An Interview with Lenore Thomson, May 2007
By Lauren Yanks
In our upcoming Jung on the Hudson conference, Lenore Thomson, M.Div. will be giving a talk entitled, "Separate and Not Equal: Psychological Type and Archetypal Calling" in our Type vs. Archetype: Conflict or Confluence? conference from July 29-August 3, 2007. Below is an interview I conducted with her in May 2007.
Thomson is the author of Personality Type: An Owner's Manual— a groundbreaking and unique contribution to the field of psychological type. A psychoanalytic editor/ghostwriter for the past thirty years, she has an M.Div. in Psychiatry and Religion from Union Theological Seminary in New York. She teaches courses on psychological type and popular culture, and leads workshops and seminars on "type and archetype."
What is the difference between archetypes and psychological types?
If the psyche were a book, type would be its genre, whereas archetype would be the story it tells.
To put it another way, type is a classification system. It answers the question "how". When we're free to choose, how are we oriented? Do we look for patterns or do we look for facts? Do we work things out logically or do we take others' reactions into account?
The archetypes, on the other hand, are structural patterns that give life purpose and meaning. They answer the question "why". When we're living out the archetypal story at our core, we feel fulfilled and motivated.
Our archetypal story is not something that we willfully choose. Rather, we discover it in our sense of vocation — the way we relate to others and the way they relate to us.
Can you give an example of this?
Jungians recognize four basic archetypal stories of human relationship: Mother and Father, Amazon and Warrior, Companion and Seeker, and Mediatrix and Sage. These stories are as old as human existence; we can see their images in every culture, at every period of time. They correspond to instinctual experiences of male and female as they've existed for a million years.
An archetypal story becomes individual, however, as we live it out typologically — in terms of our own functional preferences and free-will choices. And part of type maturation is coming to terms with our contra-sexual potential, transcending the gender-stereotypes associated with these ancient patterns.
For example, a woman who is living out the Mediatrix story recognizes in herself aspects of the collective unconscious and attempts to give them form. However, she ultimately needs contact with the Sage within, who organizes conscious knowledge and makes it available to others. Jung would define this contra-sexual story pattern as her Animus.
Conversely, a man who is living out the Sage story may be overly invested in conscious knowledge until he comes to terms with Mediatrix within, who is receptive to the unknown. The type preferences of these two people will dictate how their stories get expressed in the world, but type doesn't determine the stories themselves.
What do you think you'll do in your workshop?
I'll give participants a short type test and talk about type for a while, looking at how people have established their ego identity, their way of adapting to the environment. But then we'll turn to the archetypal story that is actually being lived out.
Just to give a quick example: I have a friend named Bonnie, whose type preference is ESTJ. That is, she's a strong Extraverted Thinking type. She identifies with that type; she's logical, directed, good at organizing and keeping things under control. Yet she felt bored and dissatisfied with the administrative jobs that came so easily to her. She kept finding herself turning to her husband, a church pastor with Extraverted Feeling preferences, to make room for her on the periphery of his own vocational choices.
Looking at Bonnie's type doesn't tell you what was missing in her life. She had no doubt that she preferred Extraverted Thinking. But as soon as I described the Companion archetype to her, she recognized the story as her own. A Companion discovers herself by mirroring others' potential and accompanying them in transition from one state into another. So it made sense that Bonnie would discover her calling by joining her husband in doing what he loves to do. Moreover, he was giving her access to aspects of herself that she hasn't yet owned.
When Bonnie realized this about herself, she was able to see that her Thinking preferences could be used in a position of advocacy rather than administrative work. She now runs a center that connects volunteers with places where they can make a positive impact, and her logic and reason serves them well. And now that her preferences have been brought into connection with her archetypal story, her motivation is high. She has a sense of fulfilling her purpose.
How can coming to this conference be helpful?
Whether or not your type is clear, it's useful to figure out where your archetypal motives are located. For example, have you ever experienced a moment where you've felt truly yourself, at the peak of your powers, knowing that this is what life is all about for you? Even if it was a fleeting instant, experienced in a situation that doesn't seem particularly important in retrospect, what you're connected to is the emotional component that makes life worth living.
Once you have that kind of image in your head, you can work with it, see where it takes you. If you were to build a life that ensured more of those moments, what would it look like? Who would you be? These are the sorts of questions I'd like to help people pursue and answer.
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