Remaking the Imago Paterna: A Heuristic Enquiry
Date
Authors
Oram, L
Tudor, K
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Abstract
Jung’s imago encapsulates mythic, internal representations of others, born from subjective experience, culture, and archetypes. Often, psychotherapy analyzes and reconstructs this image. In this article, heuristics were used to explore the first author’s image of his father—assembled from fragmented subjectivity and absence. Following Moustakas’s phases, he engaged archetypal themes, literature, and poetry to confront and reimagine this image. Viewed as a mythic journey, psychotherapy becomes both a creative act and a transgenerational rite of passage. The rewriting of imago through therapy reimagines relationships and narratives, complicating Western ideals of individuality while reframing familial and archetypal connections.Description
Keywords
4705 Literary Studies, 36 Creative Arts and Writing, 5203 Clinical and Health Psychology, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 52 Psychology, archetype, fathers, heuristic, imago, imago paterna, Jung, myth, psychotherapy, sons
Source
Jung Journal Culture and Psyche, ISSN: 1934-2039 (Print); 1934-2047 (Online), Informa UK Limited, 19(4), 90-109. doi: 10.1080/19342039.2025.2562680
Publisher's version
Rights statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.