Archetypes are universal, inborn models of people, behaviors, and personalities that play a role in influencing human behavior. 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.
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 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 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.
The archaic and mythic characters that make up the archetypes reside with all people from all over the world, Jung believed. Archetypes symbolize basic human motivations, values, and personalities.
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.
Archetypical Figures
Jung acknowledged that the four main archetypes can intermingle and give rise to 12 archetypical figures (also known as archetypical images). These include:
- Ruler
- Creator/artist
- Sage
- Innocent
- Explorer
- Rebel
- Hero
- Wizard
- Jester
- Everyman
- Lover
- Caregiver
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.