Read an interesting article today -
jungian therapy jung: archetypes and self organization
Since finishing the Syndetic Paradigm I've gone on to read other stuff directly or vaguely related to the topic, and one thing I keep pondering is the nature of the Archetype, or "archetype-as-such" as they call it in this article. That it's a basic "form of meaning" analogous to "forms of structure" we see in the physical realm.
This article gets to the heart of the point that I think lead Robert Aziz to rework the idea of depth psychology as one defining the psyche as a "self-regulatory closed system" into one defining the psyche as an "open-system working within self-regulating, self-organizing Reality and Nature as a whole". The point of the article is to say that, just as physical forms have "geometric" basis, archetype-as-such has a natural geometric basis in Reality.
One would assume then, that all creatures, and possibly all sufficiently-complex beings in the whole Universe have characteristics that could only be explained as an innate "observance" of the idea of archetypes. One would, then, expect any form of complex alien lifeform we encounter in our future to also have a psyche or analogous structure that observes and works with instances of archetypal constellation, generalizing certain observations into intuitive patterns and responding to them as our brains appear to do.
Dreams, as messengers of archetypal messages from the brain, may simply be an adaptative activity whose purpose is to provide clarification on the archetypes-as-such emerging within our lives and personalities so that we may adapt our responses to them skillfully, with sleep being a physically rejuvenating experience but the symbolism of dreams serving as a sort of "mirror" reflecting back the current superstate of the brain's structure at the point in time when the dream occurs. (This is more or less agreed with here -
Activation-synthesis hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ). A sort of "consciousness" whose inputs are chiefly internal in nature with a sort of random/entropy-based stimulus being generated by the brain stem to arouse the mental faculties, not mostly/partly external as they are when we're awake and using our senses. The dreams may be "random", but the impulses can only happen within the context of the *current* point-in-time layout and superstate of the brain. Genetic Algorithms work by a similar principle--that of "chaos" or "entropy" stimulating self-organization within an "ordered structure" that implements feedback and constraints.
You may object that the dream image is only an ephemera. But that ephemera represents a principle of organization. Clinical evidence shows that when I dream of being bitten by a snake my analysis may be taking hold at a deeper level. Thus the principle of the snake catalyses change in the personality. I do not inherit the principle. What I inherit is a dynamic system, my personality, which may be gripped by the principle2.
Related to the snake is the principle of the spear which is seen in an airplane's body, a fish's body, a ship's hull and ice skates. The spear is a mathematical solution to the problem of moving through a resistant medium. In the personality it seems obvious that the same mathematical principle is expressed as penetrating phallic power.
We know that Aphrodite personifies the archetype of beauty and sexuality. But she also personifies a principle of sets (a set is a group of numbers enclosed within a boundary): when two sets intersect they create a third set which includes components of the first two. Imagine a fenced-in field of beets which partially overlaps a fenced-in field of cabbages. In the area of overlap they create a new fenced-in field of intermingled beets and cabbages. This is the essence of sexuality, the sharing of genes, the sharing of bodies, and the sharing of psychological qualities.
'Surely,' you object, 'a principle of sets does not do justice to Aphrodite?' It is true that my associations to Aphrodite are much richer, but that is why I personify her. Her principle pre-existed life itself. In my imagination I associate that principle with the image of a woman which I have absorbed from my environment. Then I use all that I know about the woman to elaborate the archetypal image.
When posed in this context, the symbols and principles of religion suddenly begin to make sense in terms of why they have traditionally been suggested as the true "nature" of Reality itself, pre-scientific revolution. There is probably a sketch of truth in it all when taken in the correct intuitive context. The nature of symbolism, as I've come to realize from reading "Man and His Symbols" (coauthored by C.G. Jung, his last work before he died), is sourced from our dreams, but our dreams are constrained by the imperfect fact that it has very few options for presenting what is otherwise intuitive-archetypal-as-such information to us--it can only present things with images derived from our brain's current superstate (current state of all neurons + dendrite connections + genetic/epigenetic functional state). A limitation of the medium, so to speak.
Now that we have sophisticated language to evolve our understanding of these things at a more skillful level, it behooves us to explore this world in earnest, to modernize our understanding of its implications and to correctly apply it in the modern era to the skillful extent that we've employed science to great feats. Carl Jung was really trying to do that, he was trying to build the bridge. He took us a long way but there was and still is quite a long ways to go. One thing is certain, dwelling too long on ancient spiritual principles confounds things to the extent that you need to figure out what's unskillful BS from what's ultimately meaningful going forward.