Jung’s archetypes are a mirror that shows who and what we are

In the early 1900s, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung began noticing patterns in the dreams and life stories of those who visited him for treatment at his clinic near Lake Zurich. But these patterns, he found, weren’t limited to Europeans seeking psychoanalysis in Switzerland. Looking closely, Jung found them spread throughout humanity’s oldest myths. At first, he referred to his discovery as ‘primordial images’. But he soon began to use a different term, one that we are more familiar with today: ‘archetypes’.