Introduction. The theory of archetypes
Based on his childhood experiences, dream interpretation, and in-depth analysis of his patients, Jung developed the theory of archetypes. He opposed the doctrine of empiricism established in the Western culture by the British philosopher John Locke. Contrary to empiricism, Jung proposed the revolutionary idea that children are not borne as “blank slates” (Tabula Rasa). He believed that every human at the time of his birth is already equipped with inherited patterns of behaviour, which he called “archetypes” along with the stored knowledge of our species he called “the collective unconscious”.
The new concept of psychology
What Jung was proposing was no less than a fundamental concept on which the whole science of psychology could be built. Potentially, it is of parable importance to quantum theory in physics. Just as the physicist investigates particles and waves, and the biologist genes, so held it to be the business of the psychologist to investigate the collective unconscious and the functional units of which it is composed archetypes, as he eventually called them. Archetypes are ‘identical hic structures common to all’ (CWV, pare. 224), which together constitute ‘the archaic heritage of humanity’ (CWV, pare. 259).
Essentially, he conceived them to be innate neuropsychic center’s possessing the capacity to initiate, control, and mediate the common behavioural characteristics and typical experiences of all human beings. Thus, on appropriate occasions, archetypes give rise to similar thoughts, images, mythologems, feelings, and ideas in people, irrespective of their class, creed, race, geographical location, or historical epoch. An individual’s entire archetypal endowment makes up the collective unconscious, whose authority and power is vested in a central nucleus, responsible for integrating the whole personality, which Jung termed the Self.
Jung’s differences with Freud
Jung never disagreed with Freud’s view that personal experience is of crucial significance for the development of each individual, but he denied that this development occurred in an unstructured personality. Freud believed in the doctrine of empiricism treating a newborn as “tabula rasa”, waiting for a content. On the contrary, for Jung, the role of personal experience was to develop what is already there – to activate the archetypal potential already present in the Self. Our psyches are not simply a product of experience, any more than our bodies are merely the product of what we eat.
A diagrammatic representation of Jung’s model of the psyche will help to make this clear. The model should be visualized as a globe or a sphere, like a three-layered onion. At the Centre, and permeating the entire system with its influence, is the Self. Within the inner of the three concentric circles is the collective unconscious, composed of archetypes. The outer circle represents consciousness, with its focal ego orbiting the system rather like a planet orbiting the sun, or the moon orbiting the earth. Intermediate between the conscious and the collective unconscious is the personal unconscious, made up of complexes, each of which is linked to an archetype: for complexes are personifications of archetypes; they are the means through which archetypes manifest them in the personal psyche.
Archetypes and Plato’s Ideas
To a limited extent Jung’s archetypes resemble Plato’s Ideas. For Plato ideas were pure mental forms existing in the minds of the gods before a life began and were consequently above and beyond the ordinary world of phenomena. They were collective in the sense that embodied the general characteristics of a thing, but they were also implicit in its specific manifestations. The human fingerprint, for example, is instantly recognizable for what it is on account of its unmistakable configuration of contours and whorls. Yet every fingerprint has a configuration unique to its owner. Archetypes similarly combine the universal with the individual, the general with the unique; in that they are common to all humanity, yet nevertheless manifest themselves in every human being in a way peculiar to him or to her.
Where Jung’s archetypes differ from Plato’s Ideas is in their dynamic, goal-seeking properties. Archetypes actively seek their actualization in the personality and the behaviour of the individual, as the life cycle unfolds in the context of the environment.
IRMs: Innate Releasing Mechanisms
Very similar ideas to Jung’s have become current in the last forty years e relatively new science of ethology (that branch of behavioral which studies animals in their natural habitats). Every animal species possesses a repertoire of behaviours. This behavioural repertoire pendent on structures which evolution has built into the central us system of the species. Ethologists call these structures innate releasing mechanisms, or IRMs. Each IRM is primed to become active Ian appropriate stimulus – called a sign stimulus – is encountered in environment. When such a stimulus appears, the innate mechanism released, and the animal responds with a characteristic pattern of behaviour which is adapted, through evolution, to the situation. Thus, a mallard duck becomes amorous at the sight of the handsome green head of a mallard drake, the green head being the sign stimulus which releases in the duck’s central nervous system the innate mechanism responsible for the characteristic patterns of behaviour associated with courtship in the duck.
IRMs and Archetypes
This is very much how Jung conceived of archetypes operating in human beings, and he was aware of the comparison. An archetype, he said, is not ‘an inherited idea’ but rather ‘an inherited mode of functioning, corresponding to the inborn way in which the chick emerges from the egg, the bird builds its nest, a certain kind of wasp stings the motor ganglion of the caterpillar, and eels find their way to the Bermuda’s. In other words, it is a “pattern of behaviour”. This aspect of the archetype,’ concludes Jung, ‘the purely biological one, is the proper concern of scientific psychology’ (Cw XVIII, Para. 1228). In a sense, ethology and Jungian psychology can be viewed as two sides of the same coin: it is as if ethologists have been engaged in an extraverted exploration of the archetype and Jungians in an introverted examination of the IRM.
The Jungian concept of the collective unconscious assumes the existence of a blueprint for human life consisting of archetypes being activated in particular circumstances or live stages.
The currency of archetypal theory
In the past decennia different disciplines came to similar results as Jung but without reference to him. Within the area of linguistics Noam Chomsky proposed a theory explaining the phenomenon that every infant can learn any language spoken on the Earth. He proved that despite different languages with different grammar the ability to learn a language is based on a deeper-rooted structure, an “universal grammar”, we would call after Jung archetypal.
Within the area of anthropology Claude Levi-Strauss and the French anthropologist proposed the existence of an unconscious structure holding it responsible for all human customs and institutions.
The new discipline called sociobiology proofed that the patterns of behaviour typical for all species, including humans, depend on genetically anchored response strategies designed to maximize the survival chances of the individual. Sociobiology also holds that the psycho-social development in individual members of a species based on epigenetic rules (epi = upon, genesis =development; i.e. rules upon which development proceeds);
All mentioned concepts refrain the archetypal hypothesis proposed by Jung decades earlier.
The undiscovered theory
Why Jung’s theory of archetypes keeps being rediscovered by other scientific disciplines but neglected by the psychology, then 1.) why it had been neglected at the time Jung proposed it, and 2.) why it’s neglected today?
There are many answers to this question. Throughout Jung’s mature lifetime and even more today the researchers in university departments of psychology were and are in the grip of behaviorisms. They follow the concept of empiricism seeing the individual as a “tabula rasa” whose development starts first after the birth and is based on environmental factors.
Jung’s writing didn’t present his theory in a clear form due to his weakness of passing his ideas in complicated writing. His book “Transformations and Symbols of the Libido” in which he first presented the idea of the collective unconscious mentioning also the “primordial images”, as he initially called archetypes, was so densely written and packed with mythological examples that only the most determined reader could go through.
Contradicting Darwin
The other aspect is that proposing the idea of archetypes and collective unconscious Jung contradicted the foundation of contemporary science, Darwinism. The theory of Darwin claims that the information can be passed from one generation to the next via genes. Darwinism proclaimed the process of natural selection, on the survival of the fittest as the leading force of evolution. According to Darwin the genetically transferred characteristics with evolutionary benefits will give their offspring a higher chance to survive while those with less favorable traces will be eliminated over time.
Jung instead proposed that patterns of behaviour or images occurring in members of one generation could be passed genetically to the next generation. Such “sideways transition” of survival strategies and memories is hard to comprehend. It undermines today’s scientific dogma. This theory of acquired characteristics, originally proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was and still is scientifically discredited.
Lack of proved evidence
The other reason that the archetype theory barley found scientific resonance was that Jung wasn’t able to present enough evidence-based proof supporting his theory. He provided only one case description of the “phallus man”, a schizophrenic patient who hallucinated a tube or a phallus hanging down from the son, which by changing its direction influenced the wind. An identical content was described in an old Greek manuscript referring to a Mithraic ritual which Jung discovered years later. The patient, a poorly educated man never could possess knowledge of such ritual. However, those who reject the archetypal hypothesis remain unimpressed by the discovery of parallel themes in myths derived from different parts of the world, maintaining that these can be explained just as well by cultural diffusion and not by innate predisposition.
The sigma of esoterism
One of the main obstacles is the fact that Jungian psychology didn’t enter into psychiatric mainstream. In general, the psychiatrists are seldom trained in the depth psychology and those familiar with Jungian psychology are extremely rare. Jung went beyond the demarcation line dividing psychology from philosophy, theology and by dealing with topics considered not scientific such as synchronicity, intuition, and even the discussed collective unconscious. For this reason, Jungian psychology is surrounded by esoteric aura and treated as non-scientific.