by Christina Sponias

Created on: May 31, 2009   Last Updated: June 03, 2009

Even though Carl Jung was Sigmund Freud's student, he followed his own path, after disagreeing with his teacher.

While Freud's basic analysis concentrated on the sexual field, Jung paid attention to many other characteristics of the psychical world that could not be justified by Freud's theories.

He concentrated his attention on the meaning of dreams, this way discovering the hidden code for their interpretation.

The Jungian psychology is based on dream analysis, exactly because Jung managed to understand the mysterious dream language, and verified that the dream messages contain objective information about the dreamer and his or her objective reality.

They even show to the dreamer what the future development of his or her life will be depending on various factors, because the unconscious mind that produces our dreams possesses extraordinary wisdom.

Therefore, Jung concluded that the unconscious mind is a superior counselor that we should listen to, and further researched the content of the human psyche through dream interpretation.

He discovered the existence of various images that appear in dreams and in the artistic and religious manifestations of people that belong to different civilizations, through all historical times, which are the archetypes. The archetypes define the most important aspects of human life and the necessary psychical transformation that the human being has to pass through in order to develop completely his personality.

Jung explained the unconscious mind in two parts:

- The personal unconscious

- The collective unconscious

The content of the personal unconscious belongs to the person's life, like fears and traumas they have acquired because of their deceptions and sad experiences.

The content of the collective unconscious belongs to the human race and characterizes everyone. This is why the archetypes have an already known specific meaning that can help us understand what is happening with a person who is feeling depressed or having mental disturbances, when they appear in their dreams or artistic creations.

The most important archetypes are:

The Anima or Animus They represent the perfect match for a man or a woman

The Shadow It represents the dark side of the human personality that did not develop like our conscious mind

The Persona It represents the social mask one wears in order to give a positive impression to their environment or to hide their real intentions

We can understand our mistakes and learn how to solve our problems by following the instructions given to us in dream messages by the collective unconscious through the archetypes, since they reflect our own psychical content.

They belong to the human race because they reveal general truths, common obstacles, the common human attitude to all the challenges of life, and other aspects that are part of everyone's psychical transformation. However if a certain archetype appears in someone's dream this means that it is reflecting the existence of a common mental illness in their psyche or a common social problem in their own lives.

The archetypes give us information about the personal life of the dreamer, even though using known images that appear in everyone's dreams.

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