Depth and Archetypal Psychology — Session Four / Part Three (3–4): The Eternal Child, Wounded Child and Victim Archetypes
Archetype of Eternal Child — Wounded / Victim

In the previous part, we discussed remaining in the condition of the eternal orphan and how the eternal orphan ultimately places us in a stable position of weakness in life. Within this feeling of weakness and incapacity, we reduce all that we can be and become to a “weak and powerless I.”

When the heroic position of the ego—our conscious understanding of ourselves—is weakened, if we become caught in a profound sense of guilt and turn our anger against ourselves, we remain in the eternal orphan or weakling. But if we locate responsibility for this fall not in ourselves but in others, and feel that we have not merely fallen but have also been wounded, we first find ourselves in the wounded child archetype and then in the victim archetype. Behind the mask of the victim, what comes to possess us is a profound anger and resentment towards others and, beyond them, towards existence and the world itself.

This is the feeling that injustice is the first law of life. Resentment and anger at injustice open a direct path towards the archetypes of shadow and darkness. This anger creates a feeling that “I am right” and that “others and the world are darkness,” preparing us to increase suffering in the world.

In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles is the enemy of the world and of human beings and never ceases adding suffering to the world because he believes that the world is a bloodbath and that human beings are vile and contemptible creatures who would have been better never to exist. This anger does not end merely in the belief that it would have been better if none of them existed; Mephistopheles actively works to corrupt and destroy humanity and the world.

In Part Three of Session Four, we examine another response of the orphan to suffering and to the dragon of chaos: escape from the orphan condition and an attempt at an impossible return to childhood. This regression is not a genuine return to childhood but a retreat into the archetypal qualities of childhood. It is a regression into underdevelopment. To remain underdeveloped forever is to stop learning and the development of consciousness forever. Along this path we flee into “remaining unfinished” so that we do not have to suffer along the road towards completion. The eternal child is an unconscious, unaware human being who avoids the suffering of learning and lives only on the surface of life. The price of this retreat, however, is abandoning the idea of consciousness and freedom and the realisation of the Self. A seed that chooses to remain a seed will not suffer, but the price of avoiding suffering is remaining in the depths of unconscious darkness. There may be no suffering, but we will never hear birdsong, feel the touch of the breeze on our skin, or experience rain and sunlight.

The one who accepts the suffering of blossoming may live a shorter life than a seed—but has a seed that remains closed ever truly experienced life?

Breaking the seed’s shell will make it an orphan, vulnerable to darkness and to the assaults of life and death; yet growth is what then becomes possible.

Link to the video on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/XxedQGC3V7E

Aydin Areta