Archetypes and Your Career Development

By Claudio Pardo Molina

In your work experience you have come to the conclusion that values and ancient wisdom have become more necessary today than ever. A large part of the current problems come  from ethical problems that are drawn from the past and from the depth of the contradictions of the human being.

Claudio Molina's book tries to bring to present ancient wisdom both from the east and the west. Hoping that this knowledge can help us answer these endless self-existence doubts. Where do we come from? Who are we? Where do we go?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Sep 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071549902

Book preview

Introduction to the monomyth

This book will use the monomyth theory developed by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a way to develop parts of our personality that we have not released and that could prevent us from developing our full potential in our professional career.

Campbell's theory assumes that all the myths of humanity have a similar structure where we are gradually being accompanied by various archetypes.

The term archetype[1] etymologically comes from the Greek and has several meanings source, principle, or model. To be more specific, a Jungian archetype[2], belonging to the psychologist Carl Jung, refers to a construct proposed by him to explain all those dream images and fantasies that correlate with special similarity to universal motif. These belong to religions, myths, legends, etc. which are basic constituents of the collective unconscious.

An interesting aspect about these personality models is that they have been applied currently in various psychological tests to understand, for example, the leadership style that we can have. The psychologist William Moulton[3] developed the DISC test (Dominance, Influence, Submission, and Compliance) to understand the leadership style that dominates our relationship with others and is still applied today in the selection of executives for positions of high responsibility.

My contribution in this book is my firm belief that despite having a certain DISC profile that dominates our leadership style, we will be able to grow professionally if we are able to think of experiences that we have lived where we have had to apply other sides of our personality. Perhaps the reader is surprised to read that I am inviting him to examine his own life to grow professionally. However, this reflection must be done using the path taken by the journey of the hero with a thousand faces.  We will discover that we have at least twelve archetypes that have appeared with more or less power in our past experiences.

For this reason, the structure of this book will consist of four chapters. The first chapter will present the 12 types of leadership of the DISC personality test, as well as the axes that group it. The second describes the apprentice's departure. The third exposes the initiation process that the hero must live. Finally, the fourth chapter describes the return to career development.

It is important to use these archetypes in our career development[4] because  Personal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, promote the development of personal skills and ones own potential, contribute to building human capital and facilitate employability, improve quality of life, and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations.

From the people I have met, I think those I admire the most are those who are able to act in the same way they think, even if it differs diametrically from them. This is because I consider it very difficult to maintain coherence between feeling, thinking, speaking and acting. Many times, I observe how we contradict ourselves between what we say and do, because our behavior consists of what we think or feel. I totally agree with James Allen who tells us that our character is the sum of all our thoughts.

The interesting thing about assuming that our thoughts determine our character is that if we were able to dominate our thoughts to decide the archetype with which we must think and, therefore, act, we could solve a large number of our problems and  develop our career in a better way. By this I do not mean to say that we have to be hypocritical or fake, but that I consider it an option the fact of thinking about our own past experiences where these various archetypes emerged from within us (or in our dreams) to point out how to act even against those atavistic phrases such as I am like this and so what.

The collective unconscious is inside all of us. In this unconscious state of mind there are at least 12 invisible seeds of thought that can come out at any time. That is why I honestly believe that we can have spontaneous reactions, however, the intention of this book is that we cultivate the seeds of thought