Jung's seminal influence

I FIND Richard Noll's refutation of C. G. Jung's theory of the collective unconscious (THES, November 22) flimsy and unconvicing. I argue that whether or not Jung "lied about his evidence" and committed "deliberate fraud", as Richard Noll imputes, his hypothesis about the collective unconscious as an innate reservoir of phylogenetic memory remains valid, chiefly because it is in keeping with the theory of evolution.

The presence of ready-made responses to important environmental stimuli inherited in the structure of the brain has an obvious adaptative value, and it can be reasonably assumed that any response that increased the individual chances of survival over an evolutionary significant length of time became genetically coded in the brain through the pressure of natural selection. Much of what constitutes our relations and attitudes to the natural and social environment is determined by these inherited adaptative responses, without which the human species simply would not have survived.

What makes the notion of the collective unconscious often difficult to accept is the presence of consciousness, a specifically human psychic acquisition, one of whose many functions is to repress the more archaic psychic material and in consequence render it inaccessible to direct penetration in normal circumstances. This explains why most of the evidence for the collective unconscious, including that used by Jung, is of indirect and therefore controversial nature, like mythical symbols, artistic visions, or dreams.

But if one accepts the hypothesis of the collective unconscious on purely theoretical grounds as consistent with the theory of evolution and natural selection, the actual experimental or cultural evidence is of secondary importance. One might even say that had Jung fabricated all his evidence or not supplied any at all, his hypothesis would still be scientifically and theoretically sound. In the same way a well-constructed bridge is not a proof of the validity of physical and geometrical laws; it can only be a proof of the skill of its constructors. Physical and geometrical laws are proven or refuted on theoretical, that is, mathematical grounds, quite independently of how bridges are made, or whether they are made at all. Similarly, once the theory of evolution is accepted, the hypothesis of the collective unconscious must also be accepted as deduced logically from the former. By relying exclusively on empirical and experimental evidence Richard Noll seems to have fallen into a trap typical for all inductive theories, which are as good (or as bad) and reliable as the evidence they are based on.

Piotr Sadowski

Lecturer in English

American College Dublin