Re: Re: [JUNG-explanation

[Guest guest]

Dear Alice,

I was wondering where you were. Good to hear from you. I have been very

touched by your concern.

[Guest guest]

<< was hoping Greg or someone cl;d catch Beatrix up on archetypes as

universal processes >>

At Alice's invitation/suggestion, perhaps the following quote from

s' wonderful book, On Jung (1990), would shed some further light on

this fascinating subject, of universal significance:

" Just as the male stickleback is moved to court a female whose belly is

swollen with eggs, a mallard duck becomes amorous at the sight of the

handsome green head of a mallard drake or a ewe becomes attached to her lamb

as she licks the birth membranes of its snout, so a human mother, presented

with her newborn infant, perceives its helplessness, and its need for her,

and is overwhelmed by feelings of love, the force of which may come as a

complete surprise to her. All these patterns of response have been prepared

for by nature and require no Lamarckian explanation to account for them. As

Jung himself insisted, the term archetype 'is not meant to denote 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 Bermudas. In other words, it is a " pattern of

behavior. " This aspect of the archetype, the purely biological one, is the

proper concern of scientific psychology' (CW,para.1228). " ......

What becomes fixed in the genetic structure is the predisposition to these

kinds of experience. Every organism evolves in its typical environment

(which ethologists call its Umwelt) and, in the course of its life cycle,

encounters 'typical situations'. As a result of genetic mutations, which

occur spontaneously and at random, an individual will acquire a

characteristic or a propensity which makes it better adapted than its fellows

to respond appropriately to a certain typical situation - such as, for

example, attack from a predator. This individual will tend to survive and

pass its new genetic configuration to members of subsequent generations, who,

possessing the desirable characteristic, will compete more effectively in the

struggle for existence. As a result the new attribute eventually becomes

established as a standard component in the genetic structure of the species.

In this manner, our archetypal propensities have become adapted to the

typical situations encountered in human life. The repeated selection of

fortuitous mutations, occurring through thousands of generations and over

hundreds of thousands of years, has resulted in the present genotype or

archetypal structure of the human species. And this expresses itself as

surely in the structure of the psyche as it does in the anatomy of the human

physique. " (page 37-38)

" With the theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious, Jung grounded

his psychology in biology. The life of the individual is to be seen not only

in the context of his culture but in the context of the species. Jung summed

this up in a profound aphorism: 'Ultimately,' he wrote, 'every individual

life is the same as the eternal life of the species' (CW 11, para. 146). As

a consequence, Jung's model of the psyche is imbued with biological

assumptions. Just as the structure of the psyche is determined by the

essentially biological concept of the archetype, so psychic function proceeds

in accordance with the biological principles of adaptation, homeostasis and

growth. " (page 40)

I hope this helps some.

Greg