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The Baldwin Effect: a Neglected Influence on CG Jung's Evolutionary 04_Hogenson/D/5L 06/09/2001 5:16 pm Page 591 Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2001, 46, 591–611 The Baldwin effect: a neglected influence on C. G. Jung’s evolutionary thinking George B. Hogenson, Chicago Abstract:This paper considers the claim that C. G. Jung used a Lamarckian model of evolution to underwrite his theory of archetypes. This claim is challenged on the basis of Jung’s familiarity with and use of the writings of James Mark Baldwin and Conway Lloyd Morgan, both of whom were noted and forceful opponents of neo-Lamarckian theory from within a neo-Darwinian framework. The paper then outlines the evolu- tionary model proposed by Baldwin and Lloyd Morgan, which has come to be known as Baldwinian evolution or the Baldwin effect. This model explicitly views psychological factors as central to the evolutionary process. Finally, the use of Baldwinian thinking in contemporary theorizing regarding language and other symbolic systems is reviewed and suggestions are made regarding the implications of Baldwinian models for theory building in analytical psychology. Key words: Baldwin effect, computer simulation, evolution, Lamarckism, language systems. [An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the National Conference of Jungian Analysts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 18, 1999, under the title, ‘Evolution, psychology, and the emergence of the psyche’.] Introduction In 1919, C. G. Jung presented a paper, entitled ‘Instinct and the Unconscious’ (Jung 1960), at a symposium in London jointly sponsored by the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association, and the British Psychological Association. At the symposium, several papers, all with the same title, were presented by prominent figures in British psychology. Jung alone represented the continent. Generally speaking, this paper is referenced for one of two reasons; it repre- sents Jung’s first public use of the terms archetype and collective unconscious, and it is the first instance where Jung refers to the archetypes as being ‘engraved on the human mind’. This latter expression is taken by some commentators to be indicative of Lamarckian tendencies in Jung’s thought (Stevens 1990). Jung 0021–8774/2001/4604/591 © 2001, The Society of Analytical Psychology Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 04_Hogenson/D/5L 06/09/2001 5:16 pm Page 592 592 George B. Hogenson more famously repeats the engraving metaphor in volume 9 part 1 where he writes: There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the form of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action. (Jung, 1959, para. 99, emphasis in original) Was Jung actually endorsing, or even thinking in terms of a Lamarckian basis for his theory of archetypes? Did he believe that the archetypes existed by virtue of the transmission of acquired characteristics wherein a trait or ability developed in the life time of one organism is passed directly to its offspring, as a Lamarckian would argue? (Lamarck’s position will be discussed in greater detail below.) This is an important question regarding our understanding of Jung, and his place in the history of thought, insofar as a Lamarckian argu- ment for the origins of the archetypes would jeopardize Jung’s repeated claim to have grounded his theory in sound scientific method and doctrine. Indeed, Freud’s unwavering commitment to Lamarckism stands as one of the more perplexing elements of his programme, and Freud’s followers went to some lengths to blame Jung for Freud’s errant theorizing. However, as the phil- osopher of science, Patricia Kitcher, demonstrates in her superb study of Freud’s uses of late 19th Century scientific concepts, Freud’s D ream : A Com - plete Interdisciplinary Science of Mind (Kitcher 1995), Freud’s system rested heavily on Lamarckian concepts. ‘Even in the thirties’, she writes: Freud clung to Lamarckianism and recapitulationism. In noting that he could not do without Lamarckian inheritance, he was not announcing the fall of his theory. Despite the ‘difficult position’ he had been placed in by ‘the present attitude of bio- logical science, which refuses to hear of the inheritance of acquired characters … [he] must, however, in all modesty confess that [he] cannot do without [it]’ (Moses and Monotheism, 1939, SE XXIII:100). (Kitcher 1995, p. 177)1 Similarly, Frank Sulloway concludes his assessment of Freud’s Lamarckian commitment by showing that it was not a peripheral or incidental concomitant of his theory as his followers maintained following his death. Rather: From the discovery of spontaneous infantile sexuality (1896/97) to the very end of his life, Freud’s endorsement of biogenetic [recapitulationist] and Lamarckian view- points inspired many of his most controversial psychoanalytic conceptions. More especially, these premises bolstered the heart of his developmental theories, legitim- ating their controversial claim to universality amidst a storm of skeptical opposition. Furthermore, these assumptions prevented Freud from accepting negative evidence and alternative explanations for his views. All in all, it is easy to see why Freud’s erroneous biological assumptions prompted such elaborate steps by his followers to deny their importance in Freudian theory. (Sulloway 1979, p. 498) 04_Hogenson/D/5L 06/09/2001 5:16 pm Page 593 The Baldwin effect 593 As Sulloway also shows (p. 440), one of the preferred means used by Freud’s followers to exonerate Freud of the charge of pervasive Lamarckism was to locate Lamarckian tendencies in the late works of Freud and then blame Jung – and sometimes Ferenczi – for having introduced such misguided thinking into psychoanalysis. On its face the claim that Jung was responsible for Freud’s Lamarckian commitments is difficult to understand. Jung never mentions Lamarck in the collected works, if the general index is any guide, and Lamarck is not discussed in the Freud/Jung correspondence. Jung was, to be sure, deeply interested in what he called ‘a phylogeny of the mind’ (Jung 1961, para. 521). Roazen observes that Jung was ‘far more prone to cite phylogenetic interpretations than was Freud himself’, and Freud’s objection that Jung had a tendency to ‘seize on a phylogenetic explanation before the ontogenetic possibilities had been ex- hausted’ (Roazen 1975, p. 261), but all that meant was that Jung was interested in the evolutionary history of the mind, with no implied commitment to any particular theory of evolution. Phylogeny refers to the historical development of a species over evolutionary time, regardless of what evolutionary model one embraces. Ontogeny refers to the developmental history of an individual organism. Thus Freud’s objection to Jung’s phylogenetic interests simply refers to Jung’s failure, in Freud’s mind, to exhaust the possible causes of pathology in the development of the individual prior to opting for a more evolutionary or phylogenetic explanation. Indeed, the notion that Jung’s phylogenetic inter- ests prompted Freud to embrace Lamarckism, as proposed by Jones and others, is spurious, for, as both Sulloway and Kitcher make clear, Freud’s commitment to Lamarckism significantly predated his work with Jung. Nevertheless, defenders of Jung have found it necessary to finesse the charge of Lamarckism in Jung by arguing that his theories do not require a Lamarckian basis, as Freud’s so manifestly do. Thus Anthony Stevens remarks in his book, O n Jung, that ‘the collective unconscious is a respectable scientific hypothesis, and one does not have to adopt a Lamarckian view of evolution to accept it’ (Stevens 1990, p. 36). Rather, Stevens argues, one can interpret Jung’s ideas about the collective unconscious and the archetypes in terms derived from later developments in evolutionary theory and comparative psychology, to make sense out of Jung in more contemporary terms. Stevens is correct, but his comments leave open the question of what exactly Jung himself thought his position was in relation to evolution, Lamarckism, and the basis for his vision of a phylogeny of the mind. It also leaves open the question of what Jungian theoreticians at the beginning of the 21st Century are to do with theoretical constructs that appear to be based on 19th Century assumptions. These are the issues that I intend to address in the rest of this paper. While, regrettably, Jung did not leave behind a detailed working out of his position on evolution, I hope to show that there are some hints, at least by 1919, and perhaps earlier, that he was well aware of the inadequacy of Lamarckian thinking and in fact rejected it. Additionally, I hope to show that an alternative 04_Hogenson/D/5L 06/09/2001 5:16 pm Page 594 594 George B. Hogenson to Lamarckism, which has since come to be called Baldwinian evolution or the Baldwin effect, with which Jung was familiar, provides the basis for the develop- ment of Jungian theory today to an even greater degree than it did when Jung proposed his theories of the collective unconscious and of archetypes nearly 100 years ago. Thus, I intend to show that an argument Jung advanced in 1919 regarding inheritance, and his reiteration of that position throughout his life, sheds important light on our understanding of the relationship between the theory of archetypes and evolutionary theory. Additionally, I believe that Jung’s 1919 paper points to a variety of other possibilities for theory building and research in analytical psychology. To make these arguments, however, it is first necessary to briefly sketch some controversies regarding the relation- ship between evolution and the mind that were current at the end of the 19th Century. Lamarckism Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744–1829), is often imagined as some sort of flat earther or equally benighted crank whose ghost Darwin decisively laid to rest with the publication of O n the O rigin of Species (Darwin, 1859/1964).
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