Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s theory suggested that these archetypes were archaic forms of innate human knowledge passed down from our ancestors.

In Jungian psychology, these archetypes represent universal patterns and images that are part of the collective unconscious. Jung believed that we inherit these archetypes much in the way we inherit instinctive patterns of behavior.

Personal vs. Collective Unconscious

Jung was originally a follower of Sigmund Freud. The relationship eventually fractured over Jung’s criticism of Freud’s emphasis on sexuality during development, which led Jung to develop his own psychoanalytic approach known as analytical psychology.

While Jung agreed with Freud that the unconscious played an important role in personality and behavior, he expanded on Freud’s idea of the personal unconscious to include what Jung called the collective unconscious.

According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind, and the personal unconscious contains memories-including those that have been suppressed.

The collective unconscious is a unique component in that Jung believed that this part of the psyche served as a form of psychological inheritance. It contained all of the knowledge and experiences that humans share as a species.

The Origins of Jungian Archetypes

Jung believed that archetypes come from the collective unconscious. He suggested that these models are innate, universal, unlearned, and hereditary. Archetypes organize how we experience certain things.

“All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes,” Jung explained in his book, “The Structure of the Psyche.”

“This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form, they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. Lees verder →