Instinct

Instinct in Jung’s mature theory names the biological-somatic pole of a single spectrum whose spiritual-imaginal pole is the archetype. The spectrum image — Jung’s own, in “On the Nature of the Psyche” (CW 8) — is of a rainbow running from the infrared end (instinct, the body, impulse toward typical action) to the ultraviolet end (archetype, the pattern of typical meaning), with consciousness occupying the visible middle band.

Instinct is not the same as drive in the Freudian sense. For Jung an instinct is an inherited mode of action — migration, courtship, parental care, pack behavior — that unfolds as a typical pattern when the releasing conditions are met. The archetype is the inherited mode of representation of the same pattern: the psychic correlate of the biological disposition. The instinct-archetype parallel is therefore a single psychophysical reality seen from opposite ends. What presents as a somatic urge at the infrared pole presents as an archetypal image at the ultraviolet pole, and individuation is among other things the integration of the two ends of the spectrum. See archetype and instinct-archetype-parallel.

Relationships

• archetype
• instinct-archetype-parallel
• psychic-energy