Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Figure’ operates simultaneously on at least three distinct registers, and the concordance entry must honour all three. At the most concrete level, the term appears as a bibliographic device — the numbered illustration that anchors visual argument in alchemical iconography (Jung), neuroanatomical mapping (Craig), mythological survey (Campbell), and clinical research meta-analysis (McPheeters). This surface usage is not trivial: in Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy and Symbols of Transformation, the ‘figures’ are not mere decoration but carriers of symbolic amplification, each image a projected unconscious content demanding interpretive engagement. At a second level, ‘figure’ names the personified form through which psychic content becomes apprehensible — the archetypal figures (hero, trickster, Great Mother, shadow) that populate the collective unconscious and structure ego development across mythology and clinical experience, as Neumann traces with precision. Hillman, cited in Campbell’s Oriental Mythology, captures the depth-psychological imperative when he credits Campbell with restoring ‘eternal figures’ to everyday consciousness. At a third, phenomenological register developed by Merleau-Ponty, ‘figure’ names the Gestalt foreground that perception carves from ground — a perceptual structure prior to association. These registers intersect provocatively: what the psyche projects is itself a figure-ground dynamic, and the symbolic figures of alchemy, myth, and dream are, phenomenologically, what consciousness cannot help but perceive as foreground.
the different archetypal figures — uroboros, Great Mother, dragon, etc. — in which the unconscious presents itself to the ego, or which the ego constellates out of the unconscious
Neumann argues that archetypal figures are the mythological forms through which the unconscious structures and presents itself to developing ego-consciousness at each stage of psychological transformation.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
No one in our century — not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Levi-Strauss — has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness.
Hillman’s tribute identifies the restoration of mythological figures to conscious life as Campbell’s singular contribution, affirming the depth-psychological centrality of figure as living archetypal presence.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962thesis
the unity of the thing in perception is not arrived at by association, but is a condition of association, and as such precedes the verifications which establish and delimit it
Merleau-Ponty establishes figure as a phenomenological precondition of perception itself, arguing that the foreground unity of a perceived thing is constitutive rather than constructed after the fact.
, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting
another distinctive image begins to come forward. It is this archetypal imago that will carry him to the end and give his late paintings their spiritual quality.
Stein traces how a new archetypal figure — the imago — emerges progressively in Rembrandt’s self-portraits, functioning as the psychic organizing form through which individuation is lived and expressed.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting
the political relationship of these characters is summarized in Figure 5.3… we can also identify an axis of ‘auxiliary’ functions that set out to assist Dorothy in mature and less mature ways
Beebe uses a schematic figure to map the hierarchical and archetypal relationships among typological characters, demonstrating how visual figures serve as analytical instruments in depth-psychological type theory.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017supporting
he drew the same figure over and over again… the drawings filled the entire page and were intelligent and simplified symbolic representations of the subject matter
McNiff documents the compulsive repetition of a drawn figure as an autonomous symbolic expression that resists therapeutic redirection, suggesting the figure holds psychic necessity for the patient.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004supporting
Figurae (Lambspringk), see De lapide philosophico figurae et emblemata figures, non-Christian, 18 sacred, 9, 11, 13, 18ff
Jung’s index entry distinguishes sacred figures from non-Christian ones and links them to the alchemical emblematic tradition, positioning ‘figures’ as the visual-symbolic idiom through which archetypal contents were historically encoded.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
Osiris in the cedar-coffin… Nut giving birth to the Sun… The Divine Cow… The human cross
The list of text figures in Symbols of Transformation illustrates how mythological figures — divine, cosmic, and human — are assembled as a comparative symbolic archive anchoring Jung’s amplificatory method.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952aside
a doll swathed in multicoloured wrappings… The fool’s motley shows that she felt she was dealing with something crazy and irrational.
Jung reads a figure embedded in a patient’s painted tree as a spontaneous archetypal symbol of irrational psychic process, using it to demonstrate the historicity and universality of apparently unique inner experiences.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967aside
The gradual unfolding of the symbolic drama presented me with a welcome opportunity to bring together the countless individual experiences I have had in the course of many years
Jung presents the alchemical symbolic drama — populated by its recurring figures — as the historical document that gave structure to his clinical observations of transference, linking iconographic figure to psychotherapeutic process.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954aside