the Kore in a woman is generally a double
one, i.e., a mother and a maiden
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE KORE
306 Not only is the figure of Demeter and the Kore in its threefold aspect as maiden, mother, and Hecate not unknown to the psychology of the unconscious, it is even something of a practical problem.
The “Kore” has her psychological counterpart in those archetypes which I have called the self or supraordinate personality on the one hand, and the anima on the other.
In order to explain these figures, with which I cannot assume all readers to be familiar, I must begin with some remarks of a general nature.
307 The psychologist has to contend with the same difficulties as the mythologist when an exact definition or clear and concise information is demanded of him.
The picture is concrete, clear, and subject to no misunderstandings only when it is seen in its habitual context.
In this form it tells us everything it contains. But as soon as one tries to abstract the “real essence” of the picture, the whole thing becomes cloudy and indistinct.
In order to understand its living function, we must let it remain an organic thing in all its complexity and not try to examine the anatomy of its corpse in the manner of the scientist, or the archaeology of its ruins in the manner of the historian.
Naturally this is not to deny the justification of such methods when applied in their proper place.
308 Jn view of the enormous complexity of psychic phenomena, a purely phenomenological point of view is, and will be for a long time, the only possible one and the only one with any prospect of success.
“Whence” things come and “what” they are, these, particularly in the field of psychology, are questions which are apt to call forth untimely attempts at explanation.
Such speculations are moreover based far more on unconscious philosophical
premises than on the nature of the phenomena themselves.
Psychic phenomena occasioned by unconscious processes are so rich and so multifarious that I prefer to describe my findings and observations and, where possible, to classify them—that is, to arrange them under certain definite types.
That is the method of natural science, and it is applied wherever we have to do with multifarious and still unorganized material.
One may question the utility or the appropriateness of the categories or types used in the arrangement, but not the correctness of the method itself.
309 Since for years I have been observing and investigating the products of the unconscious in the widest sense of the word, namely dreams, fantasies, visions, and delusions of the insane,
I have not been able to avoid recognizing certain regularities, that is, types. There are types of situations and types of figures that repeat themselves frequently and have a corresponding meaning.
I therefore employ the term “motif” to designate these repetitions.
Thus there are not only typical dreams but typical motifs in the dreams.
These may, as we have said, be situations or figures.
Among the latter there are human figures that can be arranged under a series of archetypes, the chief of them being, according to my suggestion,1 the shadow, the wise old man, the child (including the child hero), the mother (“Primordial
Mother” and “Earth Mother”) as a supraordinate personality (“daemonic” because supraordinate), and her counterpart the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman.
S10 The above types are far from exhausting all the statistical regularities in this respect.
The figure of the Kore that interests us here belongs, when observed in a man, to the anima type; and when observed in a woman to the type of supraordinate
personality.
It is an essential characteristic of psychic figures that they are duplex or at least capable of duplication; at all events they are bipolar and oscillate between their positive and negative meanings.
Thus the “supraordinate” personality can appear in a despicable and distorted form, like for instance Mephistopheles, who is really more positive as a personality than the vapid and unthinking careerist Faust.
Another negative figure
1 To the best of my knowledge, no other suggestions have been made so far. Critics
have contented themselves with asserting that no such archetypes exist.
Certainly they do not exist, any more than a botanical system exists in nature!
But will anyone deny the existence of natural plant-families on that account?
Or will anyone deny the occurrence and continual repetition of certain morphological and functional similarities?
It is much the same thing in principle with the typical figures of the unconscious.
They are forms existing a priori, or biological norms of psychic activity.
is the Tom Thumb or Tom Dumb of the folktales.
The figure corresponding to the Kore in a woman is generally a double one, i.e., a mother and a maiden, which is to say that she appears now as the one, now as the other.
From this I would conclude, for a start, that in the formation of the Demeter-Kore myth the feminine influence so far outweighed the masculine that the latter had practically no significance.
The man’s role in the Demeter myth is really only that of seducer or conqueror. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 306-309
mother mother mother mother mother mother mother
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