Introduction. Archetypes and Neurosis
The Homo Sapiens species spent 99.5% of its time in small groups as hunters and gatherers. Anthropologist Robin Fox suggests that the strength of such groups was around forty individuals, including 6 to 10 adult males, twice as many females of childbearing age, and the rest being children and adolescents. Group members shared the same values, roles, customs, rituals, and religion.
Our nature prepared us well to live in such small groups. In his book “The tribal imagination: Civilization and the savage mind” Fox emphasises how the human behaviour reveals traces of our tribal roots, and how this evolutionary heritage limits our capacity for action.
An individual psychologically equipped for life in such groups who is born into modern times experiences a literal shock when encountering today’s way of life. Such cultural shock happened to the Ik people who lived as hunters and gatherers in Uganda on 40,000 km². After their relocation to a barracks settlement and attempts to teach them agriculture led to the complete breakdown of their community.
The adaptation to such living conditions, which the Western World took millennia to achieve, was expected to happen within a generation. The members of the Ik community quickly became demoralized, developing anxiety and depression. They started to behave with psychopathic indifference toward their children and partners.
Similar developments were also observed among North and South American indigenous tribes in their confrontation with western civilization.
Neurosis as result of archetypal frustration
The frustration of instinctive life forms, referred to as “archetypes” by Jung, leads to the development of mental illnesses.
Archetypes represent an unconscious developmental plan for an individual’s life. The themes of modern human neuroses, especially anxiety, have little to do with modern life and are mostly archaic in nature.
Claustrophobia
the fear of enclosed spaces, has an archetypal basis. It is an echo of the anxiety developed by a hominid trapped in a dead-end cave with a lion approaching, leaving no possibility of escape.
Agoraphobia
the fear of open spaces may stem from an archetypal experience of being in an open savannah with no trees nearby for safety.
Acrophobia, fear of heights
may be explained by the fact that our species primarily lived in tree canapés.
Archetypal fears in modern society
Claustrophobia, a form of neurosis happens when a person feels trapped in a “dead end” situation. In modern life, such “dead ends” are metaphorical. This can happen to a person stuck in a job while being dependent on regular income to support his family. This can also happen to a mother who must sacrifice her autonomy (i.e. desire for personal development), for the sake of her child. In such situation the higher values keep her trapped in the “prison” of boring family duties under the “tyranny” of her child.
Symptoms of archetypal neurosis
The prehistoric human trapped in a dead end either escaped or was killed by the lion. The modern human can be stuck in such a situation for days, weeks, months, and years. This leads to permanent stress with overstimulation of the adrenergic system. The consequences are the so-called “civilization diseases”. The ongoing stress causes stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, with their consequences such as heart attack or stroke.
The stress alleviates the person’s frustration triggering a compensation/reward through cigarette consumption, uncontrolled eating, and not least of all, alcohol, and drugs consumption. The greater the suffering, the more extreme the consumption of such substances, and the more extreme the substances themselves (hard drugs).
The English psychiatrist, John Bowlby, defined the basic principles of psychopathology very precisely: Psychopathology arises when an individual’s life circumstances either partially or completely prevent the development of their internal needs. Bowlby observed the following regularity: the further an individual’s circumstances deviate from the evolutionarily established optimum under which they grew up, the higher the likelihood of pathological development.
Root causes of the modern-day neurosis
Against this background, some developments of modern society that frustrate the archetypal development of an individual are worth mentioning:
1. Dissolution of the model of the extended family and loss of contact within the community, especially in urban areas.
2. Instability of the family due to divorce and separation, including the increase of single-parent households.
3. Inadequate maternal care for the child due to their employment.
4. Loss of myth and inflation of religion.
5. Loss of contact with nature, natural processes such as the changing of the seasons in nature itself.
It is not to be overlooked that the more pronounced these developments become, the greater the number of neuroses, psychoses, and addictions.
Fulfillment of archetypal needs
Evidence such as this illustrates a model of psychopathology. Mental health depends on the condition of the physical and social environments that allow for the archetypal needs of the developing individual to be met. Psychopathology can arise when these needs are not fulfilled.
This formulation leads to two fundamental questions:
1. What are the archetypal needs of the developing individual?
2. What environments – physical or social – guarantee their fulfilment?
These questions, it seems, are the main questions that psychology and psychiatry of the 21st century must address.
Conclusion
Every living organism has an anatomical structure and a behavioral repertoire that is uniquely adapted to the environment in which it evolved (the “environment of evolutionary adaptation”). This is the environment in which individuals will live out their life cycle. Any change in the environment has consequences for the organism. Some changes could be reconciled with survival, while others could not. And changes that do not immediately lead to the elimination of the species could nevertheless distort its behavioral patterns, ultimately leading to extinction (i.e. pollution and climate change).
Human versatility, coupled with an intellectual capacity for renewal, has led to dramatic transformations of the environments that people now inhabit. These environments show an astonishing diversity compared to the existing characteristics of the African savanna, where we developed and lived out most of our existence as hunters and gatherers. In fact, the speed at which environments have changed in recent centuries has far outstripped the pace at which natural selection can progress in the traditional Darwinian manner.
These views present problems for any researcher who wishes to precisely delineate what exactly the characteristics of the human adaptive environment were. If we truly wish to understand what kind of creature we are, then we must make the effort to understand which factors of our environment influenced our archetypal tendencies that are still present in our psyche.
Sources
The tribal imagination: Civilization and the savage mind. Harvard University Press. 2011. pp. 417. ISBN 978-0-674-05901-6
Stevens, Anthony (1982). Archetype: A Natural History of the Self. New York: William Morrow & Co.
Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self. Brunner-Routledge, London; Inner City Books, Toronto.