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This book proposes an integrative study which would bring the psychological and the sociological together through the Jungian theory of archetypes. The author reviews archetypal theory in some detail, carefully avoiding the pitfall of conflating content and structure as he notes connections between archetypal forms and the evidence of early patterns of relating arising out of infant research. He offers a clear explication of a major idea of modern systems theory—the concept of ‘emergence’—and shows how it can contribute to archetypal theory with a contemporary way of explaining how archetypal patterns can be replicated at successive levels of development and individuation.
In the second half of the book he provides a clear account of the development of social theory in this century, explaining, through the notion of paradigms, the different forms social enquiry has taken. He derives some key questions within each paradigm, which he employs as the basis for proposing the elements of an archetypal sociology, based on an intersubjective perspective, which has the power to link both individual and group in a powerful model for the understanding of both individuation and group processes. The rest of the book is taken up in developing this perspective on groups, small and large, and on the institutions which they create, from the family to the nation. His aim is to demonstrate that archetypal patterns exist isomorphically at every level of human existence, and to claim, therefore, that this forms the basis for a new, archetypal, form of social research.
I felt excited when I looked at the project this book proposes, as I always do at the prospect of an integrative study. It seems so improbable that God created the world according to university departments. Nevertheless, I found myself, in the end, somewhat disappointed. I felt the discussion of Jung lacked a critical edge, and that the integration was of the sort which grafts one theory on to another—all too familiar, alas,