Collective unconscious refers to the things in the unconscious mind that are shared between beings of the same species. The term was made by Carl Jung. He said that the human collective unconscious is made up of instincts and archetypes. An archetype is a universal symbol. Some of the archetypes that Carl Jung talked about were The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, Water, and the Tree of Life. He argued that the collective unconscious had a big influence on people's lives. Critics of the idea say that it is unscientific, fatalistic, or very hard to test scientifically. 