Few thinkers have entered our collective consciousness as much as Freud and Jung. Most modern psychologists could only dream of such staying power. Becker and Neuberg argue that Jung’s plumbing of the human mind and his description of archetypes may be more than Western woo. They draw on cognitive, evolutionary, and developmental science to make their case. Here we tackle two questions: (1) Were Jung’s archetypes correct in some way? And (2) Are Jungian archetypes a useful theoretical approach? Our answer to the first is possibly, and the second, probably not. To this end, we present an alternative approach to developing a theory of mental representations. Jungian archetypal representations such as the Child and the Caretaker or Leaders and Followers do seem to prima facie map onto fundamental adaptive motivations of mating, childcare, and social status. And some archetypes are more relevant than others during different stages of development, such as the Caretaker during infanthood and the Mate and Rival post-puberty. As Becker and Neuberg argue, such archetypes are useful labels for these cross-cultural, and even cross-species, aspects of life. Various subdisciplines in the psychological, behavioral, and biological sciences have uncovered details about these developmental domains and stages that may have led to reliably developing representations for various roles, relationships, and patterns of behavior that match these particular challenges. So in some sense, Jung was onto something in his suggestion of fundamental archetypes, and these arguably map onto our emerging scientific understanding. What is less clear is whether Jung was somehow more perceptive in his identification of these patterns compared to other philosophers and cultural commentators. Can a Jungian approach provide more insight or are the archetypes themselves tapping into something more fundamental than Seneca (Seneca & Campbell, 1969), Marcus Aurelius (1942) or other Stoics on moral psychology or the psychology of relationships? Or Sun Tzu (Sun, 2017) or Machiavelli’s (Machiavelli, 2018) discussions on cooperation and conflict? Or in modern times, Tobias’ (1993) 20 Master Plots or even the crowd-sourced and eerily accurate TV Tropes (tvtropes.org) that pervade our modern storytelling? One could make a similar case that these examples also provide a window into human life with an ontology that maps onto our scientific understanding. But while Jung and these other thinkers may provide inspiration or even insight, they are an unprincipled and poor primitive for developing a theory of mental representations. This is especially apparent when compared to alternative approaches that build theory from first principles. The idea that genetically evolved biases channel our mental representations toward particular forms that correspond to recurring socio-ecological challenges is a reasonable proposal. Particularly so if the alternative is a ‘blank slate’ argument that insulates learning processes from any content-biases that can be shaped by forces like natural selection. However, there are many theories that explain the same phenomena, including the recent cognitive, evolutionary, and developmental approaches that Becker and Neuberg map onto the Jungian archetypes. It’s not clear what a Jungian perspective predicts on top of these theories, beyond identifying some ambiguously specified psychological domains with little precision, or merely suggesting the existence of reliably emerging motifs. As an example of an alternative, more mature theoretical approach that goes beyond the Jungian thesis, consider Dual Inheritance Theory (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981; Chudek, Muthukrishna, & Henrich, 2015; Henrich, 2016; Russell & Muthukrishna, 2018). As Muthukrishna and Henrich (2019) argue, the use of formal theory and theoretical frameworks that connect and build on other theories, themselves built from first principles and grounded in the models of evolutionary biology, allows for more precise predictions and additional constraints on both the questions we ask and the way we answer them. They allow us to tackle science as an abductive challenge and move toward more general theories of human behavior. A seminal theory in the Dual Inheritance Theory framework is captured by a model of when natural selection favors social learning over both genetically encoded solutions and trial and error learning (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; expanded and built on by others, including Aoki & Feldman, 2014; Hoppitt & Laland, 2013; Nakahashi, Wakano, & Henrich, 2012). This autocorrelational model explores how the strength of environmental similarity between generations affects the solution space. To summarize the gist of the predictions, when the environment is highly stable, phenotypes encoded in genes provide the most efficient solution to these long standing problems.

中文翻译：

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原型对于心理表征理论来说是一个糟糕的原语

很少有思想家像弗洛伊德和荣格那样进入我们的集体意识。大多数现代心理学家只能梦想这样的持久力。Becker 和 Neuberg 认为，荣格对人类思想的探索和他对原型的描述可能不仅仅是西方的求爱。他们利用认知、进化和发展科学来证明自己的观点。我们在这里解决两个问题：（1）荣格的原型在某些方面是正确的吗？(2) 荣格原型是一种有用的理论方法吗？我们对第一个的回答可能是，第二个可能不是。为此，我们提出了一种发展心理表征理论的替代方法。荣格的原型表征，例如孩子和看护者或领导者和追随者，似乎确实映射到了交配、育儿、和社会地位。在不同的发展阶段，一些原型比其他原型更相关，例如婴儿期的看守者和青春期后的伴侣和竞争对手。正如贝克尔和纽伯格所说，这些原型是生活的这些跨文化甚至跨物种方面的有用标签。心理学、行为学和生物科学中的各种子学科已经发现了有关这些发展领域和阶段的细节，这些细节可能导致可靠地发展出与这些特定挑战相匹配的各种角色、关系和行为模式的表征。因此，从某种意义上说，荣格在他对基本原型的建议中提出了一些建议，而这些可以说是映射到我们新兴的科学理解上。不太清楚的是，与其他哲学家和文化评论家相比，荣格在识别这些模式时是否更敏锐。荣格的方法能否提供更多的洞察力，或者原型本身是否在利用比 Seneca（Seneca & Campbell，1969）、Marcus Aurelius（1942）或其他关于道德心理学或关系心理学的斯多葛学派更基本的东西？或者 Sun Tzu (Sun, 2017) 或 Machiavelli (Machiavelli, 2018) 关于合作与冲突的讨论？或者在现代，托比亚斯 (Tobias) (1993) 的 20 个主要情节，甚至是我们现代讲故事中普遍存在的众包且极其准确的电视比喻 (tvtropes.org)？人们可以举出一个类似的例子，即这些例子还提供了一扇了解人类生活的窗口，其中包含映射到我们科学理解的本体论。但是，尽管荣格和其他这些思想家可能会提供灵感甚至洞察力，但对于发展心理表征理论而言，他们是一个无原则且糟糕的原始人。与从第一原理构建理论的替代方法相比，这一点尤其明显。遗传进化的偏见将我们的心理表征导向与反复出现的社会生态挑战相对应的特定形式的想法是一个合理的建议。尤其是如果替代方案是“空白石板”论点，它将学习过程与任何可以由自然选择等力量塑造的内容偏见隔离开来。然而，有许多理论可以解释相同的现象，包括贝克尔和诺伊伯格最近映射到荣格原型的认知、进化和发展方法。尚不清楚荣格的观点在这些理论之上预测了什么，除了以低精度识别一些模棱两可的特定心理领域，或者仅仅暗示存在可靠的新兴主题。作为超越荣格论文的另一种更成熟的理论方法的示例，请考虑双重继承理论（Boyd & Richerson，1985；Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman，1981；Chudek、Muthukrishna 和 Henrich，2015；Henrich，2016；罗素和穆图克里希纳，2018 年）。正如 Muthukrishna 和 Henrich（2019 年）认为的那样，使用形式理论和理论框架连接并建立在其他理论之上，这些理论本身建立在第一原则并以进化生物学模型为基础，允许对我们提出的问题和我们回答问题的方式进行更精确的预测和额外的约束。它们使我们能够将科学视为一种诱因的挑战，并朝着更普遍的人类行为理论迈进。双重继承理论框架中的一个开创性理论被一个模型捕捉到，当自然选择有利于社会学习而不是基因编码的解决方案和试错学习（Boyd & Richerson，1985；由其他人扩展和建立，包括 Aoki & Feldman， 2014；Hoppitt 和 Laland，2013；Nakahashi、Wakano 和 Henrich，2012）。这个自相关模型探索了代间环境相似性的强度如何影响解空间。总结预测的要点，当环境高度稳定时，