Appendix: The Four Archetypes of Survival - Caroline Myss (2023)

The child, the victim, the whore, and the saboteur are deeply involved in their most pressing survival challenges. Each represents different issues, fears, and vulnerabilities that you must face and overcome as part of your Sacred Contract. As you do this, see these four archetypes as your most trusted allies, who can represent both spiritual and material forces. They can become your guardians and maintain your integrity by refusing to trade you with it in the name of survival. Keep in mind that like all archetypes, their energies are essentially neutral, despite the negative connotations of their names. (While the child itself sounds positive, variants like the wounded, needy, or orphaned have a similarly negative hue.)

The outline of your Sacred Contract may have been agreed before you were born, but how you respond to the challenges that come your way and how you choose to interact with the people you have contracts with is entirely up to you. When your decisions are made unconsciously and you act defensively and fearfully, you may not learn and grow as you should. The more consciously you remain aware of the archetypal patterns that influence your behavior, the more likely your decisions and lessons will be positive. Now let's take a quick look at each of the four survival archetypes and see how you can learn from them.

the child

The mature personality of the Child archetype nurtures that part of us that longs to be cheerful, innocent, and looks forward to the wonders of tomorrow, regardless of age. This part of our nature contributes greatly to our ability to have fun in our lives while balancing the seriousness of adult responsibility. A balanced child is a joy to be with because the energy that emanates from this part of our personality is positively contagious and brings out the best in others and in ourselves.

The child also determines our ideas about life, security, education, loyalty and family. Its many aspects include the wounded child, the abandoned or orphaned child, the dependent child, the innocent child, the natural child, and the divine child. These energies can arise in response to different situations you find yourself in, but the core issue of all child archetypes is dependency versus responsibility: when to take responsibility, when to be healthily dependent, when to oppose the group, and when to embrace community life. Each of the variants of the child archetype is characterized by specific tendencies, including dark tendencies.

injured child

The wounded child archetype contains memories of abuse, neglect, and other traumas we suffered in childhood. This is the childhood pattern that most people identify with, largely because it has become the focus of therapy since the 1960s. Many people, for example, make the relationship with their parents who raised their wounded child for their own sake responsible for subsequent dysfunctional relationships. On the positive side, the wounded child's painful experiences often inspire a deep compassion and desire to help other wounded children. From a spiritual perspective, a wounded childhood paves the way to learning forgiveness.

The shadow aspect can manifest itself in an ongoing sense of self-pity, a tendency to blame our parents for current shortcomings and resist moving forward through forgiveness. It can also make us turn to parents in any difficult situation instead of relying on our own ingenuity.

orphan

From little orphan Annie to Cinderella, the orphan in the best-known children's stories reflects the lives of people who are born to feel that they are not part of the family, including the family psyche or tribal spirit. However, since orphans are not allowed to join the family circle, they have to develop independence at an early stage. The lack of family influences, attitudes, and traditions inspires or forces the orphan to construct an inner reality based on judgments and personal experiences.

The shadow aspect manifests when orphans never recover from feelings of abandonment and the scar tissue of familial rejection stifles their maturation, often leading them to seek surrogate family structures where they can experience tribal unity. Therapeutic support groups become shadow tribes or families for an orphan who knows deep down that healing these wounds requires transition into adulthood. Therefore, building mature relationships remains a challenge.

Magical/Innocent Child

Seeing the potential for sacred beauty in all things, the Magical Child embodies wisdom and courage in the face of difficult circumstances. An example is Anne Frank, who wrote in her diary that despite all the horrors for her family when she was hiding from the Nazis in an attic, she still believed that humanity was basically good. This archetype is also endowed with imagination and the belief that anything is possible.

The dark energy of the magical child manifests itself as the lack of the possibility of miracles and the transmutation of evil into good. Pessimistic and depressive attitudes, particularly when exploring dreams, often emerge in a wounded magical child whose dreams were "once" considered stupid by cynical adults. The shadow can also manifest as a belief that energy and action are unnecessary, allowing the person to withdraw into fantasy.

child of nature

This archetype inspires a deep and intimate connection with natural forces and has a special affinity for animal friendships. While the child of nature has emotional and tender qualities, they can also have an inner toughness and resilience—the resilience of nature itself. Children of nature can develop advanced communication skills with animals, and in stories that reflect this archetype, an animal often comes to the rescue his child companion. Many veterinarians and animal rights activists resonate with this archetype because they feel a conscious relationship with animals from an early age. Other adults describe communicating with nature spirits and learning to work in harmony with them to maintain the order of nature.

The dark aspect of the nature child is manifested in a tendency to abuse animals, people, and the environment.

However, a love of animals is not enough to qualify for this archetype. A lifelong pattern of an intimate and loving relationship with animals, as your psyche and spirit require these bonds as a crucial part of your own well-being, is your best guide.

Eternal Boy/Girl

This archetype guides us to remain eternally young in body, mind and spirit and not to let old age stop us from enjoying life. The shadow of the Eternal Child often manifests as an inability to grow up and take on the responsible adult life. Like Peter Pan, Eternal Boy resists the end of a life cycle in which he is free to live outside the confines of conventional adulthood. The Puella Eternis hue can manifest in women as extreme dependence on those in charge of their physical security. It is neither reliable nor can it accept the aging process. While few people revel at the end of their adolescence, the eternal child is sometimes left floundering and groundless between life stages, having failed to lay a foundation for a functioning adult life.

dependent child

The needy or dependent child carries a heavy feeling that nothing is enough, and is always trying to replace something that was lost in childhood—although exactly that is never clear. Like the wounded child, this leads to bouts of depression, only worse. The dependent child tends to focus on their own needs and is often unable to recognize the needs of others. As with all seemingly negative archetypes, you can learn to recognize their origins and use them as a guide to warn you when you are at risk of falling into needy and self-centered attitudes and behaviors.

divine child

The divine child is closely related to both the innocent child and the magical child, but differs from them in his redeeming mission. It is associated with innocence, purity, and redemption, divine qualities that indicate the child enjoys a special union with the divine itself. Few people, however, tend to choose the divine child as their dominant child archetype because they have difficulty realizing that they could live in divine innocence constantly. And yet, Divinity is also a reference point of your inner spirit that you can lean on when you are in a conscious process of selection. You could also assume that all divinity cannot have a shadow aspect, but that's not realistic. The shadow of this archetype manifests as an inability to resist negative forces. Even mythical gods and most spiritual teachers - including Jesus, who is the model of the Divine Child for the Christian tradition - simultaneously expressed anger and divine strength when confronting those who claimed to represent heaven while condemning injustice, arrogance, or displayed other negative qualities (think of Jesus' anger against the money changers in the temple). Assess your commitment to this archetype by asking if you see life through the eyes of a benevolent and trusting god/goddess, or if you initially respond more with a fear of hurt or a desire to hurt others first.

The victim

Don't let the name of this archetype fool you. If properly identified, the victim may alert you to the possibility of being bullied either through passivity or through inappropriate actions. It can also help you recognize your own tendency to bully others for personal gain. However, we need to develop this clarity of perception, and that means learning the nature and intensity of the sacrifice within us.

In their shadow manifestation, the victim is saying that you are always being taken advantage of and it is never your fault. Sometimes we want to play the victim because of the positive feedback we receive in the form of sympathy or pity. Our goal is always to learn to recognize these inappropriate attitudes in ourselves or others and to act accordingly. We are not made to be victims in life, but to learn to deal with challenges and overcome our fears.

As you connect with your own inner victim, ask yourself:

• Am I blaming others for the circumstances of my life?
• Am I spending time in the pit of self-pity?
• Do I envy others who always seem to get what they want out of life?
• Do I feel bullied by others when things don't go the way I want them to?
• Do I often feel more powerless than powerful?

the saboteur

This can be the most difficult archetype to understand, as its name is associated with betrayal. However, the purpose of this archetype is not to sabotage you, but to help you learn the many ways in which you undermine yourself. How often do you put new plans into action, only to end up getting in your own way as fear undermines those optimistic plans. Or you start a new relationship and then destroy it because you start imagining a painful outcome. You start a working relationship with someone else and once again find yourself in a power struggle that could be resolved peacefully—but you fall into the same destructive pattern because you fear the other person.

The Saboteur's fears and issues are all related to low self-esteem that causes you to make decisions that block your own empowerment and success. As with the victim and the whore, you must take on this powerful archetype we all have and make an ally out of it. In doing so, you will find that it draws your attention to situations where you are at risk of being sabotaged or sabotaging yourself. Once you become familiar with the Saboteur, you'll learn to heed and heed these warnings and save yourself the excruciating pain of making the same mistakes over and over again. Ignore it and the shadow saboteur will manifest itself in the form of self-destructive behavior or a desire to undermine others.

To learn how to become aware of the inner saboteur, ask yourself the following questions:

• What fears have the most authority over me? List three.
• What happens when I'm overcome by fear? Does it keep me silent?
• Do I allow others to speak for me?
• Do I agree to some things out of fear that I might otherwise disagree?
• Have I let creative opportunities pass me by?
• How aware am I at the moment that I am sabotaging myself?
• Can I see the saboteur in others?
• Could I offer advice to others on defying the sapper? If yes, what would it be?

To the prostitute

None of us think positively of the term "whore," yet we learn from this archetype the great gift of never having to compromise our mind, body, or spirit ever again. By now you may have reached the point where the whore has become a mature part of you, surrounding you with a powerful vibrational field that says, "Not for sale."

The whore archetype includes lessons in selling or trading one's integrity or spirit for fear of physical survival or financial gain. It activates the seductive and controlling aspects of the unconscious, enabling you to buy another person's stock as well as selling your own power. Prostitution must be understood as selling or alienating your talents, ideas and any other expression of self. The core learning of prostitutes relates to the need to generate and refine self-esteem and self-respect.

We prostitute ourselves when we sell our body or mind for money, or when we compromise our morals and ethics for financial gain. This can be staying in a marriage or a job that puts our well-being at risk for reasons of financial security.

As you identify this archetype, ask yourself:

• Have I ever sold myself to people or organizations I didn't really believe in?
• Have I ever stayed in a situation that offered me financial protection because I wanted financial security?
• Have I ever enabled another person to compromise themselves to gain power over that person?
• Have I "bought" another person's loyalty, support, or even silence to do what I want?

From another perspective:

• Have I ever agreed to help someone weakened by their whore archetype?
• Do I judge others because they constantly compromise?
• Do I think they are weak and I am a better person?

And from another perspective:

• Have I ever felt like I was being dragged into a situation where I needed to sell my ethics, but then felt strong enough to say "no"?

Once you've answered these questions, you can determine the rest of the 12 archetypes that make up your personal support team.