--- Louis Kontos <Louis.Kontos at liu.edu> wrote:
> I don't agree with the biologism of either Freud or
> Jung. Can we still speak
> of a collective unconscious around archetypes and
> notions of
> cultural/historical memory without recourse to
> biological explanations? I
> think yes.
Why do you think so? If they are not biologically based then what are they based upon? The collective unconscious of Jung does not draw upon the experiences of the given individuals lifetime but the entire history of man. Jung cites symbols and themes that occur in many different cultures that did not have contact with one another. These themes occur prominently in children's art and among the psychopathic, according to Jung. Now, either Jung is wrong and these were culturally transmitted or they are somehow essential to man's biological makeup.
How, if at all, does the collective unconscious square with Donald Brown's list of Human Universals? What are we to make of such constants that exist in all known human cultures? Anthropology and psychology aren't my fields and realize there may be many thinkg that I am not taking into consideration, but I have these questions and would appreciate input.
Are Freudian concepts empirically based?
> Sure, if by this we mean
> that he identified real phenomena (and didn't simply
> imagine them),
That was not my question. My question was how are Jung's theories any less empirical than Freud's. It's fashionable to pooh-pooh on Jung as a charlatan and let Freud off the hook even though it occurs to me Freud's theories were no more empirical or scientific than Jung's.
Having
> said this I don't think
> that Freudian concepts apply equally in every time
> and place. Fanon pointed
> this out when he said that colonized people don't
> suffer an oedipal complex.
Well, first of all, you would have to assume that non-colonized people suffer from the oedipal complex. But let's assume that such a thing as the oedipal complex exists. Why would colonized people not suffer from the oedipal complex? Patriarchy abounds in most corners of the earth.
Thomas
===== <<You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel>>
Bloodhound Gang, "The Bad Touch"
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