Glossary: Collective unconscious

The part of the psyche that contains universal contents (the archetypes), not from personal experience but inherited from all humanity, and further back even, to our animal ancestors. The inborn, psychological aspect of our inborn instincts. Explains the universality of archetypes. In the same way that all humans have the inborn capacity for language and sight, they have inborn templates for universal human experiences (mothering, birth, death, etc.). The forms of the archetypes are hereditary and comparable to instinctive behavior patterns found in all animals. Compare with the personal unconscious.

First, fantasies (including dreams) of a personal character, which go back unquestionably to personal experiences, things forgotten or repressed, and can thus be completely explained by individual anamnesis. Second, fantasies (including dreams) of an impersonal character, which cannot be reduced to experiences in the individual's past, and thus cannot be explained as something individually acquired. These fantasy-images undoubtedly have their closest analogues in mythological types. . . . These cases are so numerous that we are obliged to assume the existence of a collective psychic substratum. I have called this the collective unconscious.

- "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 262