Archetypal Possession

Archetypal possession is the clinical term for the psychic condition in which the ego no longer has a complex but is had by it — the affective-imaginal charge of an archetypal pattern inundates the ego and speaks through it as if from a separate center. The classical tradition named this plainly: it is the condition in which a daimon speaks, in which a god rides the mortal, in which [[mania|mania]] takes hold of the one it has chosen.

Jung’s treatment distinguishes possession by a personal complex — where the material is biographical and can in principle be integrated through analytic work — from possession by an archetype proper, where the material is transpersonal and more dangerous, because the ego under archetypal pressure tends to expand into inflation rather than to recognize its condition. The figure of the mana-personality names the particular form archetypal possession takes when the ego identifies with the archetype of the wise old man or the great mother. The work of individuation is not to expel the archetypal material but to establish a conscious relation to it that is neither fused nor severed.

Relationships

• complex
• daimon
• inflation