It's an interesting topic for me, not just because it ties closely with my interests, which I will expound upon more shortly, but I also get the distinct impression that most 'Jungians' (and these folk are most assuredly proud of that moniker) disdain the sciences, and thus are disinterested in any sort of merger or comparison. Even in this latter-day Jungian lens being deployed here at University of Essex, I find most people still fall back on the conventional ways of describing archetypes and the psyche: mythology, mythological imagery, and a lot of deliberately vague language meant to obscure rather than enhance meaning. Jung himself is arguably guilty of that final charge in his writings, though I think this has more to do with the bewildering way in which he writes, and how his ideas freely evolved in his prose, more than any deliberate bastardization of discourse. A better example of that may be the French psychoanalyst Lacan, who, despite being a creative thinker and arguably a link between Jung and psychoanalysis, used a lot of ostentatious and confusing jargon to make simple concepts very pretentious. This beefing of models and writing, a certain defiance against Occam's Razor in both logic and prose, is quintessential of the postmodern condition. Yeah, sorry guys. I'm still bashing it.
Of course postmodern thinking has its place; I think the famed analytical psychologist Andrew Samuels' idea of the pluralism as described in The Plural Psyche, where he basically says the disparate and the unified can exist at once, illustrates this point. But as I've said before, postmodernist thinking (Just write your own personal journey in your academic writing, after all, who knows what the objective truth is? Shit, who even cares?) has crippled true scientific thought. Any desire of discovering a higher truth beyond human senses has been largely discarded. You have the biologists and physicists, who by and large are more and more acting like engineers, deliberately ignorant of philosophy, as if to defy the nauseating swell of subjectivism in the humanities and social sciences (but by defying it, end up doing work that is just as compromised). And then you have the humanity and social study majors, who are quite openly doing work personally tailored to their own desires. So a bunch of narrow-minded, amoral and agnostic engineers, and obnoxious, self-important campus revolutionaries. In New Jersey we call this a clusterfuck.
I really do believe depth psychology, Jung's brand in particular, is the way out of this shit. Analytical psychology, when interpreted correctly, seems to be about integrated the subjective into a larger objective goal (ego into self). This is what both the reductivist scientists need to do (realize that they do have subjective interests in their work, and that a arching philosophy matters) as well as the social scientists (their work is meaningless and fiction lest they ground it in objective reality). But due to the reverence often given to one CG Jung, analytical psychologists find their field to have similar problems. I mean, who outside of this line of work takes the idea of archetypes that seriously? Analytical psychology has trended very heavily towards the postmodern social sciences, and I think this is the case because it is the easiest way for Jungian thought to survive. But it is not the best way. We need a crash back towards the 'hard' sciences, and that's where the emphasis on biology is so important.
Still with me?
So. Archetypes. Those patterns of thought, relationships and perception that we've inherited throughout all of human history. They are inherently indescribable, but they seem to indirectly manifest in certain imagery or stories. We all draw from this reservoir, or collective unconscious, so we all have similar imagery and events in our lives. We all have a mother-image in our heads. We all have constructed the ideal image of a partner, or a mentor. We are all living narratives that have a certain amount of similarity. We all have a side of ourselves we despise and eventually must confront for healthy integration. We all, in short, experience archetypal phenomena.
Jung is usually credited with the idea, though thinkers as far back as Plato had similar notions. Scientists such as the astronomer Kepler noted that they felt their ideas were simply inspiration from within, that they found corresponded with reality, rather than some deliberately constructed notion (Kepler even used the word 'archetype' at one point to describe this). But it was Jung who described archetypes with dynamic psychic energy, the power to completely override a person's life. And Jung himself admitted he was merely describing things that others had done to some extent prior to him... making him, in some sense, not that different from, say, Darwin, who was not devising some radically complex theorem out of the air, but rather just describing rather simply what the world told him.
Not all Jungians concentrate on archetypes as much as their predecessors did. I have noted some of the clinicians who come talk here barely bring them up at all, instead focusing on complexes (which Jung felt are formed around archetypal content) and real-life issues in their patients' lives, and I respect this a lot. I think the mythos of analytical psychology is, frankly, usually arrogant and off-putting, and probably alienates a lot of people who aren't bourgeois, white liberals trying to find themselves. You know, some people don't have time to hear how their dream relates to content found in the Odyssey and not anything immediate to them, and some people don't want to hear that kind of shit. And sometimes, dreams are just dreams. A lot of analytical psychologists, even the more modernized, developmental types, are still very focused on what Jung called numinous, or spiritual, experience. This is where archetypal imagery, like a painting a patient does, or images from a mythological story or fairy-tale corresponding to a patient's dream or life event, is supposed to be a catalyst for transcendence. But are archetypal images really that fundamental? Or maybe, just maybe, they're just tools to make people feel better and heal the psyche, with no absolute correlation between what's going on inside the head, and maybe, just maybe, these tools work more with certain types of people than others. Maybe.
But this doesn't discount the idea of archetypes themselves. The images that we associate with them are a personal matter; the fact Jung was so fixated on mythological connections to the collective unconscious has as much to do with his own personal fascination with mythology as it does with any real connection. Still, how does one account for archetypes in modern thought? Jung, who often tried to use the trends of science to support his theories (and often with some sort of erroneous application), claimed that genes were the transmitters of these primordial patterns.
Oh boy.
Genetics, is without a doubt, the epitome of 21st century science: trendy, reductive, and easily marketable to the masses. To me Jung seemed to be very keen on trends, and in this case he was way ahead of his time, because my God, does society want to attribute everything to genetics these days. Diseases. Being fat. Being a serial killer. Being nice. Being religious. Being gay. Being drunk. Having piss that smells like asparagus (this is true). Everything is a god damn gene now. And if anyone sat down and looked at the science, they'd see this just isn't possible. There are not enough genes to go around to account for the many traits that make you you or me me.
Many geneticists originally expected the Human Genome to include around 100,000 genes, maybe more. The reasoning for this was anthropic and typically arrogant: humans are advanced animals and have advanced lives, so therefore they must have more genes than most animals. More genes must surely equal further evolution. Well, it turns out we only have between 20,000 and 30,000 genes. Nowhere near as much as reductionist methodology would require. 30,000 genes might seem like a lot, but it certainly isn't even remotely close to match every conceivable trait in a human with a specific genes. Think about the banal and even absurd phenotypes that genes have to code for: curly hair, freckles, lobed ears, neuroticism, and smelling asparagus in piss. The list is potentially infinite. Of course, geneticists acknowledge that certain genes must code for multiple traits, and function of genes certainly varies beyond just coding for discrete traits. But the explanation that there are simply fewer genes because genes encode for multiple traits feels like a weak amendment logically, mainly because it seems like an arbitrary explanation without consideration for the larger picture. Of greater import, the idea that the volume of genes- or their content- indicates biological complexity has been proven false: The nematode has 20,000 genes. Fruit flies, a prized specimen of study for geneticists, has 16,000. No connection between gene complexity and biological complexity is evident. To further underscore the point, an even more bizarre- and for geneticists, disturbing- discovery has been made: Most genetic material does absolutely nothing at all. Most of it is just nonsense material, floating along for the ride.
Dawkin's The Selfish Gene makes a strong case for why the genome includes such junk material: that it is the result of the fact genes merely intend to preserve themselves throughout the generation, and organisms are merely vessels through which they do this. But this does not explain how organisms arise from their genetic package. The truth is, genetics must explain only a fraction of why we are the way we are. Human, nematode, or god damn drosophilia, our nature is the result of something far more complicated- and integral- than genes coding for traits.
Jung was wise to suggest that there is a physical basis for archetypes. Absolutely. But he erred- as he so often did when it came to science- in tagging it with a certain trend. For instance, he tried to assign the anima and animus to 'women' genes and 'male' genes. Oh boy. Well, Jung was never too brilliant when it came to sex & gender, at least not... deliberately.
Anyways. There are two giants in modern-Jungian discourse who are trying to link archetypes with different aspects of biology. One, a guy named Anthony Stevens, is trying to link archetypes to inherited material (both genetic and otherwise) that is produced through the forces of evolution. He is an evolutionary psychologist. The other, Jean Knox, believes archetypes are not directly innate, other than some instinctual response mechanisms that help us 'learn' things from our parents and the environment. She doesn't seem to like Steven's position very much.
I have spent the past two days reading through Knox and Stevens, and I think there is something in Stevens' ideas and writings that I automatically gravitate more towards. It's not that I think Knox's presentation is wrong; she is absolutely right about genes alone not possibly being able to account for archetypes. The idea that there are simply not enough genes in our genome to account for any human traits is completely true, and the idea that genes act more like the gametes of our individual cells, or catalysts dependent on other things (biological and environmental information), is also correct. Her use of neuroscience and developmental psychology- the interaction between mother and child produces archetypal content- is also exciting. But the way she strips archetypes of an a priori definition is a bit disconcerting. In other words, she strips the archetypes of their collective quality and instead make them a 'cultural' consequence, rather than a predetermined pattern. She herself seems to struggle (at first) of making archetypes in this model any different from complexes; some acquired 'planet' in the psyche that things gravitate towards. She is coming from a developmental point-of-view, which would naturally be more openly accepted by the clinician. As I said, her use of neuroscience makes for good data. But, for obviously subjective reasons, it just doesn't entirely jive with me.
Stevens, though, does not give up the a priori position because he recognizes the layers beneath developmental psychology- the biochemistry and physics- are mathematically predetermined. He is coming much more from the view of the evolutionist. Even Knox acknowledges the mathematics behind archetypes potentially transcending space and time. I think the key here is that Knox can't get past the problem with genes as being evidence that archetypes are 'learned' and not innate, but as Stevens cites, there are plenty examples of instincts or archetypal reactions kicking in despite a lack of learning between parent and infant reinforcing that idea (e.g. people in city environments still naturally scared of snakes and spiders). The thing is that heredity is not just genetics; biochemicals that modify the genes of the parent will cause future progeny to have the same modifications, for instance. The fetal washes that take place during birth have a critical affect on temperament. There is a lot of information in heredity that is not comprised of genes alone, and that's where a priori information is still delivered. It is, of course, innate responses and interactions with the surrounding ecology that associate images with these archetypes.
One final thought on this for me. Knox's developmental view would, in my mind, have some trouble accounting for personality types. Her ideas would seem to suggest that ones psychological type (and I realize that even a lot of Jungians discard the notion, but nonetheless) would perhaps be entirely different if they were separated from their parents early on and grew up in an orphaned environment. I think a lot of typologists would disagree with this. There is something very inborn about type and temperament; certainly the way it evolves (and individuation itself) would radically differ depending on the environment. But there is a capacity for a certain personality there from the start; type is not something that is 'learned'. Maybe it's archetypal, maybe it's evolution. Maybe that's the same thing. But personality type is something that, like the psyche itself, seems to become only more apparent over time, as if it were teleogical (predestined) and not causal. But it is not something that can be accounted for by developmental mechanics alone.
I think I have an answer. A good answer. But maybe I won't share it here. Just yet.
Jung was wise to suggest that there is a physical basis for archetypes. Absolutely. But he erred- as he so often did when it came to science- in tagging it with a certain trend. For instance, he tried to assign the anima and animus to 'women' genes and 'male' genes. Oh boy. Well, Jung was never too brilliant when it came to sex & gender, at least not... deliberately.
Anyways. There are two giants in modern-Jungian discourse who are trying to link archetypes with different aspects of biology. One, a guy named Anthony Stevens, is trying to link archetypes to inherited material (both genetic and otherwise) that is produced through the forces of evolution. He is an evolutionary psychologist. The other, Jean Knox, believes archetypes are not directly innate, other than some instinctual response mechanisms that help us 'learn' things from our parents and the environment. She doesn't seem to like Steven's position very much.
I have spent the past two days reading through Knox and Stevens, and I think there is something in Stevens' ideas and writings that I automatically gravitate more towards. It's not that I think Knox's presentation is wrong; she is absolutely right about genes alone not possibly being able to account for archetypes. The idea that there are simply not enough genes in our genome to account for any human traits is completely true, and the idea that genes act more like the gametes of our individual cells, or catalysts dependent on other things (biological and environmental information), is also correct. Her use of neuroscience and developmental psychology- the interaction between mother and child produces archetypal content- is also exciting. But the way she strips archetypes of an a priori definition is a bit disconcerting. In other words, she strips the archetypes of their collective quality and instead make them a 'cultural' consequence, rather than a predetermined pattern. She herself seems to struggle (at first) of making archetypes in this model any different from complexes; some acquired 'planet' in the psyche that things gravitate towards. She is coming from a developmental point-of-view, which would naturally be more openly accepted by the clinician. As I said, her use of neuroscience makes for good data. But, for obviously subjective reasons, it just doesn't entirely jive with me.
Stevens, though, does not give up the a priori position because he recognizes the layers beneath developmental psychology- the biochemistry and physics- are mathematically predetermined. He is coming much more from the view of the evolutionist. Even Knox acknowledges the mathematics behind archetypes potentially transcending space and time. I think the key here is that Knox can't get past the problem with genes as being evidence that archetypes are 'learned' and not innate, but as Stevens cites, there are plenty examples of instincts or archetypal reactions kicking in despite a lack of learning between parent and infant reinforcing that idea (e.g. people in city environments still naturally scared of snakes and spiders). The thing is that heredity is not just genetics; biochemicals that modify the genes of the parent will cause future progeny to have the same modifications, for instance. The fetal washes that take place during birth have a critical affect on temperament. There is a lot of information in heredity that is not comprised of genes alone, and that's where a priori information is still delivered. It is, of course, innate responses and interactions with the surrounding ecology that associate images with these archetypes.
One final thought on this for me. Knox's developmental view would, in my mind, have some trouble accounting for personality types. Her ideas would seem to suggest that ones psychological type (and I realize that even a lot of Jungians discard the notion, but nonetheless) would perhaps be entirely different if they were separated from their parents early on and grew up in an orphaned environment. I think a lot of typologists would disagree with this. There is something very inborn about type and temperament; certainly the way it evolves (and individuation itself) would radically differ depending on the environment. But there is a capacity for a certain personality there from the start; type is not something that is 'learned'. Maybe it's archetypal, maybe it's evolution. Maybe that's the same thing. But personality type is something that, like the psyche itself, seems to become only more apparent over time, as if it were teleogical (predestined) and not causal. But it is not something that can be accounted for by developmental mechanics alone.
But just how does personality type relate to the objective archetypes? And what about all the other subjective events that make you you and me me? What about gender, physical and mental health, or even philosophy and ways of thought? How do we account for all the differences here with this archetypal information that we all supposedly have?
I think I have an answer. A good answer. But maybe I won't share it here. Just yet.
Jesus. If you could follow whatever the hell I just wrote, let me buy you a drink.
You owe me a drink ;) Then again, this is very reminiscent of some earlier conversations we've had. Once again, keep me posted on your ideas/research.
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