Collective unconscious (Jung)

According to Carl Jung, reborn in each individual brain structure there is a powerful spiritual inheritance of human development which is distinct from and which underlies the personal unconscious. It contains the archetypes, which are forms universally valid for everyone and into which the personal element of the individual enters as content. Different cultures, although sharing in the universal content, may also have their own specific patterns. When complexes, images and ideas from the personal unconscious form a core deriving from an archetype in the collective unconscious then they may manifest in the form of images or instincts. The idea of the collective unconscious and, in particular, the archetypes held there, relates very closely with traditional myths and with symbolic writings of the mystics, and is particularly closely related with the system underlying Tarot cards and with the esoteric Judaic Kabbalah.