Unconscious mind

Function (biology)

Philosophy

Exaptation

Psychoanalysis

Biology

Social psychology

Evolutionary biology

Cognitive science

Evolutionary psychology

Psychology

Epistemology

Sociology

Analytical psychology

Theology

Archetype

Collective unconscious

Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems

This article discusses how current theory about the evolution of universal psychological adaptations was anticipated in Jung's conception of archetypes and the collective unconscious. Evolutionary psychologists are concerned with ancestral stresses, psychological mechanisms that evolved to deal with them, and the contemporary function of' those mechanisms. Jung defined the collective unconscious as a species-typical repository of ancestral history and memory accumulated over evolutionary time. Comprising the collective unconscious are an array of archetypes— categories of objects, people, and situations that have existed across evolutionary time. The potential for cross- disciplinary work for both Jungian and evolutionary theorists is discussed.

Algorithms and archetypes: Evolutionary psychology and Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious