Moviescope Review of Archetypes for Writers

ARCHETYPES FOR WRITERS
Using The Power Of Your
Subconscious
By Jennifer Van Bergen
Michael Wiese Productions
Paperback: 241 pages
List Price: £13.99
ISBN: 1-932907-25-4
You might think that this book is just
another retread of the Campbellian
ideas popularised by The Hero’s
Journey, but you’d be very much
mistaken. Van Bergen resurrects
the ancient skill of arkhelogy or
“doing archetypes”: Discovering an
imprint of a pattern of human
behaviour (=an archetype) in a person
we observe.
Arkhelogy is a global skill, with a
number of component skills, all of
which must be mastered. Doing this
will lead you to your deepest places
in your being and potentially stretch
your writing abilities. The skills are
Character Facts (impartially observing
facts about someone), Universal
Drives (discerning universal drives in
people), Discrepancies (noticing
differences in a person between
words and deeds), Analogues
(focussing on similarities between
two people or events), Being In The
Moment, Universes of Discourse
(identifying two different worlds
within a film, their laws and points
of contact), Emotional Access Work,
Ectyping (taking a particular thing
and generalizing it) and Isotyping
(looking for something similar to the
ectype but with a different origin).
Make no mistake, this is a difficult
book. Van Bergen invents a lot of
new words, and the New Age concepts
she uses are hard to understand
correctly. They do teach you
to observe in a new and profound
way, however. Still, to get the most
out of them, taking a course or
workshop with Van Bergen or
someone who’s mastered her
theory will probably be most effective.
Nevertheless, several of the
exercises here will be very valuable
to any writer.

By Wout Thielemans