Lycanthropy and Jungian Archetypes (yet another essay)

[Scott Gardener]

I've taken it upon myself to write my own essay about werewolf categorizations and types. Having seen other takes, I had to do my own. If any of you see anything useful for it, like, say, if you're an independent filmmaker presenting it to a studio as a justification of why a certain movie mentioned in one of the later paragraphs absolutely has to be made, being a pivotal step in human evolution, feel free to do so.

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Lycanthropy and Jungian Archetypes
By Jonathan S. Coolidge, D.O.
January 29, 2006


Whether by coincidence of thought, brought about by genetically determined similarities within the human brain worldwide for generations, or through some more exotic or esoteric means, the werewolf or something like it has appeared in the lore of nearly every known culture in human history. This commonality is a subject often addressed in other articles on lycanthropy and has been used variously as a commentary about the human belief in magic or the supernatural, an argument in favor of their actual existence, or as a commentary about human hopes or fears.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung put forth a number of theories that can be applied to clarify and describe the phenomenon of lycanthropy, even if his work cannot resolve the ultimate question of how the reoccurring themes of animal transformation became so pervasive. To my knowledge, Jung’s works did not specifically focus on lycanthropy; indeed, he made little mention of it at all. But, Jung’s theories none-the-less can be applied to it with remarkable fluidity.

Jung described the “collective unconscious,” a summation of subconscious human ideas, symbols, and metaphors. Individual people have their own personal sets of associations and symbols, but the tendency from person to person none-the-less overall is to develop similar, parallel ideas. This has been offered to explain why so many inventions throughout history seem to have been invented by more than one person in different places in the world, around the same time. This tendency could also produce reoccurring themes in human legend and lore. The werewolf is such a theme.

Contemporary popular culture has capitalized on werewolves increasingly over the past few decades, though their prevalence in mainstream culture has been noteworthy since at least the 1930s and 40s. The werewolf of most of the twentieth century is based heavily on European legends during the Renaissance, from a time and place where people feared the night and wolves, the threat believed back then to be very real. Tens of thousands of people died during that era, accused of being werewolves and subjected to torture before a brutal execution. Out of this genesis from such a dark era of human history, it is not surprising that the werewolf should be thought of as a creature of horror and fear. However, even some five hundred years of ingrained fear and atrocity cannot eliminate what likely has been tens of thousands of years of metaphysical symbiosis. Other perceptions of werewolves are emerging, or perhaps more likely re-emerging, as we as a civilization struggle to put to rest our dark past. A noticeable transition of thought is occurring within our culture, and this process has generated several distinct werewolf archetypes in movies, fiction, television, and role-playing games—the legends and lore of the modern age, each reflecting a stage of this shift in consciousness.



The distinction of archetypes is more involved than a simple categorization of morphology, but a brief discussion of forms and variations in appearance cannot be avoided, in part because physical appearance in folklore often reflects upon the thoughts and will of the culture generating the lore; a malicious werewolf will have a noticeable difference from a benevolent one. Werewolves historically were once depicted as shifting into wolves per se. However, historic images of wolves pictured even non-lycanthropic animals as very monstrous creatures, and wolves in the minds of the everyday person in the Renaissance era lacked the elegance and grace of the contemporary images pictured on nature calendars and coffee mugs today. In the 1930s and 40s, werewolves began appearing in Universal Studio’s monster movies, in the likeness of a humanoid form with bestial features. This image prevailed until 1980, when the release of The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, two movies within months of each other, broke that convention by depicting werewolves differently. The former portrayed the werewolf’s creature form as a distinct anthropomorphic hybrid of human and wolf features, whereas the latter brought back the old image of a four-legged monstrous creature, in appearance perhaps not unlike the Beast of Gevaudan of sixteenth century French legend. This broke the dogma of the various entertainment industries and paved the way for other works such as, in 1993, the role-playing game Werewolf: the Apocalypse, which depicted lycanthropes who could assume all four of the different morphologies I’ve discussed, and who had even as a society within the game had names for each of these forms. The archetypes presented here are deeper than simply design aesthetics. They are instead a commentary about what the werewolf represents within any particular depiction.



The medieval werewolf: this archetype is based on the lore of the Renaissance era that pre-dates more contemporary werewolf lore, but ultimately gave rise to it. Medieval werewolves are usually portrayed shifting into an animal wolf rather than one of the more anthropomorphic forms. Often the power of shape-shifting is explained through spell-casting or the use of magical articles, making the werewolf less a race of beings and more a name for persons who are skilled with a certain form of magic, though some persons may be predisposed to it through legendary circumstances, such as being born on Christmas Day or after having slept exposed to full moon light. The surreal film The Company of Wolves explored this archetype in great depth, drawing upon classical elements of werewolf lore, ranging from the convergent eyebrow myth to the premise that werewolves are “hairy on the inside,” having a layer of fur underneath human skin. It in turn took the archetype and showed some of its uses, including, ultimately how the tale of Little Red Riding Hood is a coming of age story representing human female menarche. Other contemporary depictions of the medieval werewolf are infrequent, but the archetype is an important one in the taxonomy of lycanthropy, as it is the underlying base upon which more recent werewolf lore is founded.

The monstrous werewolf, cursed subtype: this archetype portrays the werewolf as a binary entity, alternating between a gentle, innocent person and a ravenous monster, a transition typically brought about by the full moon. This can be through a hereditary family curse, but is often the result of the bite of another werewolf. Many of the other elements of werewolf lore also have gained acceptance by way of the popularization of this archetype. The 1935 movie Werewolf of London helped to push into mainstream cultural lore the full moon transformation, while the definitive 1941 The Wolf Man popularized the idea that werewolves can only be killed by silver weapons.

The cursed werewolf shares elements perhaps with Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which in turn was based on a nightmare, implying again ties back to the human collective unconsciousness. It should be noted, however, that Dr. Jekyll’s transformation was intentional, and that Mr. Hyde represented to the doctor his repressed dark side and the opportunity to vent these emotions, free of guilt by dissociating himself from his identity as the research physician. To him, Hyde represented a form of freedom, a theme that, to be discussed later, has recently reoccurred in a less malevolent form.

The monstrous werewolf, diabolical subtype: this archetype portrays the werewolf as strictly a villain, without the internal conflict. The human form does not suffer from memory lapses, nor does it experience dread of the transformation; the human form is simply a disguise the creature assumes. A number of the notoriously low-budget sequels to The Howling employed this archetype, often introducing a Satanic aspect, a direct throw-back to Renaissance era fear and superstition. Werewolves are depicted consorting with demons or even are described as demons themselves.

In some interpretations, both monstrous werewolf subtypes are depicted together in the same storyline, in the form of “master” and “slave” werewolves. The master is a diabolical subtype, who can inflict through his or her bite a curse that transforms the victim into a slave minion. The person in human form can still resist the will of the master, but the transformed creature aspect has neither the ability nor the desire to do so. The person so enslaved can break the curse by killing the diabolical master. This premise draws directly from the fear tactics of medieval Christian lore, which, given its pervasive nature throughout Western folklore, has not surprisingly infiltrated the lycanthropic mythos as well. It is built around the theme of Original Sin and the overriding need for salvation from it, as well as around fear of Satan and Hell.

The heroic werewolf: this archetype came to the forefront as recently as the 1990s, in part from the role-playing game Werewolf: the Apocalypse, which depicts werewolves as a society of shape-shifting beings with metaphysical superpowers, bearing the responsibility of preserving life on Earth, fighting an evil spiritual force that seeks to corrupt both humankind and the Earth environment. The piece is in part a recognition of the problems human overpopulation and industry has had on the biosphere, problems such as pollution and global warming.

Heroic werewolves are often depicted having a myriad of strange powers—immortality, gravity-defying wall-climbing abilities, or even teleportation. In keeping with the heroic, larger-than-life premise, their bestial forms are often depicted as monstrously huge, muscular behemoths. These characters can overlap qualities with comic books superheroes, substituting silver for Kryptonite, but usually they have a dark element, an inner struggle to contain a more destructive side, a throwback to the evil creature archetypes discussed earlier. Though seldom seen in film until recently, they have gained popularity in features such as Van Helsing and Underworld.

The sympathetic werewolf: to those unaccustomed to distant human ancestry, this archetype would seem to be a contemporary one; its re-emergence could represent a maturing evolution of werewolf fandom into something more complex. Sympathetic werewolves are based on realistic extrapolations, an attempt to answer the question of what it would actually be like, to be a being who could become both wolf and human. Modern spirituality movements are pushing to bring this template to the forefront, as spiritual therianthropes directly identify with this model, which is strikingly different from the monstrous archetype that until recently has dominated the portrayal of lycanthropy.

Spiritual therianthropy probably has been around in one form or another for as long as has been human civilization, but the modern therianthropy movement began shortly after the establishment of the Usenet newsgroup bulletin board alt.horror.werewolves in 1992, about a year before White Wolf Game Studio first published Werewolf: the Apocalypse. The bulletin board was founded at first to discuss werewolves from within the venue of the horror genre, but after a year or two, its regular visitors began sharing a common realization that they identified spiritually with the idea of shape-shifting, and that they had an image of wolf transformation that was strikingly different from that of slasher movies. A relative consensus emerged, describing identification with a being who could live as a human, but who could leave the human realm and transform into a feral animal and run free in the wilderness, unencumbered by the demands of mundane life. Unlike the Jekyll / Hyde transformation, this freedom was not based on desire to commit brutal evil acts so much as longing to escape the trappings of the mundane, to reconnect with nature. Spiritual therians generally acknowledge that physical shape-shifting is impossible, or at least, highly improbable without either a molecular science well beyond what is currently available or the ability to change fundamental laws of nature. But, they employ various forms of meditation, mental discipline, ritual, or lucid dreaming to emulate shape-shifting.

The sympathetic werewolf is almost non-existent in cinema today, except perhaps for an adaptation of Dennis Danvers’ novel Wilderness. However, at the time of this writing, independent film director Anthony Brownrigg and his wife, screenplay writer Meagan Brownrigg, have been negotiating with studios to produce Freeborn, a feature film with a proposed budget over six million dollars and a goal of portraying werewolves both as plausible, realistic beings and as being in keeping with how most werewolf fans see lycanthropes. Special emphasis is being placed on photo-realistic transformations and creature forms in keeping with the preferences of devoted werewolf fans, many of whom are spiritual therianthropes. The movie was originally intended to be a budget horror feature, but the Brownriggs attribute its expansion into a more complex and layered thriller and drama directly to feedback from werewolf fans.

Miscellaneous Archetypes: Several additional archetypes borrow elements of lycanthropy but also overlap with elements of other concepts within the human collective unconsciousness.

The Fantasy Werewolf is a variant of the sympathetic werewolf; this archetype removes the lycanthrope from the context of the familiar world, drawing it into a more fantastic setting, often eliminating the need for secrecy that overrides their sympathetic counterparts. This archetype seems to occur mainly in fan fiction but also appears in fantasy novels. Freed from concerns about persecution, werewolves can find each other and develop their own civilization. In this sense, werewolves are allowed to be simply another race, as tolerated, rejected, and accepted as the rest.

“Furries” are anthropomorphic animal characters, born of a movement independent of but parallel to therianthropy. The term “furry” also describes fans of such beings, who often envision for themselves a persona as one. The furry movement is a larger phenomenon than therianthropy, and at least some people have suggested that the latter is a spin-off of the former. I disagree, having personally witnessed the origins on alt.horror.werewolves; but, given that both movements identify with animal forms and identities, the two often encounter each other in shared venues such as conventions or online discussion boards. A number of prominent members on “The Pack,” the discussion board that supports Anthony Brownrigg’s Freeborn, describe themselves as furries. Wolf-based furries differ from sympathetic werewolves primarily in that they do not have a human form, though they also usually lack the aggressive elements that even the sympathetic werewolves usually carry, a holdover from the dark past of werewolf lore.



Werewolves can represent many things, but the metaphors discussed above have reoccurred consistently for the past few decades and represent an observable trend. They describe an awakening from fear and darkness and a new willingness to reconnect with our ancient heritage. The werewolf can thus be seen as, appropriately enough, a symbol of transformation. But, in this sense, the transformation is a spiritual one. Jungian archetypes are frequently reinvented through the ages, and lycanthropy is no exception. To that end, werewolves are likely to continue being among us for a long time. Perhaps some day future generations of therianthropes and furries will be able to engineer themselves physically into their ideal form. Perhaps werewolves may indeed become a real society, with their own traditions, holidays, and language, very much as they are depicted in present day fan fiction. It is likely that doing so will involve a struggle, as today there is still very much a stigma to overcome, as werewolves are also a reminder of the dark side of humanity.

[PariahPoet]

*raises a paw as the first INTJ werecat*

[Faolan Ruadh]

INTJs unite! ::does a wolfish mastermind dance:: Admittedly, Myers-Briggs/Keirsey was one of the first things that I thought of when the combination of Werewolves and Jung was mentioned.

[PariahPoet]

Aww!! Your avatar looks just like my dog Heidi I had growing up.

[Set]

I don't know much about Jung or his archetypes, but that was quite good.

[werewolf2668]

Scott, did you write this? If so, hats off to you!

As for whether or not Jung accounts for the pervasiveness of animal transformation beliefs, I think that he does. All humans share a collective-conciousness, not through telepathy, but rather because all of us have a subconcious that acts in a similar way. As all humans of different cultures are still human, that transformation is so pervasive suggests that it has roots in universal subconciousness.

Jeez, I need to read up on Jung. I don't even know if I know what I'm talking about.

I've read "The Literary Werewolf" once though before. It identified much the same archetypes as does your essay.

Thanks for posting.

[Scott Gardener]

Thanks for the compliments. I haven't read "The Literary Werewolf," but it sounds like I need to.

Someone else getting the same idea as me, and it pertains to Jungian archetypes. Anyone else get the joke?

[Kimmay]

Ooh

Thanks for the very interesting and informative read.

[TakeWalker]

Excellent.

I notice no citations. Did you write this for class/professionally, or simply in your spare time? If the latter, kudos, because not many people can fling about phrases like "metaphysical symbiosis" as if they were so much grain. (Mmm, grain-flinging...)

You do sort of stray away from Jung towards the end. Foremost in my mind is the part about furries, where you miss a golden opportunity to draw together via the collective unconscious your discussion on therians.

If I were grading this, I'd give it at least an A, if not an A+. Well, assuming you didn't need citations (that would be cause for expulsion ).

[Scott Gardener]

You're right to call me on citations, though most of what I referenced are cited by the article itself. Still, Wikipedia deserves mention, as I used it to verify my use of terms related to Jung.

[TakeWalker]

Well, I expect to see a bibliography, young wolf! Two demerits! (Whatever that means...)

Actually, I honestly wouldn't advocate use of Wiki material in an academic paper. I'm sure in this case, what you found was correct, but there's just so much room for misinformation on that site...