The New Science of the Archetype

In early June, I joined biologist Robert Prinz at the 13th annual Code Biology Conference in Portugal--I was zoomed in (unfortunately I couldn't make it to be there in person--sad face!).

Anyway, for years, there has been debate among Jungian scholars as to how much of a contribution biology actually makes to the concept of the archetype. While it's important not to reduce the experience of an archetype to this or that biological mechanism, at the same time, there is a LOT of evidence now to suggest that we can cleanly identify what the biological grounding of archetypal experiences actually is.

That is to say, an archetype, as Jung described it, is an experience that emerges spontaneously from the unconscious and has something powerful to say about our current life situation. Such an experience happens in the form of a dream, and image, vision, or sudden fascination--it's an emotionally powerful, gripping dream or idea that seemingly comes out of nowhere. So, then, where does it come from? Well, there are lots of answers to this question, and in all likelihood, the archetype is something that has a signficant biological, psychological, and social component to it. So the debate, here, though, has been on just how much biology is really in this?

For years, there have been many in this discussion who claimed that our genetic inheritance is too sparse to really accomplish this feat of at least partially grounding the archetype experience in some kind of biological way. That is the central discussion going on here in this video, wonderfully edited and produced by João Major, PhD, who organized and hosted the conference, and was recently elected to be the President of the Code Biology Association (congrats, João!).

Anyway, if you want to get a closer look into this discussion, you can either click the above picture of me and Robert, or you can click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fngMSgfYUAM

Be sure to give a like and subscribe to João's channel. This is fascinating stuff, and I'm very glad to be a part of this conversation!

Never stop dreaming Imaginarians,

EG