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Why do the same symbols show up in myths, religions, and even the dreams of strangers who never met? Carl Jung’s answer changed psychology forever, and this lecture from Academy of Ideas makes it beautifully clear. He proposed that beneath every personal mind lies a collective unconscious, shared by all humanity and built from the archetypes — inherited patterns that shape how we think, dream, and worship. The video explains how these hidden structures work, why the mandala keeps appearing as a symbol of wholeness, and what it means to meet the deepest layer of the psyche. Jung’s task: kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Full Video Transcript
Is the mind of a newborn a blank slate, awaiting stimuli and input from the world to obtain structure and form, or does it have a pre-formed structure which influences how we experience the world?
This question has long interested psychologists and philosophers alike.
Carl Jung, the 20th century psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, believed the latter to be the case.
There exist, according to Jung, identical psychic structures common to all, which are
heritable and influence the way all humans experience the world.
Jung called these structures archetypes, and in this video we will provide a detailed introduction
to archetypes, explaining what they are, how they influence our lives, their relationship
to symbols, and Jung’s ideas on the connection between religious experiences and the archetypes.
Carl Jung, in addition to being a practicing psychiatrist, was one of the foremost experts
on the study of religious and mythological symbology.
It was work in both these fields that led him to the discovery of the archetypes.
In studying the myths and religions of cultures past and present, Jung noticed that many of
them shared similar patterns, themes, and symbols.
This was interesting in its own right, but what further piqued Jung’s curiosity was
that some of these same themes and symbols arose in the dreams and fantasies of patients
who suffered from schizophrenia. What could account for such similarities? Jung proposed
that the human mind, or psyche, is not exclusively the product of personal experience, but rather
contains elements which are pre-personal, or transpersonal, and common to all. These
elements he called the archetypes, and he proposed that it is their influence on human
thought and behavior that gives rise to the similarities between the various myths and
religions. To properly understand the role of the archetypes, we must first explain Jung’s
conception of the psyche. Jung described the psyche as one’s total personality, encompassing
all one’s thoughts, behaviors, feelings, and emotions. Jung divided the psyche into three
major realms, consciousness, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.
These three realms are not closed off from one another, but constantly interact in a compensatory manner.
The conscious realm is simply one’s field of awareness, consisting of those psychic contents that one has knowledge of.
In other words, any experience that enters one’s field of awareness takes on the quality of consciousness.
The conscious realm of the psyche, while extremely important in its own right, is according to Jung, dwarfed in scope by the unconscious realm.
The unconscious consists of those psychic contents which one is unaware of, and Jung divided it into
two main parts, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious,
as the name suggests, is particular to each individual. It consists of events of one’s life
that are deemed insignificant, are forgotten, or are repressed due to their distressing nature.
In addition to the personal unconscious, there is a deeper and more fundamental realm of the
unconscious which Jung called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious consists
of psychic structures or cognitive categories which are not unique to the individual but rather
shared by all, influencing our thoughts, behaviors, and the way we look at the world. In other words,
the collective unconscious is home to the archetypes. As Jung put it, from the unconscious
there emanate determining influences which, independently of tradition, guarantee in every
single individual a similarity and even a sameness of experience, and also of the way it is represented
imaginatively. Young student Eric Newman used the analogy of physical organs to help illuminate the
concept of the archetypes. Just as a body is structured by organs which are largely formed
prior to birth, so the mind possesses psychic organs which structure it, i.e. the archetypes.
Furthermore, just as the physical organs in most cases operate without one’s conscious awareness,
so do the archetypes. And most importantly, just as adequately functioning physical organs are
essential for a healthy body, a healthy mind is reliant on the proper functioning of the archetypes.
As Newman explains, the archetypal structural elements of the psyche are psychic organs,
upon whose functioning the well-being of the individual depends, and whose injury has
disastrous consequences. An important difference between the physical organs and the archetypes
is that while physical organs can be directly observed with the senses, the archetypes cannot.
The existence of archetypes is revealed by the arrangements they produce in consciousness,
namely through the manifestation of symbolic imagery.
It is only through the interpretation of the symbols manifested by the archetypes
that one can gain an understanding of the archetypal pattern of the human mind.
Edward Edinger, in his work Ego and Archetype,
provides an explanation of what a symbol is with respect to Jungian psychology
by contrasting it to a sign.
A sign is a token of meaning that stands for a known entity.
By this definition, language is a system of signs, not symbols.
A symbol, on the other hand, is an image or representation
which points to something essentially unknown, a mystery.
A sign communicates abstract, objective meaning,
whereas a symbol conveys living, subjective meaning.
While signs, by this definition, point to definite things which exist in the world,
symbols do not stand for things which exist in the physical world,
but rather point to the existence of unknown elements of the psyche or patterns of the unconscious.
As Jung put it,
Whenever we speak of symbolic contents, we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable.
We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors, and concepts are
in respect of their transcendental object.
However, there is no doubt that there is something behind these images that transcends consciousness
and operates in such a way that the statements do not vary limitlessly and chaotically,
but clearly all relate to a few basic principles or archetypes.
It is important to point out that the archetypes do not manifest the exact same set of symbolic images for each person.
Rather, the archetypes provide the structure, not the specific form, of the symbolic image.
The specific form the images take differ from culture to culture and even individually.
However, as Jung stated in the passage just quoted, the symbolic manifestation of the
archetypes do not vary limitlessly and chaotically.
Therefore, as one takes note of and reflects on the symbols as they are manifested in consciousness,
knowledge of the archetypal structure of the mind can be obtained.
Eric Newman describes the role of the symbol in producing knowledge of the archetypes in
the following way.
The form of representation peculiar to the unconscious is not that of the conscious mind.
It neither attempts nor is able to seize hold of and define its objects in a series of discursive
explanations, and reduce them to clarity by logical analysis.
The way of the unconscious is different.
Symbols gather round the thing to be explained, understood, interpreted.
The act of becoming conscious consists in the concentric groupings of symbols around
the object, all circumscribing and describing the unknown from many sides.
Each symbol lays bare another essential side of the object to be grasped, points to another facet of meaning.
Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the center in question, the coherent symbol group,
can lead to an understanding of what the symbols point to and of what they are trying to express.
To provide an example of the types of symbols which are manifested by the archetypes,
we will look at the archetype Jung called the self.
The self is the central archetype, and its role is in unifying the other archetypal structures of the psyche.
According to Jung, the importance of the self archetype coincides with the fact
that it is the source of many of the symbols found in religions and myths.
Edward Ettinger in Ego and Archetype reveals the wide array of symbols manifested by the self.
The self is expressed by certain typical symbolic images called mandalas,
All images that emphasize a circle with a center and usually with the additional feature of a square, cross, or some other representation of quaternity fall into this category.
There are also a number of other associated themes and images that refer to the self.
Such themes as wholeness, totality, the union of opposites, the central generative point, the world navel, the axis of the universe, the elixir of life
all refer to the self, the central source of life energy, the fountain of our being which is most simply described as God
Indeed, the richest sources of the phenomenological study of the self are in the innumerable representations that man has made of the deity
What is interesting to realize is that Jung believed the various representations of deities in myths and religions, both past and present, were at-root symbolic manifestations of the self-archetype.
However, Jung did not in any way mean this as a reduction of God to a product of man’s mind, rather as he wrote,
This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place.
It is simply the medium from which religious experience seems to flow.
As to what the further cause of such experience may be, the answer to this question lies beyond
the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. Throughout Jung’s life,
he struggled with the question as to what the ultimate source of the archetypes was. At times,
he suggested they arose in an evolutionary manner and were subject to change over long periods of
time. The following passage reflects this view. Man possesses many things which he has never
acquired but has inherited from his ancestors. He is not born as a tabula rasa, he is merely born
unconscious, but he brings with him systems that are organized and ready to function in a
specifically human way, and these he owes to millions of years of human development. However,
Jung also had sympathy with the idea that the archetypes may be similar to the platonic forms
existing as a type of immutable transcendental entity. As Jung wrote at one point,
Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever originated at all is a
metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable. Whatever their ultimate source, Jung believed that
the archetypes play an immense role in the lives of all individuals. By becoming increasingly aware
of the archetypal patterns through the symbols they manifest in the psyche, the individual
experiences an expansion of consciousness. Such an expansion, Jung believed, was of paramount
importance for as he put it man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press
upward from the unconscious neither should he persist in his unconsciousness nor remain
identical with the unconscious elements of his being thus evading his destiny which is to create
more and more consciousness as far as we can discern the sole purpose of human existence
is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being
Source: Academy of Ideas