You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Jung postulated the existence of a collective unconscious that is common to all members of the human family (Jung 8, par. 3), and he makes a distinction between the personal unconscious ‘and an impersonal or transpersonal … collective unconscious because it is detached from anything personal [and is entirely universal]’ (Jung 4, par. 103).
Jung further posited that the collective unconscious contained archetypes: ancient motifs and predispositions to patterns of behaviour that manifest symbolically as archetypal images in dreams, art, or other cultural forms (Jung 10). Harry Prochaska writes:
An archetypal symbol rises from the deepest layers of the unconscious…. The archetypal quality in those instances where it occurs is recognized by the sense that the expression transcends specificities of time and space and ‘speaks’ to common human experiences…. Cultural expressions must transcend the boundaries of their own cultures to become genuine archetypal symbols which are recognizable as such in other times and in other places (Prochaska 17).
We can infer that associated with the collective unconscious is a collective or archetypal memory that has its basis in biology, a result of the psychic evolution which parallels physical evolution.