Archetype

An archetype, and whatever the role assigned to it, designates an organising principle naturally active in the psyche. Psychoanalytical perspectives, particularly Jungian ones, give it major importance and situate its power in an individual or collective unconscious. Other interpretation frameworks seem just as possible: neurobiological or cognitivist, for example. The support of a neural network, or psychological constants, will then be invoked as places where it is manifested. But in all cases, the hypothesis of this concept is linked to that of a human nature that is universally identifiable in different cultural forms. Indeed, an archetype whose scope does not extend beyond a given culture would hardly merit the name.