I will be quoting from “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious” (Routledge, Second Edition) and paraphrasing when I feel it is necessary.
To start off …
Archetypes of the Collective unconscious (p.1-?)
To add clarity to these selected passages all Jung is saying is that we’re born with certain inbuilt functions that act independent of conscious awareness. What we experience in life does fall into the unconscious and can be recalled to some degree. And by this process the “collective unconscious” remains completely beyond the realm of conscious perception, but we come to know of it by way of how its contents impact upon us, and this is where the “archetype” comes in.“A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the personal unconscious. But this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious. I have chosen “collective” because this part of the unconscious is not indivdual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men abd thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present in every one of us.
Psychic existence can be recognized only by the presence of contents that are capable of consciousness. We can therefore speak of an unconscious only in so far as we are able to demonstrate its contents. The contents of the personal unconscious are chiefly the feeling-toned complexes, as they are called; they constitute the personal and private side of psychic life. The contents of the collective unconscious, on the other hand, are known as archetypes.
… The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its colour from the individual conscoiusness in which it happens to appear.”
I will give a brief outline of what it is that Jung is referring to when he uses the term “archetype” as it is often taken to mean something quite different. The most difficult thing I have found in trying to explain this term is getting people to see that the archetype of “mother” or “trickster” is not the very same thing for everyone. In many respects it is likely more helpful if you regarded the archetype of say “mother” as being one whole spectrum of personal experience. By this I mean the mother figure can be anything form an enraged and fearsome aspect of your unconscious or a maternal and caring aspect. The dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ makes the same aspect appear as two entirely different things (in a “glass half-full” or “glass half-empty” manner.)
By this we could look at dream contents. If I dream about some figure it Is not the same figure you dream about even though we are both human beings who share a commonality of experience and a certain disposition (which we could term “collective unconscious”.) In a dream some content may mean one thing specifically to me and something entirely different to you depending on your own personal experiences. The underlying interpretation is set upon the frame work of the collective unconscious and when this content passes into some form of perceivable expression does it leave some pattern in its wake. If you think about this on a purely reductionist and biological genetic level it may be more easy to grasp?
Anyway, back to Jung because he puts this across quite well in the following passages as to what “archetype” means.
Concerning the Archetypes and the Anima Concept (p.56)
The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (p.22-3)“…These reflections are essential when discussing an empirical concept like that of anima. As against the constantly reiterated prejudice that this is a theoretical invention or – worse still – sheer mythology, I must emphasize that the concept of the anima is a purely empirical concept, whose sole purpose is to give a name to a group of related or analogous psychic phenomena. The concept does no more and means no more than, shall we say, the concept “arthropods,” which includes all animals with articulated body and limbs and so gives a name to this phenomenological group. The prejudice I have mentioned stems, regrettable thought this is, from ignorance. My critics are not acquainted with the phenomena in question, for these lie mostly outside the pale of merely medical knowledge, in the realm of universal human experience. But the psyche, which the medical man has to do with, does not worry about the limitations of his knowledge; it manifests a life of its own and reacts to influences coming from every field of human experience. Its nature shows itself not merely in the personal sphere, or in the instinctual or social, but in phenomena of world-wide distribution. So if we want to understand the psyche, we have to include the whole world. For practical reasons we can, indeed must, delimit our fields of work, but this should be done only with conscious recognition of limitation. The more complex the phenomena which we have to do with in practical treatment, the wider must be our frame of reference and the greater the corresponding knowledge.
Anyone, therefore, who does not know the universal distribution and significance of the syzygy motif in the psychology of primitives, in mythology, in comparative religion, and in the history of literature, can hardly claim to say anything about the concept of the anima. His knowledge of the psychology of the neuroses may give him some idea of it, but it is only a knowledge of its general phenomenology that could open his eyes to the real meaning of what he encounters in individual cases. Often in pathologically distorted form.”
This is from a book of around 400 pages so I’ve done my best to pick out pieces from the first section of this book to give some idea of what is meant by “archetypes” and “collective unconscious”. Hopefully you’ll appreciate that this was written some years ago (the latest I think being 1954.)“…the collective conscious is anything but an encapsulated personal system; it is sheer objectivity, as wide as the world and open to all the world. There I am the object of every subject, in complete reversal of my ordinary consciousness, where I am always the subject that has an object. There I am utterly on with the world, so much so that I forget all too easily who I really am. “Lost in oneself” is a good way of describing this state. But this self is the world, if only a consciousness could see it. That is why we must know who we are.
The unconscious no sooner touches us than we are it – we become unconscious of ourselves. That is the age-old danger, instinctively known and feared by primitive man, who himself stands so very close to this pleroma. His consciousness is still uncertain, wobbling on its feet. It is still childish, having just emerged from the primal waters. A wave of the unconscious may easily roll over it, and then he forgets who he was and does things that are strange to him. Hence primitives are afraid of uncontrolled emotions, because consciousness breaks down under them and give sway to possession. All man’s strivings have therefore been directed towards the consolidation of consciousness. This was the purpose of rite and dogma; they were dams and walls to keep back the dangers of the unconscious, the “perils of the soul.” Primitive rites consist accordingly in the exorcizing of spirits, the lifting of spells, the averting of evil omen, propitiation, purification, and the production by sympathetic magic of helpful occurrences.
…
Whether primitive or not, mankind always stands on the brink of actions it performs itself but does not control. The whole world wants peace and the whole world prepares for war, to take but one example. Mankind is powerless against mankind, and the gods, as ever, show it the ways of fate. Today we call gods “factors,” which comes from facere, “to make”. The makers stand behind the wings of the world-theatre. It is so in great things as in small. In the realm of consciousness we are our own masters; we seem to be the “factors” themselves. But if we step through the door of the shadow we discover with terror that we are the objects of unseen factors. To know this is decidedly unpleasant, for nothing is more disillusioning than the discovery of our own inadequacy. It can even give rise to primitive panic, because, instead of being believed in, the anxiously guarded supremacy of consciousness – which is in truth one of the secrets of human success – is questioned in the most dangerous way. But since ignorance is no guarantee of security, and in fact only makes our insecurity still worse, it is probably better despite our fear to know where danger lies.”
Also, I hope it has distanced your thoughts from regarding Jung as a “mystic” and looking upon his work as that of a dedicated scientist who had an immense interest in the human condition. His work was practical and he dealt with real people and their problems. The process of “Individuation” is a very interesting one alongside many other “archetypal” themes, such as death, rebirth and balance.
For a more accessible representation of the archetypes I would suggest going into youtube and listening to lecture by Jordan Peterson where he goes through The Lion King showing by example of what the Jungian Archetypes are all about.