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Carl G. Jung: Archetypes of the collective unconscious

in every one of us." Jung.

"Archetype is an explanatory paraphrase of the Platonic eidos (form)." Jung. Plato's forms, or Ideas, are eternal and unchanging. Everything from a rock to a tree, to beauty and justice, has an eternal unchanging form that are reflected into the changeable world that we know. Forms are aspatial and atemporal. They do not exist in time and space. They are the perfect and primary realities of all representations. "Now if for us the will is the thing-in-itself, and the Idea is the immediate objectivity of the will at a definite grade, then we find Kant's thing-in-itself and Plato's Idea, for him the only "truly being" those two great and obscure paradoxes of the two greatest philosophers of the West-to be, not exactly identical, but yet very closely related." Schopenhauer.

Jung's concern was in the definition and expression of these archetypes. As a psychiatrist he was a thinker who was founded in the here and now of life and the study of the human psyche. He sought to understand the role these forms play in our consciousness. He had and inexhaustible knowledge of mythology and traveled the world in search of the connections of tribal and traditional lore. Through this study he found several prominent themes. In his book "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" he outlines his most important discoveries. These themes are: the shadow, the trickster, anima and animus, the great mother, the wise old man, rebirth or transformation, the child, and the mandala which is the center point of existence and the goal of the process of individuation of Self.

Archetypes express themselves through the unconscious as instinctive trends which create corresponding thought forms. The archetypes have their own energy and their own plan. In an individual psyche they can either produce meaningful symbolism or interfere with their characteristic desires and thought formations. They function like complexes which are transient to the personality and modify or obstruct the conscious psyche in negative ways. Personal complexes produce personal disposition. Social complexes create myths, religions, and philosophies that influence and characterize whole countries and eras in history. These social complexes are humanities explanation for the suffering of hunger, war, disease, and death.

The Shadow is the personal unconscious mind. Our persona is the face we project to the world but the shadow is what lies beneath. Confrontation with the shadow or personal


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