A Comprehensive Definition of the Archetype 1

Fifteen years of theorizing on the archetype has led me to a working definition that I contend not only clarifies what an archetype is and how it works but helps to sharpen a number of clinical and practical processes as I hope to show. The definition I propose is amenable to empirical inquiry, falsification, and modification, it pulls together many threads of thought on the archetype and helps, I argue, to eliminate the conceptual confusion that has plagued archetype theory. In this paper I will first outline the wide range of approaches to the definition of “archetype” and then go on to propose a definition of archetype that may clarify a number of ongoing conceptual tangles in this complex concept. In this paper I suggest that archetypes are special types of spontaneous thoughts which generate metaphorical narratives which are “mapped” from our earliest visuospatial experience of both body and world. I combine findings in spontaneous thought research, evolutionary science, including insights from psycho‐neuro‐immunology and code biology, and cognitive linguistics (metaphor theory) to develop this definition.