From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Fri 20 Feb 2004 - 04:23:15 GMT
At 11:52 AM 19/02/04 -0500, you wrote:
>I am trying to track down credible scholarship that compares and contrasts
>the epigenetic rules of Lumsden and Wilson with Jung's archetype concept.
I did a bit of searching and could not find anything.
>Based on the respective rationales of Lumsden and Wilson, on the one hand,
>and Jung, on the other, would it be fair to say that archetypal images and
>symbols, memes, and culturgens recur in cultural artifacts because
>archetypes and epigenetic rules heighten the probabilities that these
>images and symbols will become expressed in some form?
I don't really think there is much in the way of common elements. I am
moderately familiar with Lumsden and Wilson, though I have not looked at
their book for a few years. Jung I am less familiar with.
Jung and Freud started what will eventually be seen as cult
movements. What they thought and said was far less important than the way
they treated patients. Both of them and the less famous psychologists who
followed, engaged their patients with intense attention. This causes the
release of pleasure chemicals in the target of the attention and in some
people leads to a condition essentially like drug addiction. Controlled
studies have since found that psychoanalysis has no effect on anything that
can be subjectively measured. Of course testimonials for highly rewarding
experiences are very easy to obtain.
On the other hand, anyone who starts a movement has an instinctive feeling
for human psychology no matter what they write down.
>If anyone out there knows of someone who has tackled this question, please
>point me in the right direction Thanks in advance,
You might take a look here:
[starting in the middle of page 12]
One of the more interesting chapters in this book is by Anthony Stevens and
called ‘Jungian Analysis and Evolutionary Psychotherapy: An Integrative
Approach’. His starting point is again the claim that EP can unify the
various human
sciences within the Darwinian theoretical perspective. He goes so far as to
remark
that ‘it is unlikely that any psychological explanation will prosper if it is
incompatible with the Darwinian evolutionary consensus’ (p. 94). However,
Stevens
does not wish to see a century or more of psychoanalytic practices and insights
discarded. In particular, he is concerned with recovering Jungian
psychoanalysis
and integrating it with the evolutionary approach. He compares Jung’s
conception of
archetypes—innate structures that make up the ‘collective unconscious’
inherited
from previous generations—that shape how people react to, perceive and
behave in
different contexts, with the ‘innate strategies’ (p. 94) conceived of by
evolutionary
psychologists. Although Stevens considers Jung’s grasp of Darwinism to have
been
less than sound, his understanding of evolved structures in human
psychology is of
significance; it explains, Stevens suggests, why Jung’s ideas were opposed
by other
psychoanalysts (who worked within the SSSM that rejects the role of biology in
human nature). In order to integrate Jungian psychoanalysis into an
evolutionary
framework, a few modifications in terminology are needed, so that the
‘collective
unconscious’ is replaced by ‘phylogenetic psyche’ (p. 98). Unfortunately,
it seems
that few Jungians are willing to participate in Stevens’ project to
integrate, rather
than synthesize, the Jungian approach with the evolutionary one. One is
left with the
impression that this project amounts to a colonization of similar character
to that
which Hilary Rose discussed in relation to the social sciences.
*************
I am not at all sure that the concept of archetypes will survive, while the
concept that humans have evolved psychological traits such as the ability
to capture-bond (Stockholm Syndrome) will.
If there is a relation between memes and archetypes, it would be manifested
in the ease with which humans learn certain classes of complicated memes.
Keith Henson
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