ARCAtypes
Which ARCAtype are you,
why ARCAtypes are the key to knowing your purpose in life,
and how knowing your ARCAtype gives you rapid self-awareness
CONTENTS:
1. Overview
2. What are the ARCAtypes?
3. Where did ARCAtypes come from, why do they exist?
4. Why ARCAtypes are the key to self-awareness
5. Why ARCAtypes are the key to knowing your purpose in life
6. Which ARCAtype are you?
Arcatypes Overview
Something is driving you, something deep inside you, and it’s calling you to action. That “something” is an ARCAtype (a more human-specific, modern, and easier to recognize version of an “archetype”), and it’s the key to answering the biggest question any human can ask themselves:
“Who am I and why am I here?”
The benefits of the awareness and integration of your Arcatype are:
• Self- awareness
• Detailed knowledge of purpose and service
• Suppression of ego for less anxiety and depression and more love, gratitude, and joy
• Love of self through knowledge of self, leading to love of others
• Awareness of other Arcatypes for better relationships and working relationships
• A starting point for personal growth, mindfulness, and self-control
• Self-esteem and confidence
In what has been called a “groundbreaking” finding, allow me to explain the development and definition of these Arcatypes that’s been built on the work of the greatest psychoanalysts and philosophers of our time such as Jung and Nietzsche.
You’re probably aware of the mystery and power of the subconscious mind. It’s the source of dreams and déjà vu…
Most of all, you are not in control of it; it’s actually in control of you at the deepest and most ancient level.
It’s evidently something separate to your conscious mind. In effect, there are two of you; you have two minds- conscious and subconscious, and they each have their own agenda.
Now, what if I told you that your subconscious also contains a fully formed personality blueprint, complete with inherent gifts and flaws, that forms the “nature” part of your personality, the most dominant part of it?
That’s to say it is prenatal, preexistent, it was there at your conception.
That personality blueprint in your subconscious is your Arcatype, and awareness of it holds the key to personal power.
Nietzsche said of this driving entity inside you: “Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage.”
Now consider that we have agreed that your subconscious is a separate entity from you because you are not in control of your subconscious; it is in control of you.
Based on that fact, because your Arcatype dwells in your subconscious, then you must conclude that your Arcatype is in control of you.
Taking back control of and harnessing the power of your Arcatype is to awaken the “god” or “giant” within that so many thought leaders and motivational gurus have touched on. Perhaps this is even the basis of all spirituality.
I know it’s a lot to take in, so let me explain further.
With Arcatypes, seeing is believing, and I’ll shortly show you how to “see” your Arcatype.
For the last decade I’ve been “seeing and believing” by writing books, conducting seminars, and helping clients with their Arcatypes. I’d like to help you, too, and I trust the contents and resources shown below will answer all your questions as I share my research on this fascinating and game-changing phenomenon that I believe to be the gateway to a new and crucial evolution in human happiness.
The videos are the same contents as the text below each, read or watch or both.
You be the judge in the truth and power of this… as you come face to face with your own Arcatype shortly. There are only 14 Arcatypes, and we must urgently reveal which one is yours.
What are the Arcatypes?
Humans have a great deal more in common with each other than we believe, at least when it comes to Arcatypes.
An Arcatype is a cloned template of ingrained and interrelated traits that stem from a single dominant and defining driver of its host.
It is more than a personality type; personality types are the hybrid of nature and nurture and can have limited application and a compromised fit to the individual. And this has nothing to do with star signs (by definition, star signs are postnatal, and we are dealing with the prenatal and subconscious).
There are only fourteen Arcatypes, further narrowing down to only seven for each sex (Note: sex, not gender. Arcatypes are prenatal, hence they are a function of sex; biological, not biographical).
We are talking about your biological nature, here, not your biographical nurture; the hybrid of the two is what results in a perceived infinite number of “special” people, but nature is what we are concerned with when it comes to Arcatypes.
Think of the subconscious as prenatal nature in your genes, it’s your basic personality blueprint. This is why your Arcatype is preexistent.
Then, after birth you acquire and develop postnatal consciousness; a cluster of influences that make up your nurture.
Therefore, it’s a simple fact that your conscious mind is merely the plant that grows from the soil of the subconscious mind.
And your subconscious is where your Arcatype is, hence why it is the strongest part of your personality; it is what’s driving you, your very life force.
Where did Arcatypes come from, why do they exist?
Okay, here’s the “science part…”
We can only theorize where they come from, and the theories began in 1916, with a psychoanalyst named Carl Jung who was fascinated by how much commonality the dreams of his patients had.
Jung noticed repeating behavioral patterns that he could relate to the ancient history and mythology of humanity and the development of human consciousness.
He wrote:
“The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths… . . . This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms.”
Jung called these “pre-existent forms” in the human psyche “archetypes.”
Sigmund Freud reluctantly concurred with Jung’s thesis in that he had cited “archaic remnants” in his subjects’ minds, mental images that could not be explained by anything in the subjects’ lives.
Jung described the phenomenon as “imprints or momentous or frequently recurring situations in the lengthy human past.”
Jung argued that however much humans try to repress this link with “archaic remnants” in their minds, these remnants would find a way to surface regardless, albeit through different means.
So what are these “inherited pre-existent forms from the psychic life of our ancient ancestors”?
In my award-winning and bestselling 2020 book, The You Code, I offered this tentative theory, but I continue to investigate…
“This is possibly how and why these types were formed: a set number of specific tribe member roles continually imprinted on human DNA for at least 70,000 years, possibly even for the 2.5 million years that humans have existed. This surely counts as the “imprints or momentous or frequently recurring situations in the lengthy human past” that Sigmund Freud spoke of, and is therefore a likely explanation of how Carl Jung’s “pre-existent forms” came to exist…These set, ancient tribal roles surreptitiously but doggedly tug at our present-day psyche through our gut instincts.”
I spent the last decade redeveloping and redefining Jung’s archetypes so that everyday modern people could find their type, but also how to use these types as a signpost to purpose, and build a psychic bridge between the conscious and subconscious mind; to become and feel whole by ending the inner conflict.
Jung said (parentheses mine): “The more that consciousness is influenced by prejudices, errors, fantasies, and infantile wishes, the more the already existing gap (between the conscious and subconscious mind) will widen into a neurotic dissociation and lead to a more or less artificial life far removed from healthy instincts, nature, and truth.” And “Suppressed instincts can gain control of a man; they can even destroy him.”
That is the affliction of modern humans!
My Arcatype theory builds on Jung’s “archetypes” work with the benefit of genetic science and a decade-long endeavor to fully flesh out these types in a way that contemporary individuals can easily find themselves and their purpose. Furthermore, I have found there to be 14 Arcatypes, not 12. And it is clear that these are set personality blueprints, not a list of traits we all share.
To anyone who has studied our lengthy past farther back than the mere two thousand years, and knows of the evolution of human consciousness, depth psychology, and mythology, the word “archetypes” is now a misnomer and has even devolved into some kind of quasi-astrology party-trick or superstition.
The reality is far more incredible and empowering, and the correct application of Arcatypes is badly needed by humanity today.
An “archetype” is really just an ancient instinct (it could be a symbol or an image) so this is too loose a definition for a fully formed personality template such as the ones I have carefully developed and defined and have successfully used in seminars, books, and focus groups for the last decade with great success for people to gain instant self-awareness and an idea about their purpose in life.
Even Jung himself said: “The unconscious, however, seems to be guided chiefly by instinctive trends, represented by corresponding thought forms- that is, by the archetypes.”
Beyond archetypes, there are Arcatypes. Arcatypes are more than “thought forms;” they are a fully formed personality template.
And one of them is inside you, controlling you, until you see it, embrace it, and harness it.
Why Arcatypes are the key to self-awareness
“Just be yourself,” you are often told, and rightfully so, but how can you truly be yourself if you don’t know who you are?
“Self-awareness” has become a huge buzzword in the personal development world, but it’s merely a new way of expressing the age-old wisdom, “Know thyself.”
Everybody is telling you to attain self-awareness, but not many people are providing a solution until now.
Arcatypes are the solution.
Here’s why…
To be aware of a thing, you need to know what that thing looks like. To find something, you have to know what you’re looking for, right?
How can you become self-aware- to have awareness of Self- when you don’t know what true Self looks like?
Arcatypes, being fully formed personality templates, give you an exact thing to become aware of.
Hence, revealing your Arcatype means rapid or even instant self-awareness.
You must find and embrace your Arcatype to become whole and healthy, to co-ordinate the dueling forces of the conscious mind and subconscious mind within you. When conscious and subconscious join forces, you become a power to be reckoned with.
Lacking the insight of modern psychology, the ancient Greeks expressed this in stories of where a human hero (representing conscious mind) teamed up with and was backed by a powerful god (representing subconscious mind- where Arcatypes dwell).
Notice how the god in question (such as Poseidon) couldn’t do the job for the hero (such as Theseus), he could only help. But if ignored or dismissed by humans, these gods would punish them.
Of this Jung said: “These godlike figures are in fact symbolic representatives of the whole psyche, the larger and more comprehensive identity that supplies the strength that the ego lacks.”
And…
“Romans worshipped it as the ‘genius’ native to each individual. In more primitive societies it was often thought of as a protective spirit embodied within an animal or a fetish.”
You must find and respect your Arcatype to not only attain self-awareness, but great personal power, and the ability to truly love.
Self-awareness = love of self = love of others.
When you see that, by our Arcatypes being imperfect, that we are all imperfect, you will see that you are “good enough” as you are. To be aware of our imperfections means we can keep them in check and grow.
The key to knowing your purpose in life
The Law of Attraction says you can have anything you focus on, but how do you know what to focus on?
Knowing who you are, attaining self-awareness, this is obviously good to know, but it’s also a signpost for what’s really important to people today: finding purpose, and this is where Arcatypes really take you beyond Jung’s work on mere archetypes.
You see, implied in each of these cloned Arcatype personality templates is something called a “Dominant Driver.” It’s like the trunk of a tree, and all branches of a person’s behavior stem from it.
The Dominant Driver of your Arcatype is the key to finding your purpose in life.
To explain further, let’s explore what purpose is, why we crave it, and where Arcatypes fit in…
There is no shortage of profound and useful self-improvement advice out there, but there is a missing piece of the puzzle that Arcatypes give you by unequivocally answering the questions that soul-searching humans have asked themselves for thousands of years:
Who am I, and why am I here?
Why you’re here is a function of who you are, so your first step is to reveal your true self, your Arcatype. Once you know your Arcatype, who you truly are, your purpose in life will become clear.
“Why am I here?” Asking this question is somehow hardwired into our genes, and it represents a key difference between human animals and other animals: the potential for consciousness of thought and action.
A more negative way we ask this question (often to the sky) is, “What’s the point in it all?” or “Is this all there is?” but it’s all really the same question being asked in different ways: “What is my purpose?”
Implicit in that question is a belief that we need to be of service to something greater than ourselves, or why would we ask the question? We would simply get on with our selfish little lives as the rest of the animal kingdom does. And whom are we addressing this question to if not to something greater than ourselves? Who are we expecting to hear us?
“What is my purpose?” is effectively the same as saying, “How can I be of service?”
Each Arcatype has a gift to give the world by living a life in accordance with its purpose. Recognition of this gift brings harmony within and without. Refusal of this gift brings destruction within and without (as explained in the “self-awareness” section, this is like the Greek gods being disrespected).
Sometimes we refer to this as our “calling” (which begs the question, “Who or what is calling you?”). The payoff for answering the question, “What is my purpose?” correctly is passage to the bliss state.
Your bliss state is where both time and your mind are still, where you are at peace, and where your Arcatype is aligned with its nature. Work is not work if it’s meaningful. We don’t watch the clock when time stands still.
“Purpose” is what you were meant to do on a day-to-day basis, not necessarily as a job or for reward, and it involves a bittersweet balance because true love of anything is bittersweet.
This is where purpose often gets confused with passion; a passion usually means something you choose to do and that isn’t bittersweet, whereas purpose is compulsion, the good and the bad of it seems necessary to your soul.
There is no higher esteem to be found than knowing who you are and being proud of who you are, in other words, when you possess self-confidence that is immune to the exogenous.
“How can I be of service?”
Your true colors shine vibrantly when living a life according to your personal truth, when you aren’t living a lie. When you enter your bliss state, you feel a sensation of being humbled and hollowed out that can only be described as love. And in that moment you feel chosen, you feel love flow through you, and you begin to love yourself.
Love is a phenomenon of the subconscious mind, the dwelling of your Arcatype, the signpost to your calling.
Knowing your Arcatype means you’re close to knowing your exact purpose in life.
Which Arcatype are you?
So, now I hope you see the crucial importance of knowing your Arcatype, I’m sure you’d to get started on finding it.
But there’s a catch…
The reason why some people find it so challenging to attain self-awareness may also present a challenge to you correctly finding your own Arcatype; that reason is ego.
Let me explain…
In psychology, “ego” doesn’t necessarily carry the same negative connotation as in regular conversation.
As we’ve discussed, your personality is comprised of (prenatal, biological) subconscious, and (postnatal, biographical) conscious, also referred to as “ego consciousness.”
And your ego consciousness has a tendency to resist anything to do with your subconscious.
As Jung stated, “Consciousness naturally resists anything unconscious.”
Just as an adolescent fights for her independence, so too does your ego consciousness fight for its independence from the subconscious soil it grew from. It worked hard to get it, and this was entirely necessary for you to function, but a side-effect of this process is that it does obviously create a kind of inner duality.
This is the cause of the inner conflict in humans, the reason why people hear dueling “voices” within; a phenomenon that has inspired stories from Jekyll and Hyde to The Incredible Hulk.
Anyway, this means that when you are presented with the Arcatype templates- a powerful and clear image of your subconscious mind- your ego may dismiss the idea, it may even experience shock. Or, to use a Greek mythology metaphor, staring directly at Medusa (a monster of the “underworld,” aka subconscious) will turn you to stone, so you must instead use a mirror.
I’ve personally witnessed this happen on the faces of countless people, some of them even became visibly angry with me!
But this is ego in action, because it believes itself to be the one and only inventor of itself, that nothing else can challenge its authority.
As Jung said: “We should laugh at the idea of a plant or an animal inventing itself, yet there are many people who believe that the psyche or mind invented itself and thus was the creator of its own existence.”
Referring to the subconscious as “Self” and “You,” Nietzsche said: “Your Self laughs at your ego and its proud leapings.” And “The ‘You’ is older than the ‘I’; the ‘You’ has been consecrated, but not yet the ‘I’”
So, successfully finding your Arcatype often depends on your emotional maturity and/or how much of a grip your ego has on you.
Your ego may naturally resist the process and try to sabotage it. It commonly does this by choosing the wrong Arcatype, or two Arcatypes, or all of them, or none of them.
I’ve witnessed this many times, and it never ceases to fascinate!
Your ego does not want you to find your Arcatype.
As Nietzsche said: “The Self says to the Ego: feel pain!’ Thereupon it suffers and gives thought how to end its suffering- and it is meant to think for just that purpose.”
So, it is best done by a simple but carefully constructed process that I’ve perfected over the last ten years in my one-on-one work with people and a lot of trial and error.
The correct four-step process to evade the ego and successfully find your Arcatype is shown in the title ARCAtype, A.R.C.A. standing for:
Assimilation
Recognition
Consciousness
Amalgamation
There are three ways to go through the correct ARCAtype™ process, catering to different learning styles and different budgets:
1. Take the ARCAtype™ test in the book available on Amazon here
2. Take ARCAtype™ online video course on Udemy® the world’s largest and most trusted online course provider (the videos on this page were a preview of this course)- click here
3. One-on-one coaching with me – no positions currently available.
Final words to the founder of archetypes, and the giant I stand on the shoulders of with my more evolved version of ARCAtypes, Dr. Carl Jung:
“The only adventure that is still worthwhile for modern man lies in the inner realm of the unconscious psyche.”
About the author:
James Sheridan is an award-winning and international best-selling author, speaker, business consultant, award-winning copywriter, and founder of an Inc. 5000 corporation. Originally from London, England, Sheridan started from humble beginnings before embarking on an eclectic journey of diverse careers and accomplishments. He has been a professional ice hockey player in Britain’s premier league, the youngest regional sales manager for FIAT Auto Group, and a commercial airline pilot. His first pilot job included flying cargo to the Caribbean and secretive diplomatic mail flights from Miami to Cuba in unmarked aircraft as a foreign national. Later he flew 737s from London Heathrow.
Sheridan resigned his career as an airline pilot at age twenty-nine to start businesses, invest in real estate, and trade financial markets. He was determined to unlock the shortcuts and secrets of all aspects of life. He then passed on these shortcuts and secrets to tens of thousands of students around the globe through his highly successful company.