Quote #33

A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the 'personal unconscious'. But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the 'collective unconscious'. I have chosen the term 'collective' because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

More from Carl Jung

  1. No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity.
  2. Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-…
  3. Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the hu…
  4. Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of 'complexes', the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentiall…
  5. Aging people should know that their lives are not mounting and unfolding but that an inexorable inner process forces the contraction of lif…
  6. We must now turn to the question of how the existence of archetypes can be proved. Since archetypes are supposed to produce certain psychic…
  7. The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with consc…
  8. All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover…

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