Snake symbolism being a universal symbol of evil across cultures would be used as evidence by which theorist?

• A. Freud
• B. Adler
• C. Horney
• D. Jung

Answer: (D)

Snake symbolism heard as a universal motif across cultures fits Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious and archetypes. Jung argued that people share inherited psychic structures that produce common symbols in dreams, myths, and religious imagery worldwide. The serpent appears in many different contexts—temptation, danger, healing, transformation—suggesting these motifs arise from an inborn template rather than being learned from one culture. This cross-cultural recurrence is exactly the kind of evidence Jung used to support archetypes and the collective unconscious, showing a shared psychic substrate across humanity. By contrast, Freud would frame dream symbols as manifestations of personal unconscious conflicts tied to early experiences, while Adler and Horney emphasize individual development and social factors rather than universal symbolic patterns.