Jungian Archetypes.

Jungian Complexes organize individual subconsciousness.

Jungian Archetypes organize collective subconsciousness.

Archetypes are primordial images of basic psychological meanings and cultural values.

Archetype is inherited from generation to generation - behavioral pattern, thinking pattern, feel pattern.

It is an idea carrying considerable emotional value.

Archetype differs from symbol, that symbol represents archetype - cultural images, experiences and such of many. Symbol might be one word, but sum of people's understanding and feelings is something different - an archetype... various people might understand an archetype slightly differently, when someone uses symbol to call it in a group.

See also, if You wish: Symbols, What is Symbol, again?


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Archetypes are also praimages of basic psychological meanings & cultural values (gr. arche - primal, typos - image). Jung called them 'dominants of collective unconsciousness', 'collective dominants', representing 'generic ideas'...

Archetypes manifest in individual's psyche, organizing wholeness of her or his symbolic life - both aware (pl. świadomego) & unaware (pl. nieświadomego) - ideas, dogmas, mythology, creative fantasy, beliefs, ideology, thinking patterns, etc.

Source: [2].

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i think that archetypes also represent social roles, given to an individual by the society.

there are archetypes in roleplaying games, sometimes called differently (for example: character templates, character classes).


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(To do: need to think more about relations between Archetypes and Symbols, Archetypal Symbols).