Tabula Rasa and Jungian archetypes can be intertwined into a single idea.

"I believe that through our past life times a plethora of possible archetypes has been imprinted onto our conscious and from there Tabula Rasa takes control on deciding which Archetype we will fulfil." Ok...let's start here. Tabula Rasa is the biological blank slate of a child i.e. at the moment of birth 'nature' determines its actions - there is no 'nurture' (environment) imprinted. For the purposes of this debate 'past life' is environmental influence. One cannot be both in a state of Tabula Rasa and not. A is A. Memory is not Tabula Rasa. Imprint is not Tabula Rasa. At the moment where the infant begins to interact with any environment and start to form a conceptual process - Tabula Rasa ends. It's important to note the capacity for development of concepts, emotions is there at birth - it is set at Tabula Rasa - one's cognitive ability determines the content though. Tabula Rasa cannot "choose". It is a state, not an action or process. Moreover *specifically* a state of non action. Past life times is an unfounded assumption of cyclical existence. Here's why it doesn't work. Life A is born and proceeds. Life A experiences are entirely biologically coded in nature. One's memories, experiences, thoughts, concepts are all 'imprinted' on the form on neuronal connections that an individual has, in the biological brain structure that individual has. Life A ends. There is no more capacity to 'carry', 'hold', 'transport', 'store' what Life A was. Life B is conceived. Life B is made up of a split of genetic components from both parents. There is no Life A inherent in any parent. There is no specific capacity for Life A to be gene coded into B (short of similarities if A is a being biologically relative to B e.g. a sibling - for this purpose though they are not). At birth B will not be A. There is no capacity for B to be A. B cannot be both B and A. There is no biological B and capacity for imprint A. Even if there was B would not be B but be A in B's body - B's structurally different body would then make it again..non A. There is not the biological capacity to 'hold' A where A is not first present. Collective unconscious in Jungian terms is the shared unconsciousness of our genetic past. Present amongst all. He cites common themes/imagery in this support. ". . . but in the inherited possibility of psychic functioning in general, i.e., in the inherited structure of the brain. These are the mythological associations the motifs and images that can spring up anew anytime anywhere, independently of historical tradition or migration. I call these contents the collective unconscious. (Jung, 1921/1973)" Why that fails: genes encode proteins - it's the information of the DNA that will lead to the type of protein produced. There is no protein for 'female archetype shape imagery' or 'image of large tree.' Imagery is a product of the individual - after conceptual processes. Shared concepts relate to both the culture an individual is in - e.g. African pottery has X common theme in the shape of women. People see women so they dream of women. No great shock there. People see trees so they dream of trees - still no shock. Nor is it mysterious as to why such similar images would be produced in geographically isolated populations - they are part of the environment. A woman gives birth so she is given caricatures relating to that position. Jung's 'common imagery' (not always common) is an expression of artefacts that individuals develop in a cultural context. "The particular archetypal 'requirements' will be fulfilled during our critical period in development." Jungian archetypes (similar to Freud's archaic remnants) are not 'you are one or the other' they are all expressions of the unconscious. His, frankly stupid, obsession with dreams and myths gave him the idea that the unconscious had 'personality' or common thematic structure. He proclaimed to want to make Psychology scientific - but he was really just spewing ideas with little basis except on whatever mystical interpretation he found exciting for that year - including modifications and contradictions. So what do we know of the psychodynamics of Jung? It's rubbish. It's unsupported. There is a good reason why it has been largely dropped from within Psychology - there is simply not much in it that bears looking at. Jung made two arguments on archetypes: 1. Archetypes are developments from a distinctly Lamarckian perspective of evolution. In this, traits develop because of the experiences of successful generations is directly encoded into our genetic legacy e.g. giraffes grew longer necks because they stretched to reach leaves. This theory was discredited and superseded by Darwin's natural selection. Jung never caught on. 2. "The collective unconscious is the sediment of all experience of the universe of all time"; "...are not mere objects of the mind but are also autonomous factors." Apart or combined we see they really don't work at all. If archetypes are the deposits of repeated human experience then they would reflect human experience - cultures, apart from the modern age of communication have been relatively isolated - experiences then, as per evolutionary traits, are influenced by geographic location and isolation - in other words we should expect to see distinct archetypes evolve - this is distinct from presence i.e. a genetic 'early' component of archetypes and a difference in trait expression. Thus the idea of a large number of universal identical, psychological traits violates basic principles of variance (see language). Argument 2 basically arose from his inability to ascertain images he held and environmental origin relative to himself. Despite being a horrendous non sequitur - he then went onto a process of confirmation bias whereby he also applied this to his patients dreams. Person A has dream image. Myth has image >> common origin. It ignores coincidence -that given enough patients, images will occur that are recognisable - and also that both sets of imagery can be formed outside of a base singular source. In short, Jung is fun for those literature inclined (archetypes appear readily there), or non empirically concerned. Actually explaining an actual phenomena however, he fails. Utterly. This will do for now. :)