---
title: "Collective Unconscious — Jungian Psychology | 4th Tarot Glossary"
url: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/collective-unconscious
description: "The deep, transpersonal layer of the psyche containing inherited universal images and motifs (archetypes)—the psyche's shared foundation connecting to…"
lang: en
---

Back to Glossary (https://4thtarot.com/glossary)

Jungian Psychology

# Collective Unconscious

Jung's term for the shared layer of the psyche beneath the personal unconscious. While the personal unconscious contains individual memories, complexes, and repressed material, the collective unconscious contains the inherited structures of the psyche common to all human beings across all cultures: the archetypes. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious by noting that its contents were never individually acquired; they are the structural preconditions of the human psyche itself. In the 4th Tarot, every Major Arcana card is an encounter with a figure or force from the collective unconscious.

## Related concepts

universal patterns

archetypes

The Moon

shared psyche

ancestral memory

mythological themes

common humanity

objective psyche

## More in Jungian Psychology

- Abraxas: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/abraxas
- Acceptance of Evil: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/acceptance-of-evil
- Active Imagination: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/active-imagination
- Anima: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/anima
- Animus: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/animus
- Archetype: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/archetype
- Archetypes: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/archetypes
- Compensation: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/compensation
- Complex: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/complex
- Confrontation with the Unconscious: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/confrontation-with-the-unconscious
- Coniunctio: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/coniunctio
- Creatura: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/creatura
- Daimon: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/daimon
- Divine Child: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/divine-child
- Ego: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/ego
- Enantiodromia: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/enantiodromia
- Eros: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/eros
- Fantasy: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/fantasy
- Forethinking: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/forethinking
- God-Image: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/god-image
- Hero: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/hero
- Individuation: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/individuation
- Inflation: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/inflation
- Integration: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/integration
- Libido: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/libido
- Logos: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/logos
- Magic: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/magic
- Mandala: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/mandala
- Mater Coelestis: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/mater-coelestis
- Nekyia: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/nekyia
- Persona: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/persona
- Phallos: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/phallos
- Philemon: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/philemon
- Pleroma: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/pleroma
- Projection: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/projection
- Quaternity: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/quaternity
- Rebirth: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/rebirth
- Sacrifice of the Hero: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/sacrifice-of-the-hero
- Salome: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/salome
- Self: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/self
- Shadow: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/shadow
- Spirit of the Depths: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/spirit-of-the-depths
- Supreme Meaning: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/supreme-meaning
- Synchronicity: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/synchronicity
- The Irrational: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/the-irrational
- Transcendent Function: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/transcendent-function
- Tree of Life: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/tree-of-life
- Wise Old Man: https://4thtarot.com/glossary/wise-old-man

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