#archetypical thought

Throughout Jung’s lifetime, most psychologists maintained that children were passive recipients of maternal care and that they became attached to their mothers because they were fed by them (the so-called ‘cupboard love’ theory). Jung maintained, on the contrary, that children actively participated in the formation of all their relationships with the world, insisting that it was ‘a mistake to suppose [as did the majority of his contemporaries] that the psyche of the newborn child is a tabula rasa in the sense that there is absolutely nothing in it’ (CW IX. i, para. 136). We bring with us an innate psychic structure enabling us to have the experiences typical of our kind.

It’s not ‘natural’ to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little–have few verbal means. Eloquence–thinking in words–is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sign, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

What I find most intriguing and still most viable about Jung's archetype theory is Jung's floundering but also quite brilliant attempts at developing a language of complexity and speaking about phenomena like emergence, attractors in complex dynamic systems, and self-organization.

... [E]volutionary psychology would seem to corroborate ... Symbol-formation has an adaptive function. It promotes our grasp on reality as well as enriching our appreciation of the miracle of existence.

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.