We note the differences in shape, sizes, and colors in every thing that makes up this world of ours. For some reason, it takes a more sophisticated type of thinking to see what people have in common. We have to get past all the surface differences in order to discover what is similar beneath. Early in this century, a psychiatrist by the name of Carl Gustav Jung reasoned that, if people had physical characteristics in common, it was possible that certain aspects of people s inward life would also be the same. Jung was very interested in dreams, his own dreamlife and that of his patients.
Archetypes are original pictures in the minds of all people.
These pictures are such things as dragons, snakes, gods, goddesses, blinding lights, altars, thrones, kings, and princesses. The archetypes are symbols for fears, hopes, events, and ideals that all human beings share at a fundamental level. People also seemed to dream about different events at different stages of their lives. These events were such things as dying and coming back to life, killing monsters, saving people, climbing, searching and finding things. Jung was interested in dreams because he knew that dreams come from that part of the mind that is not available to conscious thought, the subconscious mind.