Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

neo-Freudian psychoanalysts
Psycho-
analysts who were trained in tradi-
tional Freudian theory but who later 
rejected some of its major points.
collective unconscious
According to 
Jung, a common set of ideas, feelings, 
images, and symbols that we inherit 
from our ancestors, the whole human 
race, and even animal ancestors from 
the distant past.
In terms of Jung’s theory, Harry Potter and Voldemort represent the archetypes, or universally 
recognizable symbols, of good and evil.
archetypes
According to Jung, uni-
versal symbolic representations of a 
particular person, object, or experience 
(such as good and evil).
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446 Chapter 
13 
Personality
instance, a mother archetype, which contains refl ections of our ances-
tors’ relationships with mother fi gures, is suggested by the prevalence 
of mothers in art, religion, literature, and mythology. (Think of the Vir-
gin Mary, Earth Mother, wicked stepmothers in fairy tales, Mother’s 
Day, and so forth!) Jung also suggested that men possess an unconscious 
feminine archetype that affects how they behave, whereas women have 
an unconscious male archetype that colors their behavior (Jung, 1961; 
Bair, 2003; Smetana, 2007). 
To Jung, archetypes play an important role in determining our day-to-
day reactions, attitudes, and values. For example, Jung might explain the 
popularity of the Star Wars movies as being due to their use of broad 
archetypes of good (Luke Skywalker) and evil (Darth Vader). 
Although no reliable research evidence confi rms the existence of 
the collective unconscious—and even Jung acknowledged that such 
evidence would be diffi cult to produce—Jung’s theory has had 
signifi cant infl uence in areas beyond psychology. For example, person-
ality types derived from Jung’s personality approach form the basis 
for the Myers-Briggs personality test, which is widely used in business 
and industry to provide insights into how employees make decisions 
and perform on the job (Gladwell, 2004; Bayne, 2005; Furnham & 
Crump, 2005).