The Development

of the Idea of
the Collective
Unconscious and of
Archetypes
Jung' s deep involvement with schizophrenic patients and his
endeavour
to understand their psychology led him to conclude that their
fantasies
and delusional systems could not be explained in terms of their
personal
biographies.
From “ Recent Thoughts on Schizophrenia” CW 3, par. 549
But unlike the contents of a neurosis, which can be satisfactorily
explained by biographical data, psychotic contents show
peculiarities that defy reduction to individual determinants, just
as
there are dreams where the symbols cannot be properly explained
with the aid of personal data. By this I mean that neurotic contents
can be compared with those of normal complexes, whereas
psychotic contents, especially in paranoid cases, show close
analogies with the type of dream that the primitive aptly calls a“
big
motifs
analogous to or even identical with those of mythology. I call
these
structures archetypes because they function in a way similar to
instinctual patterns of behaviour. Moreover, most of them can
be
found everywhere and at all times. They occur in the folklore of
primitive races, in Greek, Egyptian, and ancient Mexican
myths,