Using Archetypes to Enhance Your Understanding of Self and Others

These characters determine our daily behavior and actions but often remain hidden in our unconscious.

Green Snake Fairy Tale/ Golden Books Special Edition photo/author

Archetype Definition: The original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies: Prototype Merriam Webster Dictionary

Anyone studying psychology will run across the word archetype and often associate it with psychologist Carl Jung’s work. He suggested they were forms of innate human knowledge passed down through our ancestors.

He believed our human psyche was divided into three major components: the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Archetypes stemmed from the collective or universal unconscious. His work even led to a new definition of an archetype:

An inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of C.G. Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual. Merriam Webster Dictionary