Archetypes
According to Carl Jung, Archetypes forms an integral part of human’s collective unconscious. Archetypes are ancient or archaic images of which the contents of the collective unconscious are composed of. They are present in almost every person in one form or the other.
Archetypes are similar to complexes in that they are affectively toned collections of associated images. However, while archetypes are generalized and compose the contents of the collective unconscious, complexes are individualized and make-up the contents of the personal unconscious. A few of these are: God, Devil, mother and father figures, the child, birth, death, reincarnation or life after death, world’s end, and the hero and villain figures.
Jung believed that archetypes originate through the repeated experiences of early people. Archetypes function as highly charged autonomous contents of energy that tend to produce in each generation the repetition and elaboration of these same experiences through several modes.