Self Carl Jung's Archetypes and the Collective Essay

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Carl Jung's archetypes and the collective unconscious

This is a mythology concept based on the Freud's personal unconscious. Freud was in a quest to understand the reason behind some behaviors that were expressed by some individuals. He sought to understand what made the behaviors so automated and happened spontaneously. This prompted him to delve into the mind of people and try to understand that secret driving force within the mind. Freud proposed that there was the personal interpretation of aspects like dreams and images. He also insinuated that these aspects meant different things to different individuals hence the impossibility of having a common interpretation of individual dreams.

However, Jung postulated that these aspects do not only have the personal interpretation but also the collective meaning attached to them. For instance, there are dreams one could have for instance of the grandmother. According to Freud, there is that interpretation of the grandmother being the individual's grandmother but Jung gives the wider interpretation of the grandmother as a wise person of the society and a guardian figure and that is the collective meaning stored among many people of that society in the collective unconscious (Barbara F., 1999). There are such meanings that are attached to event like the ritualistic occasions like holy baths, circumcision and so on by the community or society and referred to as the collective unconscious.

The collective meanings that members of a given community subscribe to are called archetypes. These are the meanings that have a common interpretation among the cultures of communities across the world.

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These archetypes are noted to keep resurfacing in myths, legends, dreams as well as themes in literature. Archetypes are normally kept in the collective unconscious which is the common part of the mind of people in general that that retains as well as transmits the common inheritance in the psychology of a people.

Jung therefore concentrated more on the human race in general rather than a single individual's experiences. He refers to the collective unconscious as the common experiences of man that are embedded in the minds of human beings, he sees it as a collection of experiences as well as the archetypes of basic themes and the common motifs.

Jung strongly believed that the collective unconscious is founded on the archetypes that run in the mind of mankind. The archetypes are seen to influence the thinking pattern of people as people use the same ideas as those that were used by the previous generations with and alteration of the place and environment. These archetypes are noted in mythology, literature, art as well as dreams. It can therefore be said that the search into the unconscious is same as scrutinizing the shadow which is man's hidden nature.

The archetypes are more of the instinctual behavior that people find themselves attached to and believing in. this means that there are several archetypes as are the beliefs and common practices and the recurring situations in life. The derivation of the archetypes is based on the religious observations, the mythical observations as well as the literary….....

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