Fragmentation of the Archetype

Fragmentation names the process by which ego consciousness defends itself against the numinous by breaking the paradoxical unity of the primordial archetype into series of related but opposed images. “Fragmentation occurs in the sense that, for consciousness, the primordial archetype breaks down into a sizable group of related archetypes and symbols” (Neumann 2019, p. 336). The original archetype is too overwhelming to be borne whole; consciousness therefore splits it into a terrible and a beneficent face, a devouring and a nourishing aspect, which can be held apart and integrated piecemeal.

Neumann’s paradigm case is the neumann-great-mother: “uroboric: terrible and devouring, beneficent and creative; a helper, but also alluring and destructive; a maddening enchantress, yet a bringer of wisdom; bestial and divine, voluptuous harlot and inviolable virgin, immemorially old and eternally young” (Neumann 2019, p. 337). At the separation-of-the-world-parents this unity is torn asunder. “To the left, there is ranged a negative series of symbols — Deadly Mother, Great Whore of Babylon, Witch, Dragon, Moloch; to the right, a positive series in which we find the Good Mother who, as Sophia or Virgin, brings forth and nourishes, and leads the way to rebirth and salvation. Here Lilith, there Mary; here the toad, there the goddess; here a morass of blood, there the Eternal Feminine” (Neumann 2019, p. 337).

The image Neumann offers for the operation is optical: “The unbearable white radiance of primordial light is broken up by the prism of consciousness into a multicolored rainbow of images and symbols” (Neumann 2019, p. 337). The fragmentation is therefore not a loss but the condition of consciousness — and the repression of the Terrible Mother into the shadow is a specific, historically achieved consequence of patriarchal fragmentation which depth psychology labors to undo.

Relationships

Primary sources

neumann-origins-history-consciousness (Neumann 1949)