"Jung and the archetypes - A contemporary myth" – Jean-Loïc Le Quellec - Editions Sciences Humaines - October 2013
It is impossible to take an interest in art and prehistory, and therefore in the prehistory of art, without encountering the notion of archetype one day or another. Some authors argue, for example, that the parietal paintings of Lascaux illustrate the following archetypes: animal, cave, hunting... The existence of an archetype of the mother would be similarly suggested by the presence of numerous female figurines in prehistoric art. Other archetypes are commonly used to explain novels, paintings, films...
But what is an archetype?
The notion attributed to Jung would designate, according to the specialists, invariant structures of the collective unconscious, symbolic representations of a person, an object, sorts of a priori psychic structures that would be universally widespread...
Yes, but here it is, where is the evidence? asks J.-L. Le Quellec in this book.
Through this book, the author attempts to assess the validity of the notion of archetype, to make a historical account of it, to examine its construction and presuppositions, and to evaluate its solidity in the light of anthropological, mythological and prehistoric data. He draws up here a catalogue of the small arrangements with history and reality that are to be found in a certain literature and masterfully dismantles a contemporary myth, that of the existence of archetypes such as Jung, and many authors after him have theorized them.
Jean-Loïc Le Quellec is an anthropologist, research director at the Centre for the Study of African Worlds (CEMAf-CNRS) and Honorary Fellow at the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits University in Johannesburg. He has written numerous books on the rock art of the Sahara, which are now references. He has carried out expert missions on behalf of UNESCO. Several of his writings deal with French mythology.
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