Frameworks

Campbell’s book is not a list of archetypes but a claim about narrative: that the hero myths of many cultures share one underlying sequence, which he called the monomyth, a word he credits in a footnote to Joyce. The count of seventeen is Campbell’s own. The first part of the book sets out the adventure in three movements, Departure (five stages), Initiation (six) and Return (six), each stage with its own heading, and he describes the whole as an enlargement of the separation, initiation and return of van Gennep’s rites of passage. Campbell drew on Jung for the psychological reading of the figures the hero meets, and on Freud and Rank for the family drama beneath them, but the sequence is his synthesis of 1949, not Jung’s. The seventeen are the source of every later “journey” model, including Vogler’s twelve stages for screenwriters. The only empirical work near it is Rogers and colleagues (2023), who tested a seven-element reduction of the sequence as a way of seeing one’s own life story; that tests narrative framing, not Campbell’s comparative claim. Campbell died in 1987, the text is in copyright, and the Joseph Campbell Foundation asserts its rights actively.

Sources

• Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series XVII. Second edition, Princeton University Press, 1968. ISBN 978-0-691-01784-6. Part I, chapters 1–3 (the Prologue “The Monomyth”, the seventeen stage headings, and note 35 on Joyce).
• Rogers, B. A., et al. (2023). Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey increases meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000341
• Joseph Campbell Foundation. HERO’S JOURNEY, US Reg. No. 4246622, class 41. https://trademarks.justia.com/852/52/hero-s-85252681.html

Wolff’s scheme is the earliest of the authored taxonomies and the only one written from inside Jung’s circle. It sorts the ways a woman’s psyche may be oriented into four structural forms. Two are defined by relation to a person: the Mother, turned towards nurture and protection, and the Hetaira, turned towards the individual man as companion. Two are defined by relation to something impersonal: the Amazon, turned towards work and achievement in the world, and the Medial woman, turned towards the unconscious and the collective atmosphere around her. Wolff set them on two crossed axes, Mother opposite Hetaira and Amazon opposite Medial, so that each woman has a dominant form, a secondary one and a weak opposite. The provenance matters because the four are often listed as Jung’s: they are Wolff’s. Secondary accounts say the essay was first read to the Psychological Club in Zürich in 1934; it was printed in German in the journal Der Psychologe in 1951 and translated into English by P. Watzlawik for the C. G. Jung Institute in 1956, three years after her death. No study has tested the four forms.

Sources

• Wolff, T. (1951). Strukturformen der weiblichen Psyche. Der Psychologe, 3(7/8), 303–315. Bibliographic record: https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/?p=20504
• Wolff, T. (1956). Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche (P. Watzlawik, Trans.). C. G. Jung Institute, Zürich. Listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Wolff
• Wolff, T. (2021). Essays of Analytical Psychology. Daimon Verlag. ISBN 978-3-85630-623-6. New English edition of the essays.

This index keeps Bolen’s two books in one row because they are one method applied twice: a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst uses the Greek Olympians as names for patterns of personality and asks readers to find which gods are active in them. Goddesses in Everywoman (1984) presents seven goddesses in three groups. The virgin goddesses, Artemis, Athena and Hestia, are oriented to independence and their own aims; the vulnerable goddesses, Hera, Demeter and Persephone, are defined by relationship; and Aphrodite stands alone as the alchemical goddess of love and creativity. Gods in Everyman (1989) presents eight gods, three fathers, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, and five sons, Apollo, Hermes, Ares, Hephaestus and Dionysus, and makes the relation between fathers and sons its organising theme. The provenance point is that these are Bolen’s readings of myth as personality types. Jung wrote about the Great Mother and the anima, not about Hera or Hermes as types of person; the goddesses are Bolen’s list, dated 1984, and the gods her list of 1989. No study has tested either set, and no instrument based on them has published psychometrics.

Sources

• Bolen, J. S. (1984). Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-250082-3.
• Bolen, J. S. (1989). Gods in Everyman: A New Psychology of Men’s Lives and Loves. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-250098-4.

Pearson’s first scheme is a sequence rather than a set of types. The six are stances a person may pass through on the way to a fuller self: the Innocent who trusts, the Orphan who has learnt that the world is unsafe, the Wanderer who leaves to find a self, the Warrior who fights for it, the Martyr who gives it away for others, and the Magician who can name and change the world. The chapter order in the 1986 text runs from Innocent to Orphan, then Wanderer, Warrior, Martyr and Magician. The names changed with the editions. The printings of copyright 1986 and 1989 use Martyr; by the revised and expanded edition of 1998 that archetype is called the Altruist, the name the author’s site uses now. The six are the direct ancestor of the twelve of 1991, where the Wanderer’s nearest successor is the Seeker and the Martyr’s is the Caregiver; the author’s current pages list “wanderer” and “Altruist” as subtypes of those two. The provenance point is simple: this list is Pearson’s, dated 1986, and none of it is Jung’s. No study has tested it.

Sources

• Pearson, C. S. (1986). The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-254862-7. Contents and copyright page (copyright 1986, 1989) read in the Internet Archive copy: https://archive.org/details/herowithin002330mbp
• Pearson, C. S. (1998). The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (rev. and expanded ed.). HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 978-0-06-251555-1.
• Pearson, C. S. The Hero Within (author’s book page, naming the Altruist). https://carolspearson.com/books-page/the-hero-within-six-archetypes-we-live-by

Moore and Gillette’s four describe what they call the mature masculine, set against the boyish forms that precede it and the distortions that result when an archetype is not fully accessed. The King orders and blesses; the Warrior acts with discipline and aggression in the service of a cause; the Magician knows, initiates and keeps hidden knowledge; the Lover feels, connects and delights in the senses. The distinctive move is the two-poled shadow: each archetype fails in two opposite directions, an active and a passive one. The King’s shadow is the Tyrant or the Weakling, the Warrior’s the Sadist or the Masochist, the Magician’s the Manipulator or the denying Innocent, the Lover’s the Addicted or the Impotent Lover, and maturity is the balance between the poles. Moore, a Jungian analyst, developed the scheme in lectures for the men’s movement of the 1980s, and the sequels beginning with The King Within (1992) treat each archetype at book length. The provenance point is that the names sound Jungian but the quaternity and its shadow system are Moore’s, dated 1990. No study has tested it.

Sources

• Moore, R., & Gillette, D. (1990). King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 978-0-06-250597-2.
• Moore, R., & Gillette, D. (1992). The King Within: Accessing the King in the Male Psyche. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-09591-8. On the bipolar shadow, the Tyrant and the Weakling.

Pearson’s twelve are the list most often mislabelled “Jung’s twelve archetypes”. They date from Awakening the Heroes Within (1991), which doubled the six of 1986. Jung never fixed a number and never proposed these; the publisher of the related instrument itself dates the twelve to Pearson. The 1991 names are listed above, and the twelfth is the Fool. The instrument built on the list, the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator (with Hugh Marr; manual 2003; published by the Center for Applications of Psychological Type and now hosted by StoryWell), uses Jester for the book’s Fool, and its 2020 revision renamed three more, in the publisher’s words to make all twelve equally positive: Innocent became Idealist, Orphan became Realist and Destroyer became Revolutionary. The author’s site records each former name. The publisher describes the instrument as validated by extensive psychometric testing; no independent peer-reviewed study of its reliability or validity has been located, so this site does not present it as validated. The same twelve were adapted, with five names changed, for brands by Mark and Pearson in 2001, which is the version most marketing sites reproduce as Jung’s.

Sources

• Pearson, C. S. (1991). Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World. HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 978-0-06-250678-8.
• Pearson, C. S. (2020, 6 May). PMAI re-release letter: three archetype names adjusted. https://www.carolspearson.com/wp-imort-2/pmai-re-release
• Pearson, C. S. Archetype pages recording the former PMAI names (Realist, Idealist, Revolutionary). https://carolspearson.com/archetype-pages/orphan-archetype
• StoryWell. The roots of the Pearson-Marr archetypes. https://www.storywell.com/articles/roots-of-pearson-marr-archetypes.htm
• USPTO registrations: PEARSON-MARR ARCHETYPE INDICATOR, Reg. No. 3034746 (2005); PMAI, Reg. No. 3359380 (2007). https://trademarks.justia.com/771/67/pmai-77167717.html

Vogler’s book is a craft manual, and the count of eight is for its character archetypes; its better-known twelve are stages of plot, not archetypes. It grew from a seven-page studio memo, “A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, and it rearranges Campbell’s seventeen stages into twelve that a screenwriter can use: the Ordinary World, the Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Meeting with the Mentor, Crossing the First Threshold, Tests, Allies and Enemies, Approach to the Innermost Cave, the Ordeal, Reward, the Road Back, the Resurrection, and Return with the Elixir. The eight archetypes are best read as functions a character performs in a story rather than types of person; the Mentor and the Threshold Guardian are roles, and a single character may move between them. Three editions (1992, 1998 and 2007) and a 2020 anniversary edition have made this the version through which many readers first meet Campbell, and Jung’s shadow and trickster at one further remove. The provenance point is that the twelve stages are Vogler’s of 1992, not Campbell’s seventeen and not Jung’s, and that the eight are a storyteller’s cast list. No study has tested either list.

Sources

• Vogler, C. (1992). The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters. Michael Wiese Productions. Third edition (2007), The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, ISBN 978-1-932907-36-0.
• Wikipedia (secondary: the stages, the archetypes, the editions and the studio memo). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writer%27s_Journey:_Mythic_Structure_for_Writers
• Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press edition, 1968. ISBN 978-0-691-01784-6. The source sequence.

This is a brand tool: Mark and Pearson reworked Pearson’s twelve of 1991 so that a brand could be given a single archetypal identity. The names differ from the 1991 list in five places. Where that list has Orphan, Seeker, Destroyer, Warrior and Fool, the brand list has Regular Guy/Gal, Explorer, Outlaw, Hero and Jester. The twelve sit in four groups of three, each answering a different human motivation. The Innocent, Explorer and Sage express a longing for a better world; the Hero, Outlaw and Magician want to leave a mark on it; the Regular Guy/Gal, Lover and Jester want to belong to other people; and the Caregiver, Creator and Ruler want to give the world order. The authors plot these against two axes, independence against belonging and stability against mastery. The evidence is thin. Xara-Brasil, Hamza and Marquina (2018) asked 537 consumers in Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and Peru to associate brands with the archetypes and found the fit stronger for single words than for sentences, with answers often diverse between countries; Spangenberg (2021) proposed regrouping the twelve into four clusters. Practitioners themselves concede that the twelve come from this book, not from Jung.

Sources

• Mark, M., & Pearson, C. S. (2001). The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-136415-7.
• Xara-Brasil, D., Hamza, K. M., & Marquina, P. (2018). The meaning of a brand? An archetypal approach. Revista de Gestão, 25(2), 142–159. https://doi.org/10.1108/REGE-02-2018-0029
• Spangenberg, K. (2021). Brand archetypes (PhD thesis, University of Washington). https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/items/c15713ba-a19c-4da6-9ca8-2758d42560e1
• Meyerson, R. (2025, 8 April). Yes, brand archetypes are pseudoscience. The Drum. https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/yes-brand-archetypes-are-pseudoscience-does-make-them-completely-useless

Myss’s system is the largest and loosest of the authored lists, and the one furthest from Jung. The book asks readers to discover a pre-birth agreement about their life’s purpose by identifying the archetypes that work through them. Four are said to be present in everyone and are called survival archetypes: the Child, the Victim, the Prostitute and the Saboteur, each with a light and a shadow side. Readers then choose eight more from an appendix, “The Gallery of Archetypes”, to make a personal twelve, and place them in the twelve houses of a wheel. The count given here is four, because that is what can be verified from the book’s contents. The gallery is commonly said to hold seventy-four entries and a reviewer counts about seventy, but this site has not checked the figure against the text, and Myss invites readers to add their own, so the list is open-ended by design. Reviewers note that Myss does not base her approach on Jung’s ideas. A companion deck of eighty cards, each giving an archetype’s light and shadow attributes, followed in 2003 and is not reproduced here. No study has tested any part of the system.

Sources

• Myss, C. (2001). Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential. Harmony Books. ISBN 978-0-517-70392-2. Contents: chapter 4, “Speaking Archetypes: Your Four Principal Energy Companions”; appendix, “The Gallery of Archetypes”. Paperback: Three Rivers Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-609-81011-8.
• Myss, C. (2003). Archetype Cards: An 80-Card Deck with Instruction Booklet. Hay House. ISBN 978-1-4019-0184-4.
• Review counting about seventy gallery entries and noting that Myss does not build on Jung: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/1364557-sacred-contracts-by-caroline-myss

Booker’s seven are plots, not characters, and they belong in this index because the book is the most openly Jungian of the literary taxonomies. Thirty-four years in the writing, it argues that the stories humans tell fall into seven shapes: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth. Beneath them Booker places a single pattern taken from Jung: a story is a picture of the development and integration of the mature self, and what each of the other characters represents is some aspect of the hero’s own inner state. The provenance point is that the number seven and the plot names are Booker’s, dated 2004, and that the Jungian reading is his explicit frame rather than a gloss added later by readers. Reviewers found the prose weighed down by cliché and noted that Booker attributes disagreement with him to the critic’s limited ego-consciousness, which does not help his case. No study has tested the taxonomy.

Sources

• Booker, C. (2004). The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-5209-2.
• Publishers Weekly review (the Jungian frame, the reviewers’ objections). https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780826452092
• Wikipedia (secondary: thirty-four years in the writing, the seven names). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

The ten are a leadership-development framework from a London consultancy, and the row is here because the framework is sold to organisations as a Jungian tool. The company presents the ten in five pairs, which it calls realms: Sovereign and Strategist for order, how a person organises; Nurturer and Lover for relationship, how they engage others; Dreamer and Storyteller for creativity, how they begin the new; Renegade and Transformer for change, how they handle transition; and Warrior and Explorer for action, how they get things done. Each archetype is said to carry gifts and shadows, and people are assessed on the pattern they show against the pattern their situation needs. The earliest dated public statement of the framework this site can source is the authors’ book of November 2019; Richard Olivier formed Mythodrama in 1997 and its training has long used Shakespeare’s plays, and Laurence Hillman’s own work maps ten archetypes onto the planets. No independent study of the framework or of its assessment has been located. The product’s text and reports are licensed material and are not reproduced here; this description is written from the company’s public pages and the publisher’s listing.

Sources

• Hillman, L., & Olivier, R. (2019). Archetypes at Work: Evolving Your Story, One Character at a Time. Troubador Publishing. eBook ISBN 9781838597870. https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/archetypes-at-work
• Olivier Mythodrama. Public description of the ten archetypes and the five realms. https://www.oliviermythodrama.com/
• Mulhern, A. (2025). Archetypes at Work: an interview with Richard Olivier (podcast, episode 104). https://alanmulhern.podbean.com/e/archetypes-at-work/