POLL: Archetypes⁠—Hard-Wired Into Us?

[stu neville]

I've been puzzling about this for a long time, and a discussion on Ufology (Can you speak Venusian?) brought it back to the forefront in my mind - I'd started to research this some while ago, and now my interest is piqued again.

Basically, are there images and symbols that are instinctively preloaded into our minds, and thus trigger an autonomic reponse? This has tangentially appeared in various threads on various fora on here, for example I brought it up on Violence in Media: Urban Myth?

I've been wondering for a long time whether it's not so much the programmes themselves, but (unconcious) evocation of archetypes portrayed in them.

To explain: The Third Reich used deliberate re-creations of ritual evocations of Mars, the Bringer of War, in it's rallies, which definitely stirred feelings of aggression within anyone who witnessed them. Conversely, Janis Joplin on stage used to (apparently unconciously - discuss) perform a ritual evocation of Venus: despite not being that obviously attractive she could whip the audience into a sexual frenzy (and I know someone who did see her live, and he confirmed she was utterly spellbinding).

Now to extend this premise: what if elements of these rituals were unconciously incorporated into TV shows and films? Pre-supposing that all humans do subconciously respond to archetypes (and there's an excellent article on Jung in FT171), then surely this could go some way to explain why some, visual, media can apparently trigger extreme responses, whereas others with a similar theme do not (and books almost never).

(That thread soon swerved off into a discussion of censorship, but you get the gist).

Now, in Ufology, I know many people who find the "grey" image, for example on the cover of Communion -

- unsettling, or spell-binding, or indeed both at a very deep level, almost as if it were instinctive. As we were discussing the nature of the abduction motif on the speaking Venusian thread, and how for centuries similar phenomena have been reported but assigned different explanations (faeries, night-hags, and latterly Zeta-Reticulans), perhaps that image (or something similar) has in some way always been with us, deep in our sub-conscious.

Another instance I remember is the three points of light on flying triangles: I've seen children very deliberately dabbing paint in exactly that pattern: an isoceles triangle with a short base, forming an elongated delta, as well as vaguely remembering Aboriginal art with the same pattern, (I think) Mayan, ditto Vedic.

I haven't got any strong opinion on why these particular images should have any resonance, or indeed if it's just the way I'm looking at things, but certainly I think there's a mechanism, perhaps allied to instinct and maybe seated in the primitive brain, which for some reason triggers a reaction on a level lower than the conscious one. Is it purely coincidence, or is there a reason they seem to be imprinted - and if so, why?

Now - what does anyone else think? Are there any images, rituals, sounds, anything else that seem to bypass your normal level of awareness and go much much deeper?

Alternatively, is this a real effect, but is it merely cultural osmosis - like when you whistle a tune you've never consciously listened to, but has been on in the background for weeks?

I've attached a poll for a snapshot of opinion, but I'd like to hear from as many people as possible. When I've concluded th research, I'll let you all know what I conclude: I'm not going in with pre-conclusions, merely an approximate opinion .

 

[Spookdaddy]

I'm not sure.

This is a subject that has always fascinated me as well but its a bit confusing. It appears to me there are archetypes which the majority of us are affected by to some extent. I'm not convinced one way or the other whether these archetypes are hard wired into our subconscious or if they are a result of social and cultural pressures - I suppose the latter is the least controversial option. It's another nature or nurture kind of argument.

The "grey" image seems to me to be a very recent development. Thirty years ago people envisaged alien life as looking much like us only dressed in baconfoil and kitchen utensils.

The paranormal appears to follow fashion as much as we do. Early ghost stories were full of wailing and clanking chains and yet now even the old white sheet is more or less defunct. As discussed on another thread stickmen and shadow people appear to be fairly recent phenomena although they conform vaguely to older stereotypes. I suggested on that thread that the stickman might be an updating of old rattlebones - the human form reduced to its most basic framework.

Dunno, but its a fascinating subject. I'm looking forward to other peoples views.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

I wonder is partly to do with our inate human need to classify things.

As I've said in relation to SP before there is a bewlidering variety of encounters which often get crunched down to encounters with evil old women, grey-type figures, shadows, etc. but when a large number of cases are looked at they all vary and seem to be part of a spetrum rather discrete groups. However, classification will tend to emphasise in group similarities and between group differences making them seem more discrete. Then all you need is a waste bin "other" for things you can't fit and everything is now all nicely packaged so it is easier to grasp.

Of course once you have established groupings (from a number of simialrish encounters) it creates a set of templates against which you can interpret new encounters which further reinforces the integrety of the grouping and so it snowballs until people point at the homogenity of the group as evidence that it must actually represent something "real" - e.g. an actual entity or an archetype.

The actual situation is that there is a wide range of encounters with a lot of blurring round the edges and even sharing of characteristics and some very weird facts that are difficult to fit within any classifcatory framework.

This leads to some interesting ideas like:

The Quantum Theory of Bigfoot:
www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13729

Paranormal aspects of cryptozoology
www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13633

 

[PeniG]

Archetypes exist, but not everything labeled as an archetype, is one.

Archetypes are very much like gender roles - that some hardwiring exists seems inevitable, but our ability to distinguish hardwiring from cultural conditioning is unreliable to non-existent, especially since not all individuals are hardwired in precisely the same way and a nonstandard hardwiring is not necessarily a dysfunctional one.

People frequently say "archetype" when they mean "icon." The gray-bearded wizard ala Gandalf is an icon; to demonstrate that it is an archetype in the original Jungian sense, one would have to demonstrate that every human culture has a recognizable version of it to which members can be expected to have a narrow range of responses. The difficulty of demonstrating any such thing makes the word not particularly useful, hence its common hijacking to related but not identical meanings.

IMHO, "archetype" should be primarily used in a speculative sense: i.e., "The triangle, cone, or pyramid shape appears in enough different contexts throughout human history or prehistory that it is worth investigating the possibility that it has archetypal meanings, perhaps related to functional features such as the structural stability of the pyramid form."

All generalities are false, and we need some words with which to talk about ideas that we can't know in an objective sense. Archetype is one of those. We may never be sure that the bearded wizard or the Earth Mother or the Little Green Guy are archetypes, but the process of gathering information to test the hypothesis that they are has the potential to be productive.

 

[Yithian]

People frequently say "archetype" when they mean "icon." The gray-bearded wizard ala Gandalf is an icon; to demonstrate that it is an archetype in the original Jungian sense...

If we're angling for exactitude here, all these things commonly cited by pop-Jungians as 'Archetypes' are actually what Jung himself describes as 'Archetypal Images'. That is: reflections, refractions, shadows and products of the far more noumenal (even Platonic) Archetypes of which we understand very little.

Of course, that's just Jung's take...

 

[Yithian]

Are there archetypes to which we all respond subconciously and similarly?

.

I was going to vote yes, and then no, and then I didn't vote. I'm not happy with the word 'all' as it suggests that these entities necessarily elicit a response given that certain conditions are met.

There are thousands of variables, IMO, that influence whether or not one 'tunes into' the archetypal significance of a situation, and these can be both cuturally and personally determined.

A question for any Jungians: I know that he posits that primarily 'Inspired' Art (for 'Art' read not just 'high art' but, more generally, all cultural productions) partakes of archetypal influence and trades in its motifs, but does he allow for the possibility of a heirarchy of influence - i.e. a 'trickling down' whereby even seemingly low-productions like gift wrapping or advertising may ride on the coat-tales or exist on the effervescence of a culture suffused with archetypal influence?

I ask, as that is a view I've been coming around to for quite some time and i've never checked to see whether this can exist under a Jungian umbrella.

 

[stu neville]

People frequently say "archetype" when they mean "icon." The gray-bearded wizard ala Gandalf is an icon; to demonstrate that it is an archetype in the original Jungian sense...

If we're angling for exactitude here all these things commonly cited by pop-Jungians as 'Archetypes' are actually what Jung himself describes as 'Archetypal Images'. That is: reflections, refractions, shadows and products of the far more noumenal (even Platonoic) Archetypes of which we understand very little.

Of course, that's just Jung's take...

That's an important point - the images themselves may not be pure archetypes, but may act as a kind of mnemonic or conduit through which parts of our subconcious not even comprehensible at a conscious level can be somehow contacted (maybe in the primitive brain, say), in which actual pure archetypes may reside?

 

[Anonymous]

No. not hardwired - the faculties for cognition are certainly both modular and distributed, but I doubt that memories are genetically transmitted. Remember, all genes do is turn proteins on and off (basic I know!). However, predispositions towards personal understanding of one's abilities in relation to the group (via experience)...yes. repeat after me...nature via nurture....nature via nurture.... :lol:

 

[Yithian]

No. not hardwired - the faculties for cognition are certainly both modular and distributed, but I doubt that memories are genetically transmitted.

So how does one explain instinctual/instinctive behaviour in animals?

 

[Yithian]

I have something to post about the behaviour of newly-born bees but I'll have to find it...

 

[Anonymous]

Please...not the instinct thing again. It is not the same as cognition - indeed, read anything by Riddley to get a basic handle on it; failing that there is a great textbook by Kalat explaining brain and behaviour in humans that also deals with the issues pertaining to these differences. I remind you that when young male song birds (who are genetically predisposed to learn mating and territory songs) are deprived of learning said songs, cannot defend their territory or mate - indeed, some may never sing. Thus many seeminlgy instinctual behaviours in the wild are, as are most things, nature via nurture.

 

[Yithian]

Please...not the instinct thing again. It is not the same as cognition...

Agreed.

But surely it is a predisposition towards certain patterns of cognition, so it's hardly irrelevant as you portray it.

I sense you're not feeling too flexible on these issues...

 

[Anonymous]

I agree with the tone of your argument, but a predisposition to cogntion refers to development. It does not refer to any previous knowledge being hardwired. Indeed, in humans many of the behaviorus we term 'instinct' can be supressed - unlike our friends in the animal kingdom. In reference to the thought/language debate (as it is related to this concept) Jerry Frodor proposed a mentalese underlying thought that, in an extreme interpretation, would allow that ideas are hardwired. But to my knowledge (and am studying this at the moment) there is no indication that memories can be genetically transmitted. As I understand the brain in regards to Hebbian synapses and the more modern long term potentiation theories plus biochemical mechanisms that allow neurones to fire, I am in the camp of most cognitive scientists and agree that what is called the binding problem is (as Chalmers states) a hard problem. I do not see any evidence that would explain how, if I get an important memory, that the chemical interplay would somehow alter my gene coding and pass this info along. Indeed, only half my genes get passed on anyway - so has this memory somehow altered both my sex chromosomes? Seems bloody unlikely. Further, as there are chemicals in the brain that are important in not being able to remember, what system would override this mechanism and decide that a memory needs to be genetically transmitted? Hmmmm...that's what I say...

 

[stu neville]

I remind you that when young male song birds (who are genetically predisposed to learn mating and territory songs) are deprived of learning said songs, cannot defend their territory or mate - indeed, some may never sing. Thus many seeminlgy instinctual behaviours in the wild are, as are most things, nature via nurture.

You could argue that the songs and territorial issues are cultural to the birds - however, the most fundamental instincts, to breathe, eat, sleep and mate, have to be hard-wired. If any animal was born not knowing how to breathe, it's species would die out rather quickly. It's a primitive brain function, and the primitive brain knows how to do it all on it's own. Further, newly-hatched ducklings will follow a toy train if it's the first animate object they see, in the belief that it's their mother: clearly not nurture, but pure nature.

... what system would override this mechanism and decide that a memory needs to be genetically transmitted? Hmmmm...that's what I say...

Controversy time - (and purely hypothetical) what if that system was the collective unconscious? What if it wasn't stored directly in our own brains as such, but on a kind of communal server? Discuss.

I'm sure someone will mention the plurality of entities before long, but as we're dealing with an unproven to start with, let's just go with it, shall we? (That in mind, however, I've resurrected the Occam's Razor thread, so any discussion on the nature thereof can be conducted elsewhere and not divert this thread, which is developing very nicely, thank you very much ).

 

[Graylien]

Short humanoids with oversized heads, big eyes, thin limbs, and no hair have been reported in the context of UFOs since the late 40's. You could argue that the grey alien (as depicted so vividly on the cover of Communion) is the ultimate simplification of this set of characteristics; it boils them down to a pure icon which cannot be simplified any further.

As Alvin Lawson has pointed out, the closest parallel to the grey alien in real life is the human foetus. The foetus represents us at our most vulnerable and helpless. The idea of a powerful foetus-like entity, which by comparison makes our adult selves look vulnerable, is intrinsically horrifying.

One of the most successful cliches of horror fiction is to take something which is normally completely harmless and malleable - say, a child's doll or ventriloquist's dummy - and imbue it with a life of its own. Being chased through the woods by a big hairy ape is pretty frightening, but being chased though the woods by a doll clutching a knife is just plain wrong - and therefore even more frightening.

I'd suggest that the success of the gray alien archetype is down to both it's irreducible simplicity and its utter wrongness (I'm sure there's a more academic term I should be using, but never mind). It has the physique of a helpless foetus, yet it can float through walls and paralyse us. It has no sex organs, yet it seems obsessed with inflicting sexual humiliation on its victims. It has the big eyes of a cute cartoon character, yet there is nothing cute about it.

And, whereas we pride ourselves on our individuality and personality, it has no personality at all. It appears absolutely physically identical to it's fellows. It doesn't even bother to dress itself (clothes, after all, indicate the presence of personality and personal preference on the part of the wearer; someone had to design them, someone had to decide what colour they wanted to wear, etc etc. The lack of clothing suggests a total lack of vanity and individuality).

 

[Anonymous]

Well Stu, the instincts you talk about are indeed in the primitive brain; indeed, you will find that such reflexes as gagging, salivating etc are the work of the top of the spine and the medulla. These are basic bio functions and have nothing whatsoever to do with higher cognition. Sorry the whole collective (un)consciousness stuff (whether taking Jung or Derrida) is a pretty weak - usually the type of theories that are spouted in pubs by drunken undergraduates, socialists, third rate philosophers and non-scientists (spot the trend). I'm not saying that culture doesn't exert influence, but it is not in the way that these theories postulate. I would suggest that the notion of exemplars, prototypes, categories/concepts and schemata offer a mundane, but more likely, basic explanation of how the mind generates these images.

 

[rynner2]

I do not see any evidence that would explain how, if I get an important memory, that the chemical interplay would somehow alter my gene coding and pass this info along. Indeed, only half my genes get passed on anyway - so has this memory somehow altered both my sex chromosomes? Seems bloody unlikely.

Back to Darwin, dear boy! If the important memory affects your behaviour in such a way as to optimise your chances of survival and reproduction, then your offspring will be likely to inherit similar traits.

Most people have a fear of snakes and spiders - presumably this goes back to our monkey ancestry, when such creatures could be dangerous. A monkey that wasn't aware of the potential danger of a snake might soon end up as a meal for the snake!

Of course, this could be partly cultural - young monkeys learn aversion to danger from the adults. But any 'rebel' youngster that decided to ignore the lessons of its elders would probably not survive long. So selection helps good learners survive... Complicated, ain't it!

I'm not sure how this would apply to such archetypes as the female triplet of maiden-mother-crone, though. It's something we all become aware of through life, and more so as we get older, but I can't see much evolutionary importance in it. (Except that a young man who marries a crone is unlikely to pass on his genes!)

 

[Yithian]

Most people have a fear of snakes and spiders - presumably this goes back to our monkey ancestry, when such creatures could be dangerous. A monkey that wasn't aware of the potential danger of a snake might soon end up as a meal for the snake!

But most babies?

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry Rynner, but using Darwin for inheriting memory is incorrect. I believe you are confusing natural selection with Lamarkian theory. His theory is as follows:
http://epswww.unm.edu/facstaff/zsharp/1 ... darwin.htm

"Organisms evolve from simple to complex over immense periods of time.
The first factor is that organisms inherently tend to more complexity. This is related to the ‘power of life’.
The other is environmentally controlled. In response to local environmental changes, organisms made much use of certain parts of their bodies and underused other parts over the course of their life.

The idea that changes in environment control evolutionary changes in the organism stood the argument from design upon its head.
The parts that were heavily used grew, while those that were underused withered. His theory then states that these traits were passed along to their offspring.


The classic example of Lamarck is the giraffe. Newly discovered, it caused a sensation, as it should. Even today, the sight of a giraffe in the zoo is breathtaking. Lamarck reasoned that early giraffes relied on leaves as their food source, and over the course of their life reached high into trees to get the leaves. They stretched their neck slightly, and this was passed on to their offspring, which also stretched their neck, passing this on to their offspring. Similarly, the legs and tongue would be stretched in the pursuit of leaves, both of which would be passed on to their offspring.



Lamarck’s theory was one of inheritance of acquired characteristics. That is, the characteristics inherited in life would be passed on to the offspring. Along these lines of reasoning, a bodybuilder would have babies that were slightly more muscular than non-bodybuilders. But there are numerous examples of characteristics that cannot be explained in this way.



What are some?

Certain bugs are well camouflaged, as are zebras and even giraffes. How could the zebras ‘will themselves’ to have stripes to protect themselves against predators. There is no logic to imagining a zebra (let alone a bug) that would try to get stripes, and thereby pass this trait on to its offspring!
Peacocks are brightly colored. How could they do this? What is the driving force?


As a test of inheritance of acquired characteristics, researchers actually tried things like cutting off the tail of mice to see if the babies had shorter tails. No such luck. (Talk about a stupid experiment. Circumcision is a better test)."

 

[rynner2]

No no no! I wasn't referring to Lamarck at all, nor did I say that memory is inherited (although some transplant stories suggest that it might be...).

I was merely pointing out that memory and other aspects of our intelligence affect our behaviour, and natural selection works on this. Succesful behaviour/adaptions are preserved and continue, and in so much as we share so much of our inheritance, there is no surprise that there should be similarities in our thinking.

Go back far enough (and it doesn't have to be that many generations), and we are all related. And the most succesful ways of thinking will be the most common.

If in future, certain archetypes prove unhelpful, natural selection will tend to weed them out.

 

[PeniG]

Genetic memory/collective unconscious, although an integral part of Jung's original postulate, are not absolutely necessary to the existence of archetypes, if they are real.

Take the maiden/matron/crone triptych. This represents one reality about the way women develop. Between menses and first pregnancy, we have certain biological features and social roles which are unique to young women; once we get pregnant, our social and physical lives change profoundly; then, once we hit menopause, a third big change, to be superseded only by death. You can add on "child" and "corpse," but those identities are shared with men, so functionally, the triptych represents the human female biological destiny. Even I, who have no children and never will have, have reached a point where I think of myself as "matron" rather than "maiden," and the biographies of unmarried women in the past show a similar subtle transition in self-image (but I may be making that up due to cultural conditioning - how would I tell?).

So if we count the triptych as an archetype, it is arguably based in the common experience of all human women, not in inherited memory or a metaphysical pool of common unconsciousness. The way to test this theory would be to look over non-Western cultural traditions and see how the lifestages of women are conceived and treated. I often see it posited that the triptych is connected to the lunar cycle due to analogy with the menstrual cycle; yet the moon is frequently a male diety - what implications does this have for the archetypal nature of our interpretations of the image? Do men, women, intersex, and transgendered people interpret archetypcal images of these stages differently? And so on.

Nor can we assume that, if the concept of the archetypes is valid, they necessarily all have the same origin. I can't think of a culture that *doesn't* have a "little people" tradition. Does this mean that there are real little people, or that something in the way our brains procees our perception of the world predisposes us to envision them, or what? I would say that "little people" are an archetype and grays, fairies, etc., are aspects that archetype, but don't think there's enough data to say where it originates.

If I am correct, archetypes at this point in time are primarily a job for comparative anthropology, which may have implications for other disciplines like psychology once some systematic data are gathered. Many of the arguments made here look like theorizing ahead of the data.

Which is part of what newsgroups are for.

(Incidentally, Lamarck never developed the giraffe analogy...there's an essay by Stephen Jay Gould on the subject.)

 

[Anonymous]

I don't dispute species similarity in cognitive structures (same brain design etc), but do dispute the idea of similarity of structure giving rise to a mentalese (c.f. Frodor) system that would produce an archetype. I believe that we, when discussing archetypes, are giving too much credence to the idea of 'depth' (in the philosophical sense) and perhaps it is this that yearning for something more that leads people to posit a designed or supernatural substrate. Any shared concepts are due to the media or geographical/cultural modality we share - there is nothing passed on in the genes. While I grant, Rynner, that sucessful predispositions do shape natural selection (e.g. genetic drift), and also agree that hormonal/structural differences re: strategies (such as psychopathy) are inherited, these dispositions are not in any shape or form cognitive - cognition allows the individual to find ways of expressing his/her feelings/desires. Perhaps it would be interesting to start a thread on how desires are interpreted by our higher functions?

 

[barfing_pumpkin]

Are there any images, rituals, sounds, anything else that seem to bypass your normal level of awareness and go much much deeper?

I've heard that the game of hide-and-seek is played by children the world over, no matter how isolated or parochial the culture.

re: Graylien's take on the 'grey' figure:

More than anything, I'd suggest that the 'grey' represents our fear of dispassionate mechanisation. Take the overdeveloped 'light-bulb' head, for instance - which symbolises intelligence - and the large, black 'insectile' eyes, which imply a cold, scrutinising nature ('the eyes are the window of the soul', natch). Now, these characteristics - when applied to the context of something 'alien' or 'outside' - are not as recent as people might ordinarily think. Such a creature has already been described by H.G. Wells in the late 19th century - re: The War of the Worlds, and the extraterrestrial intellects 'vast and cool and unsympathetic' that are to us as we are to 'the beasts that perish'. Coupled with the general physical appearance of the grey - which may not be so much foetal as evolved - might not the grey itself represent what we fear to become due to the 'dehumanising' aspects of technological progress? If so, then we could have a modern archetype here - a representation of a humanity made callous by its own ability, a humanity that has lost touch with concepts such as individualism and mercy; a humanity that can do nothing but scrutise, dissect and study without the mitigation of morality, creativity, or humility. Quite simply, our general repulsion at the grey is a projection - a fear of what we ourselves might become in world where industry, mechanisation and science appear to be outprogressing our notions of religion, philosophy, art and individualism.

Be interesting to see if a similarly 'coldly indifferent creature' stereotype existed before the Industrial Revolution.

 

[stu neville]

Resurrecting my own thread...

..Be interesting to see if a similarly 'coldly indifferent creature' stereotype existed before the Industrial Revolution.

How about the globally-present "wildman"? In those days, certainly, wildmen represented all that was purely natural and thus uncivilised, as opposed to God-fearing civil society. Note wildmen weren't feared so much as held up as an example of what man can easily become without the stabilising influence of scientific and social progress / religion etc etc - the latter frequently being cited as the primary reason man had been placed above the beasts.

Interesting contrast if the grey is indeed what we deeply fear we'll become, especially if it does represent the loss of our deeper emotions.

BTW, if this one takes off again, can we perhaps agree to adopt the broad-ish meaning of archetype, to which I alluded in the opening post, otherwise the thread risks being sidetracked yet again with pedantry*. That's always the problem with bright people discussing a nebulous proposition .

*May not be a problem with still-extant posters. He said obliquely.

 

[PeniG]

The classic Sidhe are coldly indifferent or wildly, excessively passionate by turns, sometimes in the same figure - the type immortalized in literature as La Belle Dame sans Merci, the Love Talker, and so on. The core of the Sidhe is that they want what they want when they want it, and then they don't want it anymore, and they don't put anything else before their own impulses. Ever. Love on a human scale doesn't enter into anything they do. Tam Lin was the Fairy Queen's favorite, but she was going to pay the teind to hell with him, and when Janet rescued him she wished she had put out his eyes and replaced them with wooden ones, so that he couldn't tell the secrets of her realm to mortals. She carries Thomas the Rhymer off for seven years and returns him with a tongue that can never lie, against his own protest, for reasons she never condescends to explain. She is passion and indifference simultaneously.

I'd track this back to the realization humans are trying very hard not to make, that the universe doesn't give a care about us. Nature is not merciful and it is not cruel. It just is. We have to deal with it, but it doesn't have to deal with us. The way this ignored knowledge manifests in our psyche varies - greys, the Sidhe, the Cthulhu Mythos - and it runs off the edges into other concepts; but that's the nature of a concept, after all. The image of the grey peels off the passion and leaves only indifference; but modern populations are separated from the daily experience of the passion of nature, so that's natural enough.

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

Now, in Ufology, I know many people who find the "grey" image, for example on the cover of Communion -

- unsettling, or spell-binding, or indeed both at a very deep level, almost as if it were instinctive.

Insect.

Which may explain the reactions.

 

[EnolaGaia]

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