Classic Characters
15 06 2006
I was thinking the other day about personality test and one of the things that people say is thay they are mostly based on Jungian Archetypes. Carl Jung was the inventor of anaytic psychology and came up with a whole lot of really interesting things. The two I am most interested in are Cultural Unconscious and the Archetypes.
The four basic types are self, shadow, anima and animus which are interesting but there is more interesting stuff to come when it comes to stories and characters. The ones listed on Wikipedia include the perfect couple, the child, the trickster, the superman (or ubermensch), the hero, the great mother, the wise old man and the eternal boy.
Just for giggles see if you can put the following characters into one of these baskets.
Indiana Jones
Superman
Obiwan Kenobi
Bart Simpson
Gandalf the White
Bilbo Baggins
The mother or daughter in Freaky Friday
Neo
The White Witch
The Joker
I suspect if you had a bit more skill than me you could easily pick a handful of these archetypes and you’d have a good starting place for a story of your own.
