Archetype
A model, prototype, statement, pattern of behavior, which other models, objects, statements, copy or emulate, often as a derivative of this canonical example.
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Origin
The word traces to Greek arche (beginning) and typos (form). Carl Jung gave it its modern psychological meaning, first calling these patterns "primordial images" — a phrase borrowed from Jacob Burckhardt — before coining "archetypes" in his 1919 essay "Instinct and the Unconscious." Jung proposed that figures such as the Mother, the Hero, and the Trickster are universal patterns shared through a collective unconscious, a concept he developed throughout the 1910s and 1920s.
Updated February 22, 2026