Editing Collective unconscious (section)

== Archetypes ==
{{Main|Archetypal psychology}}
In an early definition of the term, Jung writes: "Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype, no matter whether its mythological character is recognized or not."<ref>Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 8 (1960), "Instinct and the Unconscious" (1919/1948), ¶280 (pp. 137–138).</ref> He traces the term back to [[Philo]], [[Irenaeus]], and the ''[[Corpus Hermeticum]]'', which associate archetypes with divinity and the creation of the world, and notes the close relationship of [[Platonic ideas]].<ref>Singer, ''Culture and the Collective Unconscious'' (1968), pp. 36–37. "Jung reminds us that the term 'archetype' occurs as early as Philo Judaeus, with reference to the <u>Imago Dei</u> (God-image) in man. It can also be found in Irenaeus, who says: 'The creator of the world did not fashion these things directly from himself but copied them from archetypes outside himself. In the <u>Corpus Hermeticum</u>, God is called 'archetypal light.'" Referring to Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 9.I (1959), "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1938/1954), ¶149 (p. 75).</ref>

These archetypes dwell in a world beyond the chronology of a human lifespan, developing on an evolutionary timescale. Regarding the [[animus and anima]], the male principle within the woman and the female principle within the man, Jung writes:

{{blockquote|They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially in that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they bring into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods, and men. The existence of these archaic strata is presumably the source of man's belief in reincarnations and in memories of "previous experiences". Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche.<ref>Jung, ''Collected Works'' vol. 9.I (1959), "Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation" (1939), ¶518 (pp. 286–287).</ref>}}

Jung also described archetypes as imprints of momentous or frequently recurring situations in the lengthy human past.<ref>Kevin Lu, "[http://jungiansociety.org/images/e-journal/Volume-8/Lu-2012.pdf Jung, History and His Approach to the Psyche] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402115352/http://jungiansociety.org/images/e-journal/Volume-8/Lu-2012.pdf |date=2015-04-02 }}", ''Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies'' [http://jungiansociety.org/index.php/publications/journals/journal-2-2011 8.9] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402092338/http://jungiansociety.org/index.php/publications/journals/journal-2-2011 |date=2015-04-02 }}, 2012.</ref>

A complete list of archetypes cannot be made, nor can differences between archetypes be absolutely delineated.<ref>Shelburne, ''Mythos and Logos'' (1988) p. 63. "Any attempt to give an exhaustive list of the archetypes, however, would be a largely futile exercise since the archetypes tend to combine with each other and interchange qualities making it difficult to decide where one archetype stops and another begins. For example, qualities of the shadow archetype may be prominent in an archetypal image of the anima or animus. / One archetype may also appear in various distinct forms, thus raising the question whether four or five distinct archetypes should be said to be present or merely four or five forms of a single type. There would seem, then, to be no definitive decision procedure for determining the exact boundaries of an individual archetype."</ref> For example, the Eagle is a common archetype that may have a multiplicity of interpretations. It could mean the soul leaving the mortal body and connecting with the heavenly spheres, or it may mean that someone is sexually impotent, in that they have had their spiritual ego body engaged. In spite of this difficulty, Jungian analyst [[June Singer]] suggests a partial list of well-studied archetypes, listed in pairs of opposites:<ref>Singer, ''Culture and the Collective Unconscious'' (1968), p. 109.</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
|-
!Ego
!Shadow
|-
|Sacred Progenitor
|Tyrannical Progenitor
|-
|Old Wise Man
|[[Trickster]]
|-
|[[Anima and animus|Animus]]
|[[Anima and animus|Anima]]
|-
|Meaning
|Absurdity
|-
|Centrality
|Diffusion
|-
|Order
|[[Chaos (cosmogony)|Chaos]]
|-
|Opposition
|Conjunction
|-
|[[Time]]
|[[Eternity]]
|-
|[[Sacred]]
|[[The sacred and the profane|Profane]]
|-
|[[Light]]
|[[Darkness]]
|-
|[[Spiritual transformation|Transformation]]
|Fixity
|}

Jung made reference to contents of this category of the unconscious psyche as being similar to [[Lucien Lévy-Bruhl|Levy-Bruhl]]'s use of "[[collective representations]]", [[Henri Hubert|Hubert]] and [[Marcel Mauss|Mauss]]'s "categories of the imagination", and [[Adolf Bastian]]'s "primordial thoughts". He also called archetypes "dominants" because of their profound influence on mental life.