Archetypes of the Psyche: Psychological Patterns in 21st Century English Novels

Abstract

In this paper, the frequency, transformation and modern sense of psychological archetypes discussed in the 21st century English novels was analyzed in a Jungian approach. The corpus of 50 novels was analyzed, and the characters were split into several big archetypes including Hero, Shadow, Persona, Anima/ Animus, and Self. Results indicate that Hero archetype traits are present in 32 percent of the characters, Shadow in 27 percent, Persona in 18 percent, Anima/Animus in 13 percent and Self in 10 percent of the characters and this shows internal conflict and character transformation in the modern tales. Gender analysis has indicated that male characters possess most Hero (61) and Shadow (58) archetypes and female characters possess more Persona (56) and Anima/Animus (59). The influence of narrative perspective on archetypal depth was also significant: first-person narratives received 67% high archetypal intensity, experimental ones 74% and third-person limited 52%. The cultural and contextual factors also determined archetypal adaptation and the identity crisis and the trauma were presented in 57% of the Shadow archetypical representations. Forty-five percent of partial transformations, 28 percent complete integrations, and 27 percent archetypal journeys that were not resolved occurred, which revealed that there was a transition to the psychological realism rather than closure. The average values of 0.68 were obtained when an archetypal index of Narrative Impact (ANII) with weights of the character depth (0.40), narrative conflict (0.30), the symbolism (0.20), and the resolution (0.10) was used, which confirmed the fact that modern texts are of great interest in terms of psychology. The paper also sheds light on how archetypal criticism is still relevant today, besides it is also concerned with the hybridization of how the expression of archetypal is manifested in contemporary literature.