What is a character prototype? Who first put forward this concept?

Switzerland is perhaps one of the most famous scenic spots in the world. It is not only beautiful mountains and rivers that attract many tourists to Switzerland. Go to Zurich to meet the famous carl jung, or

Today, after Jung's death, it has become a long-cherished wish of many tourists to visit his former residence in Kusner, feel the stone carvings and towers made by Jung himself in Bolingen, and walk the small stone bridge that Jung once walked on every day.

Swiss psychologist Carl Gustavjung (18751961) is the junior and collaborator of the world-famous Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud (18561939). He revised Freud's view that artistic creation is stimulated by unconscious sexual desire. In his view,

Jung is inextricably linked with China, and his psychoanalytic thoughts are deeply rooted in China culture and China philosophy. The Book of Changes and The Secret News of Taiyi Golden Flower are his highly respected and enriched works. Professor Jung's understanding of psychological development process (self-orientation) benefited greatly from China's thought. Moreover, he established temporality as the universal law of nature, which is also his conclusion after studying the causal and non-causal relations of nature in China's thought.

In recent years, Jung's analytical psychology and its influence in other disciplines are heating up in China. In China, the Oriental Psychoanalysis Research Center was established; Professor Shen of South China Normal University, the first China member to obtain the qualification of psychoanalyst of the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP); The first (1998) and second (2002) international seminars on "Psychoanalysis and China Culture" were held in China. Thomas Coates Kirsch, former president of the International Psychological Association, Ruger Zhao Jia, president of the International Psychological Association, and Dr. Moristein, president of the International Psychological Academic Committee, attended the meeting and made speeches. All these have had a far-reaching impact on the international community.

As one of the most influential psychologists, Jung's reputation and influence can be equal to Freud's, and even surpass the former in some aspects and fields. His theory and influence have gone far beyond the psychological circle. Jung used his analytical psychology theory and practice to influence contemporary philosophy and the whole humanities, as well as contemporary scientific thought and research.

Jung was one of the first deep psychologists who seriously thought about the traditional meaning of ancient China. In the early 1920s, Jung met Wei Lixian (1873 1930). Wilhelm, a German missionary, lived in China for many years, made a thorough study of China's ancient culture and introduced many masterpieces of China's philosophy and religion to the west. Through William's translation and introduction, Jung began to understand China, The Book of Changes, The Secret Message of Taiyi Golden Flower and other famous works with profound oriental thoughts.

Jung himself once commented on William, the German translator of the above two classics: "William's work in his life is so important and valuable to me, because he explained and confirmed what I have been pursuing, thinking, yearning for, engaging in and studying in the past." "William's works have brought us the genes of China culture and China culture that can fundamentally change our world outlook." Jung studied Chinese and was deeply attracted by the rich images in Chinese characters, which he called "readable prototype". Not only did he carve the epitaphs for Tony Wolff and Emma Jung in Chinese, but he also used the Chinese word "harmony between man and nature" as his lifelong pursuit on the last stone he carved before his death.

Aiming at Freud's theory of individual unconsciousness, Jung put forward the theory of collective unconsciousness, which is also the core content of Jung's analytical psychology. Jung believes that in the unconscious mind, there are not only personal experiences from childhood, but also many primitive and ancestral experiences. Life is not a blank sheet of paper as Locke said, but a kind of "racial memory" brought by heredity, just like animals inherit certain instincts. In order to explore and study this impersonal content hidden in everyone's mind, Jung turned his research object from case to myth, to literature, and from psychiatry to anthropology. Here, Jung finally found an entity that unified the symbolic form transformed from Libido with the collective unconscious existence. Jung named this entity "primitive image" and later named it "prototype".

Jung believes that the essence of literature lies in expressing the collective subconscious. "The creative process, as far as we can understand, involves unconsciously activating a certain prototype image and finely casting this image into the whole work. Artists seize these images, dig them out of the abyss of unconsciousness, give them the value of consciousness, and transform them into the understanding and acceptance of contemporary minds. " "The power of the prototype, whether expressed in the form of direct experience or through narrative language, can excite us, because the sound it makes is much stronger than our own. Whoever says the original picture speaks the voice of 1000 people, which can make people fascinated and fooled. This is the mystery of great art and the secret that it affects us. "

The ancestor of prototype theory should be British anthropologist edward tylor. In the book 187 1 year of primitive culture, Taylor first put forward the theory that art originated from witchcraft. He thinks that the way of thinking of primitive people is very different from that of modern people. For primitive people, the world around them is extremely strange and mysterious and awesome. The main feature of primitive thinking is animism. Mountains, rivers, plants, birds, animals, insects and fish are all spiritual to primitive people, and they all sympathize with people.

Fraser, a famous British anthropologist, published an epoch-making anthropological work "Golden Branch" on 1890. This work is regarded as the cornerstone of prototype theory. Fraser compared the religious ceremonies of many nationalities, and studied the basic patterns of myths and ceremonies according to their similarities, pointing out that ancient myths are the products of ritual activities, and they are descriptions accompanying or following such activities. Fraser believes that all the customs, rituals and beliefs of primitive tribes originated from sympathy witchcraft. It is obviously impossible for human beings to control the mysterious nature with witchcraft at the earliest, so they founded religion to seek God's favor. When religion was proved to be ineffective in reality, mankind gradually established various sciences to reveal the mysteries of nature. On this basis, Fraser put forward a formula of great significance to the development of human thought: witchcraft-religion-science. In this diachronic process, many mysterious rituals and strange oracles became understandable.

Prototype is further explained in Jung's unconscious theory. Like Jin Zhi, his change and symbol of Libido is the basis of archetypal criticism. Jung's archetype and his theory of collective unconsciousness have had a great influence on literature and art. In the field of world literary criticism, the concept of "archetype" has been widely used since Maud Bodkin (1875 1967) applied Jung's archetype theory to analyze the classic poem "Archetype Pattern in Poetry" (1934).

Northrop Frye (191219919965438), a Canadian scholar, made a systematic and in-depth study of the myth-prototype problem from the literary point of view. Inspired by Jung, Frye also believes that literature is the expression of mythological rituals, the rebirth and resurrection of myths from the forms of myths and rituals, and it is regarded as the accumulation of primitive experiences and prototype images of human ancestors. Frye's Analysis of Criticism analyzes and summarizes the gains and losses of various existing criticism schools in the West with a fairly broad vision, which greatly breaks through the limitations of the "new criticism" school that has dominated the British and American criticism circles since the 1920s and opens up a new situation of western literary criticism after World War II. The appearance of Critical Analysis marks the rise of prototype criticism theory and research in the field of literary criticism. Analysis of Criticism "systematically explains the archetypal criticism theory with broad vision, well-designed logical structure and extensive circumstantial evidence, and is regarded as a must-read classic of this critical school".

Chinese academic circles have successively introduced and translated the works of famous scholars such as Fraser, Jung and Frye on prototype theory, and published some academic monographs on prototype theory with China characteristics. Ye Shuxian of China Academy of Social Sciences should be a famous authority figure in the theoretical research of "myth-prototype". A series of academic monographs and papers on myth-prototype theory have been published, such as Heroes and the Sun: Prototype Reconstruction of China's Ancient Epic (1991); Prototype and Intercultural Interpretation (2002); The archetypal model of China's mythological cosmology, the encounter between neutrality and rain archetype in Chinese and western literature, filial piety and shoes in China literature-Oedipus theme, archetype and Chinese characters, etc. In addition, Frye Studies-China and the West, edited by Tsinghua University Wang Ning and Xu (1996); Yang Lijuan's monograph World Myth and Primitive Culture (2004); Shi Chunhua's monograph "Exploration of Mind Ontology-Mysterious Prototype" (2002); Cheng Jincheng's monograph Criticism and Reinterpretation of Prototype (1998); Chang Ruosong's monograph The Myth of Human Mind: Jung's Analytical Psychology (1999) played a theoretical guiding role and contributed to the upsurge of myth-prototype research in China.

Myth-archetypal criticism requires grasping the * * * nature and evolution law of literary types as a whole. Prototype is a "typical recurring image", and the most basic literary prototype is myth, which is a model of formal structure. Various literary types are the continuation and evolution of myth. Myth-archetypal criticism emphasizes that the analysis and research of various literary works should focus on interrelated factors, which reflect the collective literary imagination of human beings, and they often show some rather limited and repetitive patterns or procedures. Therefore, we should not treat each work in isolation, but put it in the whole literary relationship and regard literature as a whole from a macro perspective. Just like watching an oil painting, we should not only study its various details in front of us, but also "stand behind", look at the composition of literary works from a broader perspective, break through the boundaries of one or two literary works, and achieve a clear grasp of the overall outline of literature. The theory and practice of prototype criticism has opened up a new thinking space for western literary criticism with its unique macro-nature. Wellek, an authoritative figure in American literary theory, believes that myth-prototype criticism is the only truly international literary criticism, just like Marxist criticism and psychoanalytic criticism in terms of its influence and popularity.

China culture is of great significance and value to the development of Jung and his psychology, and has played a far-reaching role. Jung himself absorbed rich nutrition from China traditional culture and enriched and perfected his psychological theory. At the same time, he also played an active and important role in the spread of China culture in the world, especially in the western psychological field.

After Jung, the analytical psychology he founded is still developing and still shows his enthusiasm for China culture. 1In August, 1995, 13 International Conference on Analytical Psychology was held in Zurich, Switzerland. More than 500 participants came from all over the world, showing a strong lineup of international analytical psychology or Jungian scholars. Although these analytical psychologists are all over the world, and their respective languages and research interests are quite different, they all have one thing in common, that is, they admire and pursue China culture.