Archetypes as Transformed Contents of the Collective Unconscious

jung-archetypes-quotation

The Transformation of Archetypes

Another well-known expression of the archetypes is myth and fairy tale.

“But here too we are dealing with forms that have received a specific stamp and have been handed down through long periods of time.

The term “archetype” thus applies only indirectly to the “representations collectives,” since it designates only those psychic contents what have not yet been submitted to conscious elaboration and are therefore an immediate datum of psychic experience.

In this sense there is considerable difference between the archetype and the historical formula that has evolved.

Essentially on the higher levels of esoteric teaching the archetypes appear in a form that reveals quite unmistakeably the critical and evaluating influence of conscious elaboration.

Their immediate manifestation, as we encounter it in dreams and visions, is much more individual, less understandable, and more naive than in myths, for example.

The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its color from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear.”

Collected Works 9(1)

Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

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One Comment

  1. Jung says there is a difference between “the archetype and the historical formula.” I cannot understand what it means.

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