Archetypes similarly combine the universal with the individual, the general with the unique, in that they are common to all humanity, yet nevertheless manifest themselves in every human being in a way peculiar to him or to her.

All those factors, therefore, that were essential to our near and remote ancestors will also be essential to us, for they are embedded in the inherited organic system. (CW VIII, para. 717)

The most important archetype to be actualized in the personal psyche of a child is the mother archetype.

Archetypes actively seek their actualization in the personality and the behaviour of the individual, as the life cycle unfolds in the context of the environment.

Jung did not state his theory in a clear, testable form, nor did he back it up with sufficiently persuasive evidence.

Thus, on appropriate occasions, archetypes give rise to similar thoughts, images, mythologems, feelings, and ideas in people, irrespective of their class, creed, race, geographical location, or historical epoch. An individual’s entire archetypal endowment makes up the collective unconscious, whose authority and power is vested in a central nucleus,

Every animal species possesses a repertoire of behaviours. This behavioural repertoire is dependent on structures which evolution has built into the central nervous system of the species. Ethologists call these structures innate releasing mechanisms, or IRMs.

researchers working in university departments of psychology were in the grip of behaviourism, which discounted innate or genetic factors,

In a sense, ethology and Jungian psychology can be viewed as two sides of the same coin: it is as if ethologists have been engaged in an extraverted exploration of the archetype and Jungians in an introverted examination of the IRM.