Carl Jung's Cognitive Theory, Archetypes, and Dream Psychology

Overview of Cognitive Science

Cognitive science is a multidisciplinary field comprising cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology. In recent years, cognitive science has become a predominant paradigm in studies of the mind. It incorporates concepts and methods from philosophy and cognitive psychology, whereas behaviorism dominated the psychological sciences during the first part of the 20th century. Cognitive scientists are interested in the mental structures and processes of the mind.

Several individuals have attempted more rigorous definitions of cognitive science. A computational view emphasizes that cognitive science, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, tries to elucidate the workings of the mind by treating them as computations — not necessarily of the sort carried out by the digital computer, but of a sort that lies within a broader theory of computation (Johnson-Laird, 2009). More restrictive definitions of cognitive science, however, include only one or another of the divergent models that cognitive scientists have developed.

Early cognitive scientists viewed the mind as a processor, similar to the early digital computer. The mind was seen as a passive recipient of information, which was registered in short-term memory and perhaps encoded in long-term memory. More recent cognitive scientists have pointed out that the mind is a parallel processor, and have emphasized that mental structures are active and that they occur within a particular context. Such work may be excluded by a definition of cognitive science that focuses exclusively on information processing and computation (Esgate, 2004).

Jung and Cognition

Cognitive science models typically specify cognitive architecture in one of two ways: symbolic and connectionist. The elements of symbolic systems are symbols, which are stored in associative constructs. A strong proponent of the symbolic theory of cognition was psychologist Carl Jung, who described cognitive processes in greater detail — yet still based on two unique rubrics: perception and judgment. Sensation and intuition are types of perception; thinking and feeling are two kinds of judgment. In the 1940s, Isabel Myers developed an extension of these theories, formulating a self-reporting questionnaire to help individuals work with their own understanding of Jung's theoretical construct (Eisner et al., "Levels of Learning," 2009).

With the advent of more advanced study in psychology, sociology, and anthropology, the 20th century brought new theories regarding myths. Jung, for instance, argued that all humans share certain innate unconscious psychological forces — archetypes — which express themselves as myths and are similar across cultures because they originate not through culture, but through the individual. Myths thereby reflect patterns in the mind, and those patterns are more fixed (e.g., raw vs. cooked, nature vs. culture). While myth has survived across the centuries to reflect societal organization, contemporary society can benefit by using myth to uncover deeper psychological truths about oneself (Segal, 2004).

References

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