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One of the rules Carl Jung gave his patients was to avoid being "possessed by an archetype and don’t identify with one either." Most don’t know what an archetype is; much less what being "possessed" would feel like. But if you are possessed by one, you are unconscious of what is happening to you. And if you identify with one, you mistake the archetypal behavior pattern for who you are.

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Archetypes are "instinctive" patterns of behavior that men and women drop into without thought, whenever they are faced with an archetypal situation. A woman who bears her first child, for example, instinctively "becomes a mother" without having to think about it. A man, faced with a violent confrontation, instinctively reacts without thinking...which may involve "fight" or "flight." Thinking is not required when one is seized by an archetype. Nor is consciousness. However, consciousness and thought are required to avoid reacting instinctively when placed in an archetypal situation.

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The key is to recognize your own behavioral pattern--in this case as a negative, undesirable experience--and to choose to use your experience with the archetype to create a more positive way of reacting to life’s experience.
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Anyone with one of these personality disorders discussed below is "possessed by a wounded archetype." Sounds nasty, doesn‘t it. It feels even worse. Life becomes very hard and you get so deeply defensive in your ego that you can’t see that you are your own worst enemy.

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 The Victim Archetype

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"The Victim" is one of the worse experiences in life. It is a consistent loser of a behavior pattern. An archetype is a type of behavior which repeats over and over among many people, even though they don’t consciously understand why it is happening. Everybody feels like they’ve been victimized from time to time. But when being a victim is a way of life, something is seriously wrong. If you’ve found your life falling into this pattern repeatedly, it may be that you are playing the Victim.
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If so, you are the only person who can do anything about it.
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Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townshend write about the causes and signs of the victim in their book Boundaries. Normally, they write, a person who has established a consistent, repeating pattern of being a victim was abused as a small child. Being abused does not necessarily mean that a child was sexually abused or physically beaten, but that his emotional, physical or spiritual boundaries were repeatedly violated as a very small child when he was powerless and helpless.
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The child’s trust was violated and the result is the creation of a damaged sense of self and a dysfunctional personality structure that might last him the rest of his life.
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Some results of victimization, according to Cloud and Townsend are:

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Self-deterioration and hate of the persecutor is the outcome of constantly submitting to this archetype.
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The victim is a curse in our lives until we realize that it is teaching us about how we give our power away again and again. When we are victimized, we are not maintaining our boundaries! So one of the things we’ve got to take responsibility for is setting and maintaining boundaries with those who trespass into our circles. When we have had enough instances of victimization, we can’t bear the pain anymore. Then, we might find the courage of stop this "dark" pattern of behavior.
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You can use your life experience to work on yourself so that you avoid becoming a victim. Then, the Victim becomes your teacher.
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But you must take responsibility for changing your life, or nothing further will happen to you. You must do the work.
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Do the work by first educating yourself about boundaries. Read Cloud and Townsend’s book Boundaries, and discuss it in a reading circle. Write about your realizations here on the message board as you do so.

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The Child Archetype 

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The Child as an archetype is the unconscious pattern of behavior of all those of us who never quite grow up. This archetype incorporates all our images of life, safety, nurturing, loyalty, and family.
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There are several forms of the child archetype, including the Needy Wounded, Abandoned Child, the Puer Aeternis, the Innocent Child, the Nature Child, and the Divine Child. Each has its unique form. However, all are archetypes of dependency and neediness. All require taking care of by others. Most never got enough love, and seek love constantly in their outer relationships. Some never grow up, and some idealize their childhood years and never are able to live in the present world at all. All feel unable to take care of themselves. All feel powerless. But each, in their own way, possesses the beauty of the child. That beauty may be hard to find in a "senior citizen" behind the sagging bellies and white hair, of course.
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Most of us avoid confronting our neediness to be taken care of, protected, told what to do and how to do it. Countless men in their marriages slip into this archetypal pattern, expecting their wives to become their mothers, taking care of their needs, making them feel secure in their manhood, by being the kind of woman their mothers were.
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The man with the child within has never separated from his Mother. This is called a "Mother Complex." In ancient times, young men were taken through an initiation by the men of the tribe to be separated from the Mother. During these initiations, the initiates endured terrible pain and were taken into hand by the Men’s Societies to teach them their responsibility as a man, the men’s mysteries, and the tasks the tribe would be assigning them. Their time as boys was ended, and the irresponsible and rebellious behavior young men engage in was over--or else the young men were killed by the older Men. Whatever happened, the young men could not go back to their mothers. They became part of the "Way of the Fathers"--the way of discipline and warriorship. Women stayed with the Community of Women, learning the Women’s Mysteries and developing their expression of the more positive aspects of motherhood, such as unconditional love, nurturing, childbearing, and compassionate treatment of men’s needs.
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The Child teaches us to preserve our innocence and curiosity about the world; it teaches us to recognize the underlying fear which causes our neurotic neediness to seek security instead of freedom; it teaches us to recognize our underlying need to feel loved which causes our neurotic neediness for nurturing and mothering from adult lovers; it teaches us to avoid taking life so seriously all the time and to take time to play.
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At the same time, the Child teaches us that we are likely to fall into behavior that, as an adult, is childlike. We all have to "grow up" sometimes; otherwise, we won’t be able to take on the challenges adult life presents for us. The Puer Aeternis never grows up. The Peter Pan syndrome of the adult who lives in realms of make believe and never grows up is a common one--even today.
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Today, we live in a society without rites of passage, which never severs young men from their mothers. As a result, young men do not know who they are or how to be men, how to love without neediness, or how to hold themselves in the world of work without fear or resentment.

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 The Prostitute Archetype

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The prostitute archetype patterns the behavior of the person who repeatedly gives their self away.
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In its strictest interpretation, it identifies the woman or man who sells his or her body for sexual purposes. In its broader meaning, it refers to anyone whose morals, integrity, intellect, honor, or soul are for sale. It is most often brought into play whenever the issue of survival comes up...or any of the related issues to survival, such as promotions, salaries and raises, titles, or job security.
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It is "the prostitute" that keeps a person in a job she hates, in a marriage she should leave, in a business whose ethics she detests, or working for a person she can’t stand...because of fear of loss. She gives away credit for her work because she is afraid to confront or walk away from a boss who takes credit for her work. She gives away her sense of worth to an abusive or childish husband who expects her to be a mother to him. She gives up her sense of personal honor by giving in to the opinions of colleagues instead of living from her own sense of right and wrong.
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The Prostitute makes us try to hold on to what we’ve got when we should let it go and move on to the next thing. Life is uncertain. There are no guarantees, no rules which seem to work, no safety net to catch us when we fall. When we feel insecure, we "cling" when we should let go.
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This situation is very common, and most of us have experienced "the prostitute" in one form or another. What this archetype teaches us is that we are ruled by fear and have no self confidence. When we are constantly ruled by this pattern of losing, our sense of self suffers, and we shrink smaller and smaller until there is very little left of our self. Finally, we are totally at the effect of others, meeting others needs but not our own.
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Self-hate is the outcome of surrendering to the "Prostitute."
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"The prostitute" teaches us to take our power back and to meet our own needs. Tell the others no. Protect your boundaries. Do not give away your honor, your ethics, your integrity, your energies, your soul for safety. There is no safety. It will cost you your self respect.

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The Sabeteur Archetype 

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"The Saboteur" is the archetypal pattern of behavior that has us sabotaging our selves by failing to step forward into greater responsibility, into new opportunities, or into new challenges.
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Have you ever had the opportunity to step into a more challenging position at work but felt afraid that you couldn’t handle the challenge and so declined the opportunity? Have you ever had the opportunity to take a big step forward in your personal growth, but chose instead to avoid the change in your self? Have you ever had the opportunity to improve your situation but turned back out of fear of the risk? Then you know the "Saboteur."
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Like the "Victim" and the "Prostitute" archetypes, fear is the underlying emotion driving these choices. The victim is the loser. The prostitute is the slave. And the saboteur is the whipping boy, or girl. Self contempt is the result, for when you are caught in the energies of the saboteur you know that you have the chance to grow but that you just don’t have the courage to step into the gap.
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The self-saboteur fears change.
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When the choice not to change is driven by the knowledge that the change is not "who one is," then this is a choice of self love. No problem. A person who understands himself knows what he wants to do and is good at; a solitary worker who loves his computer programming would not be advised to step into a salesmanship task requiring expertise in working with customers and their problems. But at times, there are growth opportunities when it might be good to grow out of such solitary technical environments into more people-oriented or management work roles.
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For those whose issue is self-sabotage, this archetype is a negative influence until it teaches one to respect one’s own ability and power to meet new challenges. Opportunities arise when one is ready. We might not recognize our ability, but others do. And when they offer new challenges to us, we might consider their need for our unique talents to meet their needs

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Bibliography: Carolyn Myss, Sacred Contracts

Townshend and Cloud, Boundaries