According to Carl Jung (1976), each person has “primordial images” as Jacob Burckhard called them (or archetypes, as Jung called them), apart from their individual memories. Jung writes (1976, p. 83): “(…) they are possibilities of human representation, inheritances in the structure of the brain, and that produce very remote ways of seeing.”
For Jung, these archetypes found in the collective unconscious could explain why there are very similar legends in different parts of the world.
“Primordial images are the oldest, most general and deepest thoughts of humanity. They have both feelings and thoughts; Furthermore, they have something like their own independent life, like that kind of partial soul, which we can easily see in all philosophical or Gnostic systems, which are based on the perception of the unconscious as a source of knowledge (Jung, 1976, p.84).”
Jung assures that, after overcoming the infantile personal form of transposition, the libido delves into the depths of the unconscious and awakens “the buried treasure from which humanity has been extracting its gods and demons and all those thoughts, strong and powerful without the which man stops being man” (Jung, 1976, p. 85).
The fact that archetypes are found in the unconscious is explained, according to Jung, because they have been recorded in the human brain a long time ago and only need certain conditions to manifest again.
When asked where these archetypes come from, he assumes that “they are sediments of experiences constantly repeated by humanity” (Jung, 1976, p. 88). He also calls them “traces” of subjective reactions that have been repeated many times. However, he recognizes that it is not possible to know its nature.
These inherited experiences will determine our reactions in relation to life experiences and the kind of experiences we will have. For example, Jung believed that we should not learn to fear the dark or snakes because we are predisposed to develop these fears (Gross, 2005).
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Sources:
Gross, R. (2005), Psychology, the science of mind and behavior 5th edition. Hodder Arnold Publication
Jung, C. G. (1976), The unconscious. Losada Editorials: Buenos Aires