The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) is an encyclopedic collection of
archetypal images consisting of photographs of
works of art
A work of art, artwork, art piece, piece of art or art object is an artistic creation of aesthetic value. Except for "work of art", which may be used of any work regarded as art in its widest sense, including works from literature ...
,
ritual
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized ...
images, and artifacts of sacred traditions and
contemporary art
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic co ...
from around the world. The archive is hosted by National ARAS, with institutional members in
New York,
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
,
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
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, coordinates =
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, and
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
.
Overview
The ARAS archive contains about 17,000 photographic images collected over more than sixty years, each accompanied by scholarly commentary.
The commentary includes a description of the image with a cultural history that places it in context historically and geographically, an important aspect for understanding and working with archetypal images. Where applicable, the commentary brings the image into focus for its modern psychological and
symbolic meaning, as well as often including a bibliography for related reading and a glossary of technical terms.
The archive has physical
repositories in the cities of its institutional-member hosts; it is also available online (online access does require a subscription) and images are indexed with keywords, including historical, cultural, geographic and other useful terms. ARAS also publishes a quarterly online journal connecting art, culture and depth psychology from a multi-disciplinary perspective that can be subscribed to free of charge on their website, aras.org.
Usage
The ARAS archive is designed for and used by students and scholars for research, by artists and designers as a
sourcebook
A sourcebook is a collection of writings on a subject that is intended to be a basic introduction to the topic presented.
Academic use
In American universities, a sourcebook, either a standard one or a custom collection, may function as a supplem ...
of
motifs and
iconographic
Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...
forms, by individuals interested in commonalities in mythology,
dream imagery, and vision which transcend nation and
ideology, and by practitioners of
depth psychology
Depth psychology (from the German term ''Tiefenpsychologie'') refers to the practice and research of the science of the unconscious, covering both psychoanalysis and psychology. It is also defined as the psychological theory that explores the rel ...
or other psychological perspectives wanting to enhance their knowledge of archetypal symbolism.
Among the scholars who have visited or made use of ARAS' resources are
Erich Neumann, who in his ''The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype'' (Princeton, 1955) mined ARAS for images of ancient
goddesses to explore the
archetype of the feminine as it evolved over the centuries from ancient
Sumeria and
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
into the modern era. Two volumes have been published containing a small fraction of the images held by ARAS, entitled ''An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism''.
History
ARAS was begun—and built to over six thousand images—by spiritualist and scholar
Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, who founded the
Eranos
Eranos is an intellectual discussion group dedicated to humanistic and religious studies, as well as to the natural sciences which has met annually in Moscia (Lago Maggiore), the Collegio Papio and on the Monte Verità in Ascona, Switzerland sin ...
conferences in 1933.
Each conference had a theme, and Fröbe-Kapteyn collected images to illustrate the topic of each year's meeting. In 1946, Olga Froebe-Kapteyn gave her collection of pictorial artifacts to the
Warburg Institute
The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London, England. A member of the School of Advanced Study, its focus is the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture – cro ...
in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, and photographic duplicates were given to the
C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and to the
Bollingen Foundation in New York. The collection in New York was edited and further developed, including collection, sorting, and classification of the material and the development of detailed study sheets for every image. This New York archive was eventually renamed the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism and was acquired by the
C.G. Jung Foundation of New York (mirror collections exist at the C.G. Jung Institutes in San Francisco and Los Angeles). The close association of ARAS with the Jung Institutes is "not because a symbolic point of view is limited to
Jungian
Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
s, but because Jung was the particular proponent of a broadly archetypal point of view that insists upon transpersonal and symbolic connections transcending cultural and theological boundaries. This perspective lies at the heart of the archive."
ARAS contains more than 17,000 images from every era of human history, from the
Paleolithic and
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...
eras, from
ancient India
According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...
,
Asia Minor
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, and
Mycenae
Mycenae ( ; grc, Μυκῆναι or , ''Mykē̂nai'' or ''Mykḗnē'') is an archaeological site near Mykines in Argolis, north-eastern Peloponnese, Greece. It is located about south-west of Athens; north of Argos; and south of Corinth. ...
, from small tribal societies to great empires. The study sheets that accompany each image provide a detailed description of the image, a cultural history to place it in context, an archetypal commentary which examines the image's modern psychological meaning and offers numerous cross-cultural references to related concepts/images, a
bibliography for related reading, and a
glossary of technical terms. This detailed documentation renders the library of images accessible to the
lay person as well as the specialist
scholar
A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researc ...
, although as the ARAS homepage notes, "There is...no supposition among those working in this field that they have found the one and only way of interpreting archetypal symbolism. The symbol is forever recreating itself anew in the imaginations of those who experience it."
ARAS online
While for many years the archive was accessible only by personal visit to one of the three locations,
New York,
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
, and
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
, the digitization of the archive has made it accessible to anyone with a computer connected through a web browser to the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
.
ARAS online is built over a powerful search engine accessible through an intuitive user interface, and aided by reference features such as the ARAS cultural
timeline
A timeline is a display of a list of events in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events.
Timelines can use any suitable scale represen ...
. This timeline shows the selected images placed in historical time, and a click on the "live" marker for a particular image opens that image and its descriptive content.
ARAS online content is available only to members. Membership costs $100 a year. ARAS also have a presence on social media and is a
non-profit organisation
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
.
[.]
See also
*
Archetype
The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis.
An archetype can be any of the following:
# a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...
*
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phi ...
*
Depth psychology
Depth psychology (from the German term ''Tiefenpsychologie'') refers to the practice and research of the science of the unconscious, covering both psychoanalysis and psychology. It is also defined as the psychological theory that explores the rel ...
*
Dream interpretation
Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. Although associated with some forms of psychotherapy, there is no reliable evidence that understanding or interpreting dreams has a positive impact on one's mental health.
In m ...
*
Symbolism (disambiguation)
References
External links
*
Sample image with scholarly commentary: Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux{{Authority control
1933 establishments in New York (state)
Organizations established in 1933
Arts organizations based in New York City
Non-profit organizations based in New York City
Culture of Manhattan
Photo archives in the United States
Mythological archetypes