How To Live Life Within Each Of The 4 Archetypes

“The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.” (Carl Jung)

Lover

The Lover is the archetype of passion, sensuality, feeling, joy, connection, support, empathy, and embodiment.

Within the psyche, it is the Lover that awakens in a person a zest for life and all of its beauty.

The Lover has a strong emotional sense that all things are connected. He wants to experience everything, delighting all five of his senses in all that he does.

The Lover feels his way through life — he feels for the world. When others are in pain, it is his pain also; and when they are happy, he is happy.

Accessing the Lover in a balanced way enables a person to connect deeply with himself, others, and the world around him.

When the ego is relating to the energies of this archetype in unbalanced ways, the Lover’s shadow manifests in one or two forms: the Addicted Lover or the Impotent Lover.

The Addicted Lover is the grown-up version of the typical “momma’s boy.” This is the Lover in overdrive, and results when the ego is inflated and identifies with the Lover.

The person with this archetype’s shadow form is too “in love” with everything, forever indulging his senses and being unable to get down to business. Jumping from romantic partner to romantic partner and job to job, he imagines himself to be a sex symbol, Eros, as well as Dionysus.

This man is ungrounded, deriving his happiness from external sources. He is dependent on others, and the though of eating lone or being alone for too long makes him cringe.

On the other side of the coin is the Impotent Lover, the archetype of the fantasizer, the hopeless dreamer. This archetype manifests when a person is out of touch with, or suppresses, the Lover energies.