The enemy: a twenty‐first century archetypal study

Abstract

This paper delineates the biologically based archetype of the enemy, showing how it derives ideationally and affectively from the archetype of the stranger, the latter an evolutionary given within the lives of animate creatures. In doing so, it both extends Jung's classic exposition of archetypes and sustains their relationship to instincts. It shows how globalization magnifies the archetype of the enemy; how, in a living sense, stranger and archetype are taxonomically distinct; and how, just as the enemy is the cultural elaboration of the biologically based archetype of the stranger, so war is the cultural elaboration of male‐male competition. In elucidating these aspects of the enemy, it makes explicit reference to Darwin's lengthy descriptive writings about male‐male competition across invertebrate and vertebrate species. Key implications and ramifications are discussed on the basis of both Jung's and Darwin's insights into what is commonly known as ‘the mind/body problem.’