype behind them. If their energy is not sufficiently intergrated they can become dangerous and self-destructive, because they have failed to find adequate expression and realization. They have, as it were, failed to live.
The positive aspect of this tendency to personification is a greater possibility for objectifying an idea or complex, which leads to its own articulation and greater freedom of expression. The clinical 'complex' may simply become a new term for the Greek soul, or anima, with an irreducible pluarlity of perspectives twinkling and turning in its translucent image. The soul has this plural nature because the unconscious contains all the subliminal perceptions and contents that constitute a total vision in potentia. A deliberate widening and dimming of ego-consciousness is necessary however to render the unconscious dimmly perceptible, which eludes our grasp the more we try to narrowly focus on it.
He who binds to himself a joy
William Blake
Does that winged life destroy
But he who just kisses it as it flies
Shall live in eternity's sunrise