Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self (Studies in Jungian Psychology By Jungian)

Rating:
Summary: The Overdue Marriage of Darwin and Jung (Updated)
Review: Fabulous! "The findings of the two new disciplines, evolutionary psychology and evolutionary psychiatry, in no way contradict or supersede Jung's original insights into the nature and influence of the archetypes which make up the human collective unconscious. On the contrary, they corroborate and amplify them. They confirm that human experience and human behavior are complex products of environmental and hereditary forces . . . . What evolutionary psychology is studying is the psychic unity of humankind. This is not, as some critics have suggested, a reductive universalism but an attempt to establish those psychic structures and functions, those strategies and goals, which we all have in common by virtue of our humanity. Far from diminishing our uniqueness as individuals and rendering us prisoners of our genes, this perspective enables us to celebrate with deeper appreciation the ways in which people living in widely different environmental circumstances work out variations of great complexity on similar sets of archetypal themes . . . . In the presence of pervasive cultural uncertainty, it becomes a matter of urgency to understand the basic archetypal needs and resources of humankind."

Rating:
Summary: The Overdue Marriage of Darwin and Jung (Updated)
Review: Fabulous! "The findings of the two new disciplines, evolutionary psychology and evolutionary psychiatry, in no way contradict or supersede Jung's original insights into the nature and influence of the archetypes which make up the human collective unconscious. On the contrary, they corroborate and amplify them. They confirm that human experience and human behavior are complex products of environmental and hereditary forces . . . . What evolutionary psychology is studying is the psychic unity of humankind. This is not, as some critics have suggested, a reductive universalism but an attempt to establish those psychic structures and functions, those strategies and goals, which we all have in common by virtue of our humanity. Far from diminishing our uniqueness as individuals and rendering us prisoners of our genes, this perspective enables us to celebrate with deeper appreciation the ways in which people living in widely different environmental circumstances work out variations of great complexity on similar sets of archetypal themes . . . . In the presence of pervasive cultural uncertainty, it becomes a matter of urgency to understand the basic archetypal needs and resources of humankind."

Rating:
Summary: A welcome contribution to Jungian Studies reading lists
Review: Insightfully written by Anthony Stevens (a Jungian analyst, and psychiatrist of 30 years' experience), Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History Of The Self is now in a greatly expanded and updated edition. Dr. Stevens provides Jungian students and scholars with a thorough exploration and stimulating study of the connections between archetypes of the fields of ethology and sociobiology, while addressing archetypes in practice such as the family, the mother, the father, masculine and feminine images and more. Archetype Revisited is a worthy and welcome contribution to Jungian Studies reading lists and reference collections.