Jungian archetypes

Jungian archetypes are a concept created by the psychologist Carl Jung. An idea developed and refined throughout his career, Jung considered archetypes as an aspect of a 'collective unconscious '. This means that Jung believed structures of the unconscious mind to be shared among beings of the same species.

In humanity, Jung understood the collective unconscious to be populated by instincts and archetypes. Archetypes are images, symbols, thoughts or situations that can be traced back to the primitive human past - these in turn influence humanity's psyche, or the 'collective unconscious'.

Jung's archetypes are prominent throughout Remember 11, with each major character being assigned an archetype in the opening of the novel. While not referred to directly in the novel, the reader is left to consider and speculate how each character might fulfill the assigned 'role' in the story.

Definition
'Probably none of my empirical concepts has met with so much misunderstanding as the idea of the collective unconscious.' - Carl Jung, 1936.

The notion of a 'collective unconscious' was a major difference between Jung and Sigmund Freud, who favoured what Jung described as the 'personal unconscious' - the unique aspects of an individual study. From observing psychotherapy patients, Jung found that patients would describe thoughts, dreams or fantasies with roots in ancient mythology.

In Remember 11
In the visual novel, archetypes are 'assigned' to the following characters:
 * Fuyukawa Kokoro - Anima
 * Inubushi Keiko - Shadow
 * Kusuda Yuni - Trickster
 * Mayuzumi Lin - Persona
 * Self - Self
 * Utsumi Kali - Great Mother
 * Yomogi Junichi - Puer Aeternus (Eternal Boy)
 * Yomogi Seiji - Old Wise Man
 * Yukidoh Satoru - Animus

In all cases, each archetype has a song named after it which is also the character's leitmotif.

The above archetypes are all clearly assigned to the above characters. This is not to say that the remaining characters - Enomoto Naoya, Suzukage Hotori and Yukidoh Sayaka - do not have archetypes of their own. However, In particular, consider that Hotori may be the 'Puella Aeterna' (Eternal Girl); note the presence of the leitmotif 'Puer Aeternus' (Eternal Boy) as an alternate version of the 'Shadow', which is Keiko's leitmotif.