Part I: Mind, Memory, and Archetype: Morphic Resonance and the Collective
Unconscious
by Rupert Sheldrake ( Psychological Perspectives, 1997)
Rupert Sheldrake is a theoretical biologist whose book, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (Tarcher, 1981) evoked a storm of controversy. Nature described it as "the best candidate for burning, " while the New Scientist called it "an important scientific inquiry into the nature of biological and physical reality. " Because his work has important implications for Jung's concepts of the archetype and the collective unconscious, we have invited Sheldrake to present his views in a series of four essays which will appear in successive issues of PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES. These essays will be updates of his presentation on
"Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious, " which he gave in May of 1986
at the Human Relations Institute in Santa Barbara. Audio recordings were made by
Alpha Omega Cassette Enterprises of Pasadena, California.
In this essay, I am going to discuss the concept of collective memory as a background for understanding Jung's concept of the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious only makes sense in the context of some notion of collective memory. This then takes us into a very wide-...
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