http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=archetype

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07630a.htm

Also, here’s my attempt to grapple with Jung’s notion of the archetype, some 15 years ago. This paper doesn’t really represent my current thinking but it might be helpful in some way:

http://ca.geocities.com/earthpages5@rogers.com/jung_eas.htm

My own feeling today is that Jung’s use of the term archetype (and archetypal image) on the whole might be a bit reductive. But one has to be careful when speaking about Jung because he’s more of a holistic than a linear thinker. If one were to say, for instance, that he sometimes seems to uncritically equate the orthodox Christian idea of the Holy Spirit with Hindu ideas about grace, one could find an instance in his Collected Works where he doesn’t.

He’s very complicated and I think self-consciously writing to thrive in given situations, political contexts, etc. Not to say that he’s a mere opportunist. I believe he was sincere in his quest. But he was quite shrewd as well.

I believe there was a further reason that the later Jung invoked the Kantian framework so often when he discussed archetypes. If I can try to sum up a complex situation briefly, it would seem that Jung unwittingly conflated the issue of archetypal multivalence with the issue of whether archetypes could be directly knowable. On the one hand, Jung recognized and often stressed the fact that archetypes are always observed and experienced in a diverse multiplicity of possible concrete embodiments, so that the full essence and meaning of the archetype must be regarded as fundamentally transcending its many particular manifestations. On the other hand, however, he often conflated this crucial insight with the quite separate epistemological issue of whether archetypes can be directly experienced and known as principles that transcend the human psyche, or whether they can only be indirectly inferred by observing the configurations of psychological phenomena which are structured by archetypes that are ultimately “unknowable” in themselves (noumena). In his understandable attempt to preserve the multivalent indeterminacy of archetypes, transcending every particular embodiment, Jung called upon a Kantian framework of phenomenon and noumenon which seemed to entail the unknowability of the archetypes in themselves, their humanly unreachable essence beyond every diverse manifestation.

This link is to a Jung lexicon by a Jungian analyst. It’s an excellent, well-balanced compilation of Jung’s work. Just scroll down a bit until you see the definitions for ‘archetype’ and ‘archetypal image’:

http://www.psychceu.com/Jung/sharplexicon.html