Archetypes.

Archetypes can happen between people

Archetypes are not only individual identities. Sometimes a pattern is created between us.

• A therapist becomes Healer and the client is left carrying Wounded.
• A parent becomes Protector and an adult disabled person is pushed into Child.
• One person becomes Caregiver and the other feels required to become Grateful Recipient.
• A disabled person is repeatedly placed into Hero because other people need their life to become an inspirational story.
• Someone is assigned Victim, while another person gets to become Rescuer.
• Competence becomes both proof of worth and spectacle: Competent Exception ↔ Inspirational Object.

So sometimes the question is not “which archetype am I?” but “what roles are we creating between us?” That is where archetypal thinking and Mine, Yours, Ours, System can become especially interesting.

Where archetypal work can help

Archetypal exploration can be useful around recurring roles; identity; strong emotional patterns; dreams and images; relationships; contradictions; cultural stories; qualities that have become difficult to express; and questions about who somebody is becoming.

But interpretation should slow down when:

• the person’s physical reality has not been believed;
• there is an obvious accessibility problem;
• the archetype is becoming a stereotype;
• somebody is being told what they “really” feel;
• independence, cure or normality is quietly being treated as the healthy endpoint;
• social injustice is being relocated entirely inside the person;
• or the person simply says: “Interesting, but that’s not me.”

That answer is allowed.