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

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.