Archetypal Neurosis. Introduction
The Homo Sapiens species spent 99.5% of its time in small groups as hunters and gatherers. Anthropologist Robin Fox suggests that the strength of such groups was around forty individuals including 6 to 10 adult males, twice as many females, and the rest being children and adolescents. Group members shared the same values, roles, customs, rituals, and religion.
Our body and psyche are well prepared to live in such small groups as hunters and gatherers passing the African savannah.
In his book “The tribal imagination: Civilization and the savage mind,” Fox emphasises how the human behaviour reveals traces of our tribal roots, and how this evolutionary heritage limits our adaptation to life in technocratic societies.
Neurosis a Result of Archetypal Frustration
The frustration of instinctive life forms, referred to as “archetypes” by Jung, leads to the development of archetypal neurosis, and in its effect to distinct psychiatric illnesses.
Archetypes represent an unconscious developmental plan for an individual’s life. The themes of modern human neuroses, especially anxiety, have little to do with modern life and are mostly archaic in nature.
An individual psychologically equipped for life in such groups who is born into modern times experiences a literal shock when encountering today’s way of life. Such cultural shock happened to the Ik people who lived as hunters and gatherers in Uganda on 40,000 km². After their relocation to a barracks settlement and attempts to teach them, agriculture led to the complete breakdown of their community.
The adaptation to such living conditions, which the Western World took millennia to achieve, was expected to happen within a generation. The members of the Ik community quickly became demoralized, developing anxiety and depression. They started to behave with psychopathic indifference toward their children and partners.
Similar developments were also observed among North and South American indigenous tribes in their confrontation with western civilization.
Archetypal Neuroses in Modern Society
There are many situations we are exposed to in modern life resembling literarily or metaphorically dangerous or frightening circumstances from the past.
Claustrophobia
The fear of enclosed spaces, called claustrophobia, has an archetypal basis. It is an echo of the anxiety developed by our ancestors trapped in a cave with a lion approaching, leaving no spase for escape.
Claustrophobia, a form of neurosis happens when a person feels trapped in a “dead end” situation. In modern life, such “dead ends” are metaphorical. This can happen to a person stuck in a job while being dependent on regular income. This can also happen to a mother who must sacrifice her autonomy (i.e. desire for personal development), for the sake of her child. In such situation the higher values keep her trapped in the “prison” of family duties under the “tyranny” of her child.
Agoraphobia
It’s a fear of open spaces. Agoraphobia may stem from an archetypal experience of being in an open savannah with no trees nearby for safety.
Acrophobia, fear of heights
may be explained by the fact that our species primarily lived in tree canapés.
Symptoms of Archetypal Neurosis
The prehistoric human trapped in a dead end either escaped or was killed by the lion. The modern human can be stuck in such a situation for days, weeks, months, and years. This leads to permanent stress with overstimulation of the adrenergic system. The consequences are the so-called “civilization diseases”. The ongoing stress causes stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, with their consequences such as heart attack or stroke.
The stress alleviates the person’s frustration triggering a compensation/reward through cigarette consumption, uncontrolled eating, and not least of all, alcohol, and drugs consumption. The greater the suffering, the more extreme the consumption of such substances, and the more extreme the substances themselves (hard drugs).
The English psychiatrist, John Bowlby, defined the basic principles of psychopathology very precisely: Psychopathology arises when an individual’s life circumstances either partially or completely prevent the development of their internal needs. Bowlby observed the following regularity: the further an individual’s circumstances deviate from the evolutionarily established optimum under which they grew up, the higher the likelihood of pathological development.
Root Causes of Archetypal Neurosis
Against this background, some developments of modern society that frustrate the archetypal development of an individual are worth mentioning:
1. Dissolution of the model of the extended family and loss of contact within the community, especially in urban areas.
2. Instability of the family due to divorce and separation, including the increase of single-parent households.
3. Inadequate maternal care for the child due to their employment.
4. Loss of myth and inflation of religion.
5. Loss of contact with nature, natural processes such as the changing of the seasons in nature itself.
It is not to be overlooked that the more pronounced these developments become, the greater the number of neuroses, psychoses, and addictions.
Fulfillment of Archetypal Needs
Evidence such as this illustrates a model of psychopathology. Mental health of developing individuals depends on meeting their archetypal needs. Without fulfilling such condition individuals get mentally ill.
This formulation leads to two fundamental questions:
1. What are the archetypal needs of the developing individual?
2. What environments – physical or social – guarantee their fulfilment?
These questions, it seems, are the main questions that psychology and psychiatry of the 21st century must address.
Archetypal Neurosis. Summary
Every living organism has an anatomical structure and a behavioral repertoire that is uniquely adapted to the environment in which it evolved. This is the “environment of evolutionary adaptation” in which individuals will live out their life cycle. Any change in the environment has consequences for the organism.
Some changes could be reconciled with survival, while others could not. Even changes that do not extinct the species could distort its behavioral patterns.
Human versatility, has led to dramatic transformations of the environments in which we live. Our new “habitats” are environments completely different compared to the African savannah. In fact, the speed at which environments have changed in recent centuries has far outstripped the pace at which natural selection can progress in the traditional Darwinian manner. Today we live in overcrowded, polluted cities, being constantly exposed to stress. Such enviroment leads finally to distinct mental and physical illnesses.
These views present problems for any researcher who wishes to precisely delineate what exactly the characteristics of the human adaptive environment were. If we truly wish to understand what kind of creature we are, then we must make the effort to understand which factors of our environment influenced our archetypal tendencies that are still present in our psyche.
Sources
The tribal imagination: Civilization and the savage mind. Harvard University Press. 2011. pp. 417. ISBN 978-0-674-05901-6
Stevens, Anthony (1982). Archetype: A Natural History of the Self. New York: William Morrow & Co.
Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self. Brunner-Routledge, London; Inner City Books, Toronto.