Foreword

I wish to put in writing some observations on an intellectual matter I deem of special interest. One could reduce it to the study of brains. In this sense, the matter is circumscribed to what may be oxymoronically termed ''instinctual representations''. Such ''representations''—I use the term loosely for now—have been suggested to be a byproduct of the emergence of symbolic faculties in instinctive beings. This may not be too precise, but it is also not blatantly wrong, and so I accept it as a decent preliminary formulation. I am speaking of what a peculiar branch of psychoanalysis termed archetypes.

The goal of this writing is to determine what archetype means in the classical psychoanalytic sense. It is unclear whether the term is meaningful at all. The proposition "Christ is an archetypal image" is a synthetic proposition, but it is not evident what kind of observations could make it true. To define an archetype as a "content of the collective unconscious" begs the question, insofar as we must determine what such collective unconscious is and, incidentally, whether it makes sense to claim it "contains" anything. In general, I will disregard any notion of archetype which implies any kind of metaphysical essentialism. If archetypes exist, they must be a biological phenomenon, as recognized by Jung. This approach justifies the emphasis we place on neurobiology. Indeed, mind-problems are of the kind where propositions are to be measured only in by the weight of existing evidence, and not by conclusive proof. A love for sharp edges and rigor compels me to limit the scope of my speculations to what I deem to be in line with neurobiological evidence and our current scientific understanding of the brain.

I advance that the conclusion of this writing is that the Jungian concept of archetype is either meaningless or useless, depending on whether one imposes a certain semantic restriction to it. Such restriction concerns the type of perceptions which are understood to be archetypal. If the restriction is imposed, the concept is pointless, in the sense that it gives a special name to a subclass of perceptions whose defining property is not special at all. If the restriction is not imposed, then a whole realm of phenomena which is not what psychoanalysts meant by archetype should be accepted as archetypes, thus destroying the concept's original meaning.

Archetypes

The term archetype dates back at least to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who suggested an echo (apekhémata) of the divine essence exists on every sensible object, by virtue of which they may elevate to the immaterial arkhitypía. Here, the word expresses the perfect platonic ideal of which each sensible object is an imperfect realization. This is not the sense of the term that interests us—although the notion of echo (or imprint, trace, etc.) will be relevant. In fact, our issue is partly the different meanings the term ascribes to across traditions and contexts. Even the work of Jung, that elevated the term to an unprecedented intellectual dimension, lacks an unequivocal definition, sometimes confronting us with the suspicion that the very author bestows it with different meanings depending on the period of his intellectual life or the object of his exposition.

It is my opinion that this linguistic issue is not as daunting as it may appear at first. A simple reason for this is that many of the meanings commonly attributed to the term can be readily disregarded as nonsensical. Secondly, some advances in the field of neuroscience—particularly in the line of research set forth by Panksepp—have contributed a great amount of empirical material to the question. This rich set of facts lays out more plausible—and potentially falsifiable—notions of what may be meant by "archetype". In other words, though the riddle is far from answered, we have at our disposal a whole domain of reality that the ancient philosophers—or early psychoanalysts—lacked. Thus, the contending formulations, to our surprise, are in the end not very numerous.

Jung

Jung had an explicitly dualistic outlook on the psyche. He endorsed the philosophical stance according to which there is no evidence in favor of the hypothesis that links psychological phenomena to physical and chemical processes, that there is no reason to regard the mind as an epiphenomenon of matter, and that it should be treated as a sui generis factor—at least until the artificial creation of a mind can be established as an achievable endeavor. This is explicitly held in the work Archetypes of the collective unconscious, written around 1932. The state of evidence at the time may perhaps make this claim understandable. However, at least to my knowledge, he never explicitly relinquished it.

Jung frequently associated the notion of archetype to that of primordial image. This association is particularly present whenever he was interested in drawing the parallelism between mythological motifs and the archetypal phenomena he allegedly witnessed in his clinical work. He also ties the concept of archetype to the notion of pattern of functioning:

Like every animal, he [the man] possesses a preformed psyche which breeds true to his species and which (...) reveals distinct features traceable to family antecedents. (...) We are unable to form any idea of what those dispositions or aptitudes are which make instinctive actions in animals possible. And it is just as impossible for us to know the nature of the preconscious psychic disposition that enables a child to react in a human manner. We can only suppose that his behavior results from patterns of functioning, which I have described as images. The term "image" is intended to express not only the form of the activity taking place, but the typical situation in which the activity is released" — 1959, pag. 78.

This evolutionary speculation is not trivial. However, it is a rather strange twist of the logical chain to propose an evolutionary basis for an immaterial phenomenon. The process of natural selection affects the course of biological species made up of material elements, all the way down to a rather peculiar acid, whose material nature—I should hope—is uncontested. Putting that aside, to claim we do not know the mechanisms that make instinctive actions possible is false under the present state of science. The neuroscientific findings seem to support, to a certain extent, the Jungian hypothesis of "archetypal" behavioral patterns. We will come to discuss these findings later on.

To Jung, archetypes are a twofold concept. The archetype-as-such is postulated as an abstract but yet unrealized pattern, a contentless and strictly formal pattern. The archetype as a manifestation is a real image or pattern which somehow corresponds to the form determined by the archetype-as-such. This is simply lingo for a simple ethological fact: animals have the capacity to distinguish patterns, and there is a difference between the "mental" or brain organization which configures the distinction of the pattern and the appearance of such pattern in nature.

Jung emphasized above all $a.$ the affective tone of these "primordial images" as well as $b.$ that they should be understood not by virtue of an essential content but by their teleology—id est, the specific behavioral disposition induced by them.

But we only arrive at the meaning of a physical organ when we begin to ask teleological questions. Hence the query arises: What is the biological purpose of the archetype? —1959, pag. 161.

It continues to be unclear in what way the biological conception of the archetype and the immaterial notion of the psyche may theoretically harmonize. But we shall leave this question aside for the moment to discuss a bit more deeply about these primordial images, or patterns of behavior.

With regards to their teleology, one mustn't be in principle convinced that it exists. A fair number of biological traits are nothing but the byproduct of others. However, there is good reason to conclude that the evolutionary development archetypes, so understood, is directly propitious to survival. Indeed, the general idea is the phenomenology of archetypes—the specific behavioral dispositions that are understood to be archetypal—consist of the induction of an affective state by stimuli to which we were selected to respond emotionally. Incidentally, such affective state could be induced by stimuli only resembling that to which we were selected to respond, thus evoking an unwarranted response. In other words, certain stimuli may be imbued with, so to speak, archaic affect, and this seems to be essential to whatever may be meant by archetype. It has been speculated that this could account for certain universal religious motifs. For example, in The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell writes:

Chicks with their eggshells still adhering to their tails dart for cover when a hawk flies overhead, but not when the bird is a gull or duck, heron or pigeon. Furthermore, if the wooden model of a hawk is drawn over their coop on a wire, they react as though it were alive—unless it be drawn backward, when there is no response.

Here we have an extremely precise image—never seen before, yet recognized with reference not merely to its form but to its from in motion, and linked, furthermore, to an immediate, unplanned, unlearned, and even unintended system of appropriate action: flight, to cover. (...) Furthermore, even if all the hawks in the world were to vanish, their image would still sleep in the soul of the chick—never to be roused, however, unless by some accidente of art ($\ldots$). With that the obsolete reaction of the flight to cover would recur; and, unless we knew about the earlier danger of hawks to chicks, we should find the sudden eruption difficult to explain. 'Whence', we may ask, 'this abrupt seizure by an image to which there is no counterpart in the chicken's world? ($\ldots$)'.

It is not difficult to observe what Campbell suggests in this passage: It could be that there were now non-present stimuli imbued with affect by virtue of our evolutionary endowment, and certain ''accidents of art'' could thus induce apparently unwarranted affective states. Both Jung and Campbell used this hypothesis to explain the alleged universality symbols that seem to hold a certain aprioristic affective charge, thus appearing universally in dreams and myths. The scope of this alleged universality is not altogether clear. Some have proposed general practices but not particular images to fall within it. Others have drawn their attention to particular imaginations: for example, that of the universal flood. I do not wish to discuss this point, for I cannot see a way to circumscribe the speculation within a limiting frame. And where there is place for unbounded speculation there is no place for truth. So, having presented a general overview of the more or less pre-scientific conception of archetypes, I should wish to proceed with the attempts of neuroscience at tackling this question.

Archaic affect

Allow me to advance that I shall not give too much detail on the neurobiology of the findings hereby commented. Doing so would make this writing much longer and technical than I intend. I should rather wish to summarize what I understand to be the principal conclusions and postulates of affective neuroscience and their relationship to the concept of archetype. Before discussing these contributions, however, it is pertinent to say a few words concerning both their ontology and their epistemology. This is important because discussions concerning the mind are famously problematic, and it would be imprudent to simply delve into the neuroscience before addressing a few concerns.

With regards to ontology, it is a common mistake to believe that Descartes committed an intellectual sin when postulating his res cogitans. In fact, when doing so, he acted in accord with standard scientific practice. It is obvious that certain human faculties cannot be explained by mechanical laws. If matter was to be entirely described by the laws of mechanics, as was the stance at Descarte's time, then some other substance had to be postulated in order to explain these non-mechanistic faculties. When Newton and Galileo postulated forces, they were doing so in similar conditions. Rather than a positive scientific achievement, such postulate was a problematic, but inescapable necessity.

The standard philosophical stance today is a commitment to a materialist monism. I share this stance—but the conundrum which forced Descartes to reject monism remains. It seems that, rather than postulating a new substance, the appropriate position is a form of Spinozian dual-aspect monism, as Panksepp described it. It is a fact that thought emerges from matter—it is happening now as I write—but it is plausible that properties emergent from matter are better understood in non-material terms. This is in no sense an ontological claim; I simply state that a complex system may be not be properly described by the same laws which describe its constitutive elements. So, it seems the missing piece which Descartes' res cogitans aimed to account for were, in fact, complex neural dynamics. How complex neural dynamics may produce thought, emotion, etc., pertains to scientific inquiry rather than to philosophical speculation. Affective neuroscience, in particular the work of Panksepp and Damasio, has provided an immense corpus of evidence in favor of the notion that conciousness is not only an emergence of complex neural organization, but particularly of those deep regions of the brain whose function seems to be the realization of emotion and affect.

With regards to epistemology, the principal question is: How can we study emotions scientifically? The answer to this question is given by three observations which are, to me, scientifically impeccable. (1) Animals exhibit outward indicators of emotional states. The clearest example are the separation distress calls. (2) We can inquire on the neurobiology regulating such expressions using standard scientific methods. (3) If artificial exposition to the neurobiological regulators of such emotions produces corresponding feelings in humans, the weight of the evidence favors the conclusion that animals also experience these feelings—at least when the brain systems involved are homologous. For example, in a paper entitled Opioid blockade and social comfort in chicks (1980), Panksepp showed that opioid blockade with naloxone reduced the imprinting effect in chicks. More generally, his findings at the time suggested that opioids mediate social interaction and bonding. More recent papers of his added a great deal of evidence to this claim. We know certain opioids, such as oxytocin, mediate human bonding and partially regulate the feelings of warmness and care present, for instance, between a newborn and a mother. Since the neurobiological circuitry involved is homologous in both species, it is not unreasonable to claim that similar feelings permeate the bond between a little chick and its mother.

As a last note, and to put this preamble aside, I should say that I follow Panksepp's terminology. By emotion, I mean any affective, cognitive, behavioral or physiological change in the organism. In this sense, the word is more tightly linked to its etymology than to its conversational meaning. By affect, I mean quite broadly any subjective and experiential feelings, whereas an emotional affect denotes the experiential component of an internal brain state.

Emotional affects are generally associated to external events. When compared to external inductors of affect, internal ones (e.g. the memory of a deceased loved one) are rather few, and perhaps limited to our own species. Even so, every affect is an internal function of the brain. Scientists have used the terms valence, arousal and surgency to describe different aspects of the affective experience, without ever daring to speak of emotions. The present state of science, so I believe, conclusively leads to the fact that such terms would make no sense if not denoting affect.

The essential thesis of affective neuroscience as a field, as far as I understand it, is the following: that affective experience ''reflects a primitive form of consciousness which was the evolutionary platform for the emergence of more complex forms of consciousness'' (Panksepp, Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans, 2005). Here, consciousness refers to ''brain states that have an experiential feel to them, and it is envisioned as a multi-tiered process that needs to be viewed in evolutionary terms, with multiple layers of emergence.'' (idem).

The evidence in favour of this thesis is close to overwhelming and, to my eyes, at least in essence, little doubt remains about its truth. There are, of course, disputes concerning technicalities—the manner in which different aspects of consciousness evolved, the neurobiology modulating certain features of consciousness—but the essential claim remains untouched. Not only is the experiential component of emotion common to, at least, all mammals, but it represents a primitive form of consciousness that is still present in the human brain. This presence is attested by the fact that the systems from which such form of consciousness emerges remain very well preserved and highly homologous across mammalian species. It is this evolutionary insight what draws a link between the conclusions of affective neuroscience and pre-scientific speculations on psychological archetypes.

Panksepp used the term equalia (e from evolutionary, qualia from its traditional philosophical sense) to denote the varieties of positive or negative feelings not simply mediated by our perceptual interfaces, but by the orchestration of inherited emotional systems in the brain. The raw affects engendered by such sub-cortical systems are ''ancestral memories (instincts) that promote survival'' (the reader is surely reminded of Campbell's example of the chick and the eagle).

It is not hard to see that these ''ancestral memories'' are what Jung termed primordial images. Needless to say, a highly complex, and in many senses still impenetrable interplay exists between the archaic emotional systems of the mammalian brain and the cortical regions to which our own species owns its so-called superior faculties. Notwithstanding, these cortical regions are entirely inessential to primary forms of consciousness; such forms subsist even in extreme cases of virtually non-existing cortical development. This was proven not only in Panksepp's work, but quite famously by Damasio as well.

Indeed, it seems that consciousness is like a curl or (in Spanish) rizo; the superior aspects of it can be removed while preserving pre-conscious affect, but whenever its primitive components are lost, nothing of it subsists. The different ''levels'' of consciousness have been described in the neuroscientific literature as primary, secondary and tertiary consciousness; or as core consciousness and extended consciousness. Regardless of the terminology, lower levels of consciousness have been demonstrated to depend on the primitive, value-encoding neurocircuitry described before. In short, consciousness can exist without cognition—but it cannot be without affect.

The relationship between the neurocircuitry of affective experience and cognitively complex phenomena, such as spirituality or dreams, has not been explored so far. However, in so far as affect is, virtually by definition, value-encoding, it seems necessary that spiritual experience is some kind of cognitive sublimation of these archaic components of human experience. This would at least account for $a.$ the striking structural similarities across the wide range of so-called archetypal stories and beliefs—the hero story, animism, shamanism, etc.—b. the profound affect with which such stories and beliefs are imbued; and $c$. the absolute resilience of such narratives in a scientific society. The same can be said of dreams. It is in this sense that one can draw a relation between the archaic emotional systems of the brain and cognitive complex phenomena. However, such relationship is surely tremendously more complex than we can begin to imagine, and is hardly mediated by unconscious images in the sense that psychoanalysis meant. But this will be discussed further in the next section.

Discussion

The question remains: What do we mean, after all this, by archetype? Is the psychoanalytic definition in line with the neuroscience of affect? If not, should the concept be disregarded or reformulated? Recall Campbell's chick example:

Chicks with their eggshells still adhering to their tails dart for cover when a hawk flies overhead, but not when the bird is a gull or duck, heron or pigeon. Furthermore, if the wooden model of a hawk is drawn over their coop on a wire, they react as though it were alive—unless it be drawn backward, when there is no response.

Here we have an extremely precise image—never seen before, yet recognized with reference not merely to its form but to its from in motion, and linked, furthermore, to an immediate, unplanned, unlearned, and even unintended system of appropriate action: flight, to cover. (...) Furthermore, even if all the hawks in the world were to vanish, their image would still sleep in the soul of the chick—never to be roused, however, unless by some accidente of art ($\ldots$). With that the obsolete reaction of the flight to cover would recur; and, unless we knew about the earlier danger of hawks to chicks, we should find the sudden eruption difficult to explain. 'Whence', we may ask, 'this abrupt seizure by an image to which there is no counterpart in the chicken's world? ($\ldots$)'.

For all practical purposes, it seems correct to say an ''ancestral memory'' exists in the chick; one embedded in deep and ancient sub-cortical systems that mediate affective experience. But before drawing any conclusions, two things ought to be pointed out. Firstly, though affective neuroscience successfully mapped the circuitry involved in producing emotions and concomitant feelings, it advanced little or nothing on how such circuitry produces them. With regards to its evolutionary perspective, one mustn't forget how little it is to claim that affect and emotion are part of the biological endowment of the mammalian brain. In this sense, affective neuroscience has provided evidence, as well as a considerable amount of detail, with regards to a claim that on itself is not altogether revolutionary. The only finding of affective neuroscience that truly deviates from standard thought is that which links consciousness to emotional affects rather than to superior cognitive faculties. The rest consists mainly of mapping the neurobiological correlates of ethological facts known many decades ago.

Secondly, recall that I initially formulated the object of this writing, although tentatively, as ''instinctual representations''. This is, at least in part, what Jung had in mind when he spoke of archetypes. It seems he was correct to say that, in what he meant by archetype, both the activity taking place as well as the stimuli which unleashes it are to be contained in the meaning of the concept. In this sense, archetype would refer to the typical unconditioned (this is, unlearned and inherited) affective response to a particular stimuli as well as to such stimuli. Thus, some distinction must drawn between archetypal response and archetypal image.

Furthermore, one must also decide whether to speak of ''representations'' or ''images'' is justified or not. In Human knowledge, Russell provides a sense of what is meant by the phrase "$A$ is an image or idea of $B$". In the spirit of the empiricist tradition, he states:

¿Qué supone decir que $A$ es una "imagen" o "idea" de $B$? Primero, debe haber semejanza; más particularmente, si ambos son complejos, debe haber semejanza de estructura. Segundo, $B$ debe desempeñar cierto papel definido en la causación de $A$. Tercero, $A$ y $B$ deben tener ciertos efectos comunes, por ejemplo, causar las mismas palabras en una persona que los experimente.

Whatever is to be meant by archetype satisfies some, but not all of these conditions. The image of a hawk, never seen before, evokes similar effects in all little chicks; however, the hawk itself plays no part in the causation of its aprioristic existence ''in the soul of the chick''. This should pose no issue to us as long as we do not adopt empiricism to a radical degree. In what comes to similarity, it is very unlikely that such term is even applicable to the process in question. We have no reason to think a conscious ''mental image'' exists a priori in the chick's mind; and can one speak of ''similarities'' between a perceived object and an unconscious neurophysiological process? Rather, it seems that we are in the face of a functional correspondence between a perception and an emotional state; the chick's neurobiology has been selected so as to respond in a defined manner to certain impressions, that of a hawk among them. It follows that the use of the term image is rather figurative, and does not accurately reflect neither the underlying neurological processes nor the (pre)conscious experience involved in what must be meant by archetype.

Some clarity is gained in asking how is the chick's response different from a mere reflex. Certainly, the response is reflexive in the sense that it is unlearned and, as Campbell points out, even unintentional. However, it has the special property of involving affect. Is this what archetypes are then—a reflex involving affect? This cannot be so, for then the sudden withdrawal of our hand from a burning surface would be an ''archetypal response''. Affect is necessary, but insufficient to account for the kind of experience which the concept strives to specify. It is not hard to observe that most reflexes aim at avoiding an incoming harm, but there is something evidently different from, say, the blinking of our eyes before a rapid approaching object and the emotional response evoked by the hawk. Both aim at avoiding danger, and are thus propitious to survival, but while the first is a rapid motor operation, the latter informs a lasting emotional state. When we trip and fall, our whole body responds so as to alleviate the damage, but none of that implies a brain state in the sense in which the anxiety and fear of perceiving a predator do. When we burn and withdraw our hands there is affect, but not the induction of a lasting emotional state, with its concomitant experiential component. The transition from one emotional state to another is a modal, lasting, and global change. Is it then that by archetype we mean precisely those stimuli which induce, without conditioning, lasting emotional brain states? If so, although not amounting to a total novelty, the concept is certainly meaningful.

However, this definition isn't unproblematic either. When a little kid burns its hand, a strictly motor response is induced: the hand is rapidly withdrawn from the burning object. But, almost surely, cry immediately ensues and lasts for certain amount of time. Here too we have the unconditioned induction of a lasting emotional state. But I think no-one will argue that a burning pan, in the situation here described, can account for what the notion of archetype strives to specify. What makes then the case of the chick and the hawk different from this? The only answer to this question, as far as I can gather, is that the stimuli in question is a perceived image; i.e. the perceptual system by virtue of which the emotional state is induced is the visual system.

If such elucidation is correct, what Campbell's example gives as archetype is nothing but this: A stimuli in the form of a visual pattern which induces, without previous conditioning, an emotional brain state. The preponderance given to visual patterns in some sense justifies the notion of primordial image, although, as stated earlier, this shouldn't be understood to imply that the ''image'' of the hawk lives ''in the soul of the chick''. Incidentally, we should note that this is narrower than the concept of equalia. As far as I can gather, of all competing definitions, this is the only one which makes sense.

We have in part succeeded, insofar as we have now in our hands a meaningful definition of archetype. But our victory proves to be Pyrrhic when we ask how is the emphasis on visual patterns justified at all?

We tend to think of the visual system as somehow more important than other sensory systems. This is already evident in Aristotle's De anima, and has never changed. In everyday life, we tend to localize our sense of selves in our heads due to the fact that our vision projects from it. However, it is obvious that it makes just as much sense to locate our sense of selves in a fingertip or a feet: the visual system is just as special as any other.

Consider any impression capable of inducing an emotional state without conditioning; how is the property of being a visual impression of any peculiar relevance to the essence of the process in question? If one takes the process abstractly, its peculiarity lies in the fact that an organism is inherently capable of responding emotionally to certain external perceptions. Whether such perceptions are the image of a hawk or the smell of a hawk seems inessential to me. But this is a matter of principle, and one could ask whether there are, as a matter of fact, non-visual perceptions capable of inducing lasting emotional states without conditioning. In other words, one could attempt to "rescue" the concept of archetype by claiming that the restriction to visual perceptions, though not a logical necessity, is a fact of nature. It is evident that a lasting emotional state can be equally induced by the image of a predator as well as by its smell, but I ignore whether the smell can induce such response without previous learning. However, it is clear that blind mammals, such as mole-rats, must have the innate ability to respond emotionally to certain non-visual stimuli—their survival is hard to imagine otherwise. This is particularly true if one thinks not of the fear system, to which the example of the chick turned our attention, but of the lust system. Reproduction is the fundamental mechanism of life—and we know it is not dependent on learning. This, in combination with the fact that there are blind mammals, should suffice to close this point. (Incidentally, there are interesting papers on the sexual characteristics of mole-rats, a species whose emotional system interested me precisely by virtue of their innate blindness. For example, a paper entitled Is the Natal Mole-Rat a Spontaneous or Induced Ovulator?, from the (delicious) Journal of Mammalogy, shows not only that the Natal mole-rat is an induced ovulator, but that the levels of progesterone were much higher in females in physical proximity to males. We may presume that this implies the induction of a greater feeling of arousal, given the relation of progesterone with the lust system described by Panksepp. This would entail the unlearned induction of an emotional state by a non-visual stimuli. But we are being somewhat speculative, and in any case we do not need this particular case to hold for our general statement to be true.)

Returning to our point, the emphasis placed by Campbell and Jung on images is unwarranted. If the term archetype is to have any sensible meaning at all, it must be that of a stimuli which induces, without conditioning, an emotional brain state. Clearly, Jung thought of such stimuli as necessarily visual. However, we face a double problem: Such restriction is arbitrary, but without it the concept loses all meaning.

Jung's emphasis on images, I believe, can only be accounted for by his desire to link the concept of archetype to spiritual phenomena and its symbolic expressions. Conversely, Jung knew that by image he could not mean only visual perceptions or representations. The issue is that without restricting the concept to visual perceptions, one seems forced to accept that the burning pan which induces a panicking brain state is an archetype—something Jung would have found too little mysterious...

Conclusion

It is a fact that there are stimuli imbued with, so to speak, archaic affect. Certain perceptions may induce, without previous conditioning, lasting emotional states. The neurobiology mediating these states is partly described by affective neuroscience. However, such stimuli is in fact not restrained to visual perceptions, and the subclass of such stimuli which are visual perceptions have no discernible special property other than that. This subclass, in this sense, merits no name of its own.

It is clear that the only meaning which the term archetype can have, according to its classical psychological sense, is twofold: $a.$ the innate biological system which responds emotionally to a visual perception (the archetype-as-such) and $b.$ any visual perception which induces a response in that system (the archetypal image). The restriction to visual perception is necessary if the term is to hold its classical meaning, for otherwise stimuli as trivial as a burning pan should be regarded as archetypes. However, as pointed out before, such restriction is on its turn rather pointless.

It seems then that the concept of archetype has two justifiable treatments, both equally detrimental to its legitimacy. Either the restriction on the kind of perceptions it references is removed, sacrificing its original intended meaning in the process, or the restriction is kept, rendering the concept pointless.

My conclusion may seem to blunt, but I think it is correct. To be fair, I should point out that this doesn't mean that Jung's original intuition was wrong. Rather, I think he failed to schematize it properly. Once more, I repeat the doctrine of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who suggested a celestial echo (apekhémata) exists in every sensible thing, by virtue of which they may reach the immaterial arkhitypía. The ancient memories (or equalia) revealed by neuroscience, which are indeed real, have something of both of these Greek concepts. They are apekhémata insofar as they are an ancestral trace, an evolutionary imprint that, so to speak, echoes through time by means of millennial evolution. They are arkhitypía in that they consist in a primitive type encoded beyond the reach of our cognitive faculties, deep in the sub-cortical emotional systems of our brains. Somewhere in his complete works, though I cannot recall where, Jung wrote that we are, so to speak, thousands of years old. This is sensibly true. The patterns of functioning he spoke of may not be ass defined as he imagined, and are certainly more mundane than he would have liked to think—but they are no less real because of this. The concept of archetype must be abandoned, at least in its classical sense. But if we adopt a non-classical version of it—one indifferent to whether the impressions in question are visual or not—then what we mean is perhaps the most fascinating phenomenon of the animal world.