Archetypes as interpretive images ...

The way I look at it ... Part III

We have sets of evolved integrated responses on which the awareness of self as an individual being is superimposed.

These sets of integrated responses are "automatically" triggered by our internal/external environment ... and then given culturally appropriate (and accepted) descriptions or interpretive images ... as Joseph Campbell wrote about the masks of God ... each becoming (the description or interpretive image becomes) an archetype.

We become aware of these integrated responses as they occur, such as fear in response to danger, or lust in response to sexual stimuli when we are mature enough to be sexually aroused. (More about the process of fear becoming motivation for fight or flight ... and the forms that our personal fighting or fleeing will take.)

We start off as newborns with these sets of integrated responses—hardwired within a range of variations in all of us—and a fairly blank mental "slate" or awareness of who we are. We are taught a sense of self, a narrative our personal existence, by others ... out of their own narratives of existence ... with the "stories" of the culture's archetypes to explain the emergence of the integrated responses as we mature in body and mind.

We are a boy or a girl. We are of specific ethnic and cultural heritages ... with friends and enemies. We are expected to behave in certain ways ... keep our clothes on and NOT urinate or defecate in public (here in western civilization). We have "invisible fences" put in place around our psyches.

This sense of self (inside the fence), we have labeled our "soul".

Archetypes provide us with mind gates for integrating our sense of self with our internal and external environments. These mind gates allow us to mentally—both consiously as in rituals and storytelling of all kinds, and subconsciously as in dreams—interact and integrate with these "prewired" sets of response—the archetypes evokes the set of responses in us—in preparation for the real thing. The more realistic the evoking of the set of responses, the more realistic we consider the archetype.

When I speak of "we"at this point, I am really speaking of a the limited group of individuals who share similar narratives of existence with me. And maybe I need a new word such as "we-as-me" ... weasme? ... as opposed to the broader sense of "we" as the whole human race ... so I would rewrite ...

This sense of self (inside the fence), weasme have labeled our "soul" ...

I will exploring all these issues in my new play, "On His Steps" ... the story of a fallen warrior trying to find and then reintegrate into a weasme community.