Jung's seminal influence

DID Richard Noll have to be so heavy handed in his attack on my defence of Jung's theory of archetypes (THES, December 13)? Yes. Because if he is to succeed in his ambition to destroy Jung's reputation he must prove the theory to be baseless.

Yet he will not succeed, because it represents one of the truly seminal ideas of 20th-century psychology and evidence as to its essential correctness is accumulating in the form of those ideas, beliefs, symbols, and patterns of behaviour that cross-cultural studies are showing to be universal in our species. It is these that Jung suggested were archetypally determined. Noll's assertion that they can be explained by "cryptomnesia" is quite extraordinary.

It is true that not much evidence existed to support the theory when Jung proposed it early this century and that he appeared at first to adopt a Lamarckian view of evolution, but the evidence now exists and Jung was later to modify his Lamarckian stance. Yet so determined is Noll to vilify Jung that he gives him no credit for this. Jung got himself off the charge of Lamarckism (ie that he believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics) by making a clear distinction between what he termed the "archetype-as-such" and the archetypal images, ideas, and patterns of behaviour that the archetype-as-such gives rise to.

Though Noll seeks to deny it, this later position is very close to that of contemporary evolutionary psychologists and psychiatrists such as Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, John Price and myself, who hold that the human mind evolved in response to selection pressures encountered by our species in the course of its evolutionary history. The mental apparatus, according to this view, is made up of numerous "modules" ("archetypes") which have evolved through natural selection to meet specific adaptive problems confronted by our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the past. These modules not only provide the rules to be followed but much of the necessary information as well. This view, which has entered the mainstream of behavioural science, is entirely compatible with Jung's later formulation of his theory of archetypes.

I offer these observations merely to put the record straight. I do not expect they will dissuade Noll from pursuing his anti-Jungian vendetta, but future historians will, I suspect, be less severe in their judgements and may see Jung's insight into the phylogenetic basis of mental processes as being far ahead of its time. I will not deny that Jung held a teleological view of evolution, but this does not affect the essential rightness of his theory.

As for the other accusations Noll levels against Jung and accuses me of evading, these are too various, devious and complex to examine here. He will have to await publication of the revised edition of my book On Jung (scheduled for 1998) when I shall be pleased to give him what he is asking for.

Anthony Stevens

Member of the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists