Rather than fully entering consciousness, they appear to us in personified or symbolized pictorial form and may penetrate into consciousness by means of myths, dreams, art, ritual, and symptoms.  
Their formulator called them parts of our "chthonic portion" and "systems of readiness for action."  They were first introduced in two separate essays by the author, "Mind and Earth" and "A Psychological Approach to the Trinity," in which he termed them "on one hand, a strong conservatism . . . and on the other, the most effective means of instinctive adaptation."  Rather than fully entering consciousness, they appear to us in personified or symbolized pictorial form and may penetrate into consciousness by means of myths, dreams, art, ritual, and symptoms.  FTP, name these primordial, structural elements of the human psyche according to Carl Jung.
Their formulator called them parts of our "chthonic portion" and "systems of readiness for action."  
archetypes