Jung's archetypes are a significant contribution to the psychology brought by the great philosopher and follower of the unforgettable Dr. Freud, who precisely in this theory did not agree with his follower. Carl Gustav Jung believed that the personality has in itself three components - the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. It is in the third category that the concept of the archetype enters, and it was not Freud who accepted it.
Theory of archetypes
To better understand the concept of archetypes, you need to remember all the components of the personality and their definitions. Jung combined the concept of personality and soul, so in his theory, the three parts were precisely the parts of the soul.
Ego
The center of the sphere of consciousness, which includes feelings, thoughts, memories and impressions that allow us to perceive ourselves as integral constancy.
Personal unconsciousness
This is the part of the personality in which conflicts and memories are now forgotten, and also those feelings that are weak and therefore unconscious by us. This part includes complexes, memories and sensations, which the person ousted from the boundaries of his experience. The complexes here affect the attitude and behavior of a person.
Collective unconscious
This is the deepest layer of personality, which is a special repository of hidden traces of the memory of ancestors, instincts from the moment of the first people. Here are stored thoughts related to our evolutionary past, and thanks to heredity this part is common to all human. It is to this part of the theory that the concept of personality archetypes applies.
What are archetypes? These are innate ideas or memories of ancestors, peculiar to all people, predisposing to a certain perception and reaction to specific phenomena and events. This is an innate emotional reaction to anything.
Basic archetypes
The number of human archetypes, according to Jung's theory, can be unlimited. In his theory, the author pays special attention to the person, anime and animus, shadow and self. Jung gave an archetype and a symbol, for example, Mask for a person, Satan for a shadow, etc.
A person
Person (translated from Latin, "mask") is a public face of a person, the way he manifests himself in public in all the diversity of social roles. This archetype serves the purpose of concealing the true essence and making a certain impression on other people, allows you to get on with others or strive for it. If a person is overly converted to this archetype, this leads to the fact that he becomes superfluous superficial.
Shadow
This archetype is the essence opposite to the person, that is, that side of the personality, which we suppress and conceal. In the shadows are our suppressed impulses of aggression, sexuality, emotional impulses, immoral passions and destructive thoughts - all that we discarded as unacceptable. At the same time, it is the source of creative thought and vitality.
Anima and Animus
These are archetypes of men and women. Jung recognizes the androgynous nature of people, and thus Anima is not just a female archetype, but an internal image of the feminine principle in a man, his unconscious side associated with femininity. Also, Animus is the inner image of a man in a woman, her male side, left in the unconscious. This theory is based on the fact that any organism generates both male and female hormones in parallel. Jung assured that everyone should harmoniously
Self
The most important archetype, which refers us to the need for harmonization of the soul, which will achieve the true balance of all structures. It was in the development of the self that Jung saw the main goal of existence.
This theory sends us to a deeper perception of ourselves, our thinking, and the understanding of the people around us.