Carl Jung's Archetypes Explained

The 4 major ones you need to know and their practical uses (+ DOWNLOADABLE SUMMARY 📝)

“The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images”

– C.G. Jung, ‘Collected Works Vol. 8,’ para. 281

Hercules and the Hydra (1431) Antonio Pollaiuolo

This is probably the most useful thing you’ll ever learn.

On the surface, Jungian psychology looks very Impractical. Many talk about spiritual things with a detachment from reality. It’s all so profound and unconventional, we can hardly find application for it in our lives (unless we go all in).

I want to give you (the normal reader) a practical guide that yields tangible results.

Carl Jung connected psychology and spirituality.

As unacademic as Jung’s work seems now, in his day, he was a scholar, doctor, and practicing psychotherapist trying his best to help people. He developed a psychology that is both archaic and hugely relevant to modern man and woman.

The evidence for this doesn’t show up in studies (dangerous for our society).

The truth of this can only be experienced personally.

Here’s Carl Jung’s archetypes explained, the 4 major ones you need to know, and how you can use this information in your life…

What are Archetypes?

‘Arche’ = ‘Beginning,’ ‘origin,’ or ‘source.’

‘Type’ = ‘pattern.’

An archetype is a primordial impression in the human mind that transcends culture, race, and time. A fear of snakes is a kind of archetype. You were born with it. And it originated with our remotest ancestors (and the lessons they learned).

Like the innate need to reproduce, archetypes are like instincts.

Archetypes express themselves in many ways.

• Emotions

• Behaviours

• Symbolic imagery

But they’re more than this.

Jung compared archetypes to a glass jug. The water that fills it and is used is like the psychic energy that drives or inhibits our behaviour and thoughts; the container itself (passive, transparent, and structuring) is the archetype.

Translucent by nature, archetypes can’t be observed – only experienced.

The 4 Major Archetypes

There’s no finite number of archetypes, as there’s no finite number of human experiences.

What we point to and call an ‘archetype’ is really a particular archetypical image. Jung discovered the psyche is a self-regulating system. Archetypes inhabit the Collective Unconscious (the universal mind we all inherit), and it is this part of the brain that seeks to create equilibrium between itself and the conscious mind.

But linear language is a function of consciousness.

So it communicates in 3 ways:

1. Projection

2. Dreams and mythology

3. Underlying manipulation of consciousness

(We’ll explore how this works with the first major archetype).

Though there are as many archetypes as there are stars, Jung identified 4 major players:

Major Archetype #1: The Shadow