Personal and impersonal attributes include the following characteristics:
In so far as through our unconscious we have a share in the historical collective psyche, we live naturally and unconsciously in a world of werewolves, demons, magicians, etc., for these are things which all previous ages have invested with tremendous affectivity. Equally we have a share in gods and devils, saviours and criminals; but it would be absurd to attribute these potentialities of the unconscious to ourselves personally
CW7 ¶ 150It is therefore absolutely essential to make the sharpest possible demarcation between the personal and the impersonal attributes of the psyche. This is not to deny the sometimes very formidable existence of the contents of the collective unconscious, but only to stress that, as contents of the collective psyche, they are opposed to and different from the individual psyche
CW7 ¶ 150Simple-minded folk have never, of course, separated these things from their individual consciousness, because the gods and demons were not regarded as psychic projections and hence as contents of the unconscious, but as self-evident realities
CW7 ¶ 150Only in the age of enlightenment did people discover that the gods did not really exist, but were simply projections
CW7 ¶ 150Thus the gods were disposed of. But the corresponding psychological function was by no means disposed of; it lapsed into the unconscious, and men were thereupon poisoned by the surplus of libido that had once been laid up in the cult of divine images. The devaluation and repression of so powerful a function as the religious function naturally has serious consequences for the psychology of the individual. The unconscious is prodigiously strengthened by this reflux of libido, and, through its archaic collective contents, begins to exercise a powerful influence on the conscious mind. The period of the Enlightenment closed, as we know, with the horrors of the French Revolution
CW7 ¶ 150