by Stayaway from Bnei Baruch

Created on: March 20, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Carl G. Jung:
Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

From the dawn of humanity we have lived in a world of symbolism. Our symbols explain the world around us, our relationships with each other and our relationship to the universe. These symbols, these essences of pure being, are the primordial qualities of the truly real. In Plato's cave light casts shadows on a wall. The world that we know is merely a shadow. The reality behind the shadows is the eternal forms, the essences, the archetypes. Freud's younger colleague, Carl Jung took Freud's idea of the unconscious mind a step further. He conceived of a collective unconscious which consists of the eternal forms, and is the instinct and inheritance of all humanity. This collective unconscious provides us with our symbolism, our hope, our meaning, and our connection to the truly real. Some of the primary archetypes discussed by Jung are Shadow, Trickster, Anima, Animus, Great Mother, Wise Old Man, Child, Transformation, Mandala and individuation of Self.

Jung's theory of personality involves three levels of consciousness. The first level of consciousness is the ego. The ego is the part of the psyche where all conscious thought occurs. The ego is the mediator for the whole psyche but is not the totality of the psyche. The personal unconscious consists of things in a person's psyche that are not conscious but can come into consciousness. The personal unconscious consists of personal experiences. The collective unconscious consists of the part of the psyche that is never conscious and has no basis in experience. It is collective because it consists of the part of the unconscious that is not individual, but universal. This is the place of universal symbols and archetypes.

While John Locke said we do not come into the world with any inborn traits, Carl Jung disagrees. The collective unconscious according to Jung is an inborn instinct which all of humanity shares. "Personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. I call this the collective unconscious. I have chosen the term "collective" because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present

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