a. inherited universal ideas, wishes, and memories.

Carl Jung proposed that the collective unconscious is a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal set of experiences unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species.

Jung wrote that “in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited.”