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Collective Unconscious Research Paper

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The collective unconscious, refers to a segment of the deepest unconscious mind not shaped by personal experience. It's genetically inherited and common to all human beings. These collective unconscious was expressed through 'archetypes', universal thought forms or mental images that influenced an individual's feelings and action. For example, deep-seated beliefs regarding spirituality and religion may be partially due to the collective unconscious. They are innate projections. Like A newborn baby is not a blank slate but comes wired ready to perceive certain archetypal patterns and symbols. Another explanation that it does exist can be seen by how some phobias are so common to all of us, even when we never had any bad experience with it. For instance, A phobia of snakes manifests in children even when there is no apparent traumatic origin for their fear. There was one study which found that one third of British children at age six are afraid of snakes even though it's rare to encounter a snake. The children had never come in contact with a snake in a traumatic situation, but snakes still generated an anxious response. …show more content…

A symbolic interpretation equates to little more than a belief that all humans share certain behavioral dispositions, while a literal interpretation indicates that the images of mythology and other cultural symbols are the inheritance of each person at

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