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. Jung believed that the human psyche was composed of three components:
The ego The personal unconscious 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 Origins of Jung’s 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. For it is the function of consciousness, not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses but to translate into visible reality the world within us,” he suggested. Jung rejected the concept of tabula rasa, or the notion that the human mind is a blank slate at birth to be written on solely by experience. He believed that the human mind retains fundamental, unconscious, biological aspects of our ancestors. These “primordial images,” as he initially dubbed them, serve as a basic foundation of how to be human. Jung believed that each archetype played a role in personality, but felt that most people were dominated by one specific archetype. According to Jung, the actual way in which an archetype is expressed or realized depends upon a number of factors, including an individual’s cultural influences and uniquely personal experiences. Jung identified four major archetypes but also believed that there was no limit to the number that may exist. The existence of these archetypes cannot be observed directly but can be inferred by looking at religion, dreams, art, and literature. The persona represents all of the different social masks that we wear among various groups and situations. It acts to shield the ego from negative images. According to Jung, the persona may appear in dreams and take different forms. Over the course of development, children learn that they must behave in certain ways in order to fit in with society’s expectations and norms. The persona develops as a social mask to contain all of the primitive urges, impulses, and emotions that are not considered socially acceptable. The shadow forms out of our attempts to adapt to cultural norms and expectations. It is this archetype that contains all of the things that are unacceptable not only to society, but also to one’s own personal morals and values. It might include things such as envy, greed, prejudice, hate, and aggression. Jung suggested that the shadow can appear in dreams or visions and may take a variety of forms. It might appear as a snake, a monster, a demon, a dragon, or some other dark, wild, or exotic figure. Jung believed that physiological changes as well as social influences contributed to the development of sex roles and gender identities. Jung suggested the influence of the animus and anima archetypes were also involved in this process. According to Jung, the animus represents the masculine aspect in women while the anima represented the feminine aspect in men. These archetypal images are based upon both what is found in the collective and personal unconscious. The collective unconscious may contain notions about how women should behave while personal experience with wives, girlfriends, sisters, and mothers contribute to more personal images of women. In many cultures, however, men and women are encouraged to adopt traditional and often rigid gender roles. Jung suggested that this discouragement of men exploring their feminine aspects and women exploring their masculine aspects served to undermine psychological development. Creating the self occurs through a process known as individuation, in which the various aspects of personality are integrated. Jung believed that disharmony between the unconscious and the conscious mind could lead to psychological problems. Bringing these conflicts into awareness and accommodating them in conscious awareness was an important part of the individuation process. Jung suggested that there were two different centers of personality:
The ego makes up the center of consciousness, but it is the self that lies at the center of personality. Personality encompasses not only consciousness but also the ego and the unconscious mind.
You can think of this by imagining a circle with a dot right at the center. The entire circle makes up the self, where the small dot in the middle represents the ego.
RulerCreator/artistSageInnocentExplorerRebelHeroWizardJesterEverymanLoverCaregiver
A Word From Verywell
Jung’s ideas have not been as popular as Freud’s and his archetypes have not been viewed favorably in modern psychology. This might be because his work tended to veer into the mystical and pseudoscientific, and is therefore often studied more as a historical artifact and in realms of literary criticism and popular culture applications of mythology than as a major contribution to the science of the mind and behavior. Other criticisms of Jung’s archetypes suggest that they are overly stereotyped, reductionistic, and culturally biased.
