The collective unconscious

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Freud’s earliest and most influential student, Carl Gustav Jung, quickly criticized his mentor’s views on the unconscious mind. Jung’s theory of the three parts of the psyche – the ego, the personal (unconscious), and the collective (unconscious) – would go on to influence generations of psychologists. He described the ego as the part of the mind where conscious thoughts and feelings take place; the personal unconscious is where memories and emotions reside, and the collective unconscious contains everything else – including instincts and archetypes.

The idea of a collective consciousness came into existence as Jung noticed recurring and strikingly similar patterns of thought and behavior that occur in people around the world. He concluded these were manifestations of forms, called archetypes, that are found in everyone’s unconscious mind. Whether this was due to genetics, or a reflection of the human soul connecting us to one another is unclear.

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