Human consciousness lies between two opposites in dynamic interplay. These can be called the subjective and objective, self and world, or conception (thinking) and perception. For over 2000 years philosophers, and more recently scientists, have grappled with the exact nature of the these two polarities and the combined questions of how reality is constituted and how we as human beings know what we know. Empiricists claim that reality is “out there” and what we know of it is merely a reflection. Idealists of various kinds state that reality is “in here,” and it is the world out there that exists only as a construct that we create.

It would certainly represent significant progress if this debate about reality and knowledge could be resolved. Whatever the outcome, the human capacity of imagination seems to lie exactly in the middle between subject and object, self and world. We are most familiar with imagination in its subjective and creative, forward-looking capability where we imagine a world that doesn’t currently exist and go about creating it. But there is also an objective side to imagination that first comes to light with Carl Jung’s explication of what he called “archetypes.” An archetype in Jung’s view is an impersonal and universal pattern that exists both outside of us as an organizing principle and in us as psychic phenomenon. It is also the presence and a possibility of “significance.”

Access to an archetype arises through an acausal process that Jung called “synchronicity.” Synchronicity implies that “one and the same (transcendental) meaning might manifest itself simultaneously in the human psyche and in the arrangement of an external and independent event.” (Jung 1955). As Jean Houston says, “Archetypes, in their finest sense, bridge spirit with nature, mind with body, and self with universe.” *

If we accept this view, we are then faced with the question as to where we can find archetypes informing our everyday life, both as individuals and in the organizations in which we work. Post-modern theorists, authors, critics and even psychotherapists have focused considerable attention on “stories” as a key motif informing social and world process.** Some call these “life scripts” which can operate both consciously and in the unconscious as well. At the personal level, we receive guidance through the stories that we tell ourselves about our lives and life in general.

The challenge is that life presents us with new situations that move us beyond our current life script. These “life crises” present themselves as major dilemmas, seemingly unresolvable. In order to resolve these dilemmas, we need a more comprehensive process that can move us through and beyond our current dilemmas into the territory where we can adopt a new life script with more positive possibilities.

At the organizational level, we can hypothesize that an organizational “story” is informed by a life script anchored in an imaginative archetype. We typically assume that organizations are far more rational entities than human beings, that they are more subject to conscious direction and redirection. It is our view that this “faith” in the command and control view of organizations is the result of an over reliance on a mechanistic metaphor applied to (and in) organizational life (even if reality constantly is proving that other images/metaphors might be more accurate).

Attempts to institute organizational change according to the construct-mechanical metaphor assume that “changing the formal structure of the organization will force changes in interpersonal relationships and decision processes, which in turn will reshape the individual attitudes and actions of individuals.”† Unfortunately, this assumption has proven to be unfounded and has led to the failure of many a change initiative.

Organizational change requires action at a level of consciousness appropriate to the type of change required. To do this change efforts must take into account a number of factors, but especially the nature of the story/myth that is guiding imagination for the organization where change is required.

Currently, for the most part, we are unconscious of archetypal activity. Working with archetypes through imagination is the first step towards accessing the higher dimensions of organizational reality and bringing new possibilities for change.

*Jean Houston, The Hero and the Goddess: The Odyssey as Mystery and Initiation, Ballantine Books, New York: 1992.

**See for example Jill Freedman and Gene Combs, Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities, W.W. Norton & Company, New York: 1996.

†Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal, Harvard Business Review, 1990. The article defines the “anatomy” of a company as the formal structure; its “physiology” as the systems and relationships that allow the flow of information through the organization and its organizational “psychology” is the shared norms, values and beliefs that shape the way individuals in the organization think and act.