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Archetype theory continues to generate scholarly activity in the Jungian literature, as the recent volumes of the Journal of Analytical Psychology attest. The lively debate regarding the ontology of archetypes, however, soon reaches a dead-end. In the absence of convincing evidence either way, campaigners attributing archetypes to either Nature or Culture are not likely to be persuaded by the opposite camp - nor by the third position, suggested by Mogenson (1999), that views archetypes as autochthonous, endemic to the relatively autonomous system of psyche. How could such proof be obtained? This paper takes a critical look at one recent effort, a neatly conceived study by Alan Maloney (1999).
The empirical inquiry has a special role in the development of scientific theories, which is not brought to bear upon the controversy regarding the ontology of archetypes, Maloney's contribution notwithstanding. Jung's discovery of recurrent motifs is indisputably empirical in the sense of being derived from actual material analysed by him. These impressive researches have yielded a rich taxonomy of archetypes; but classification does not explain how or why the phenomena being classified come to be. If Jung were simply making up generic labels in order to index diverse motifs, the whole issue of empirical proof would not arise. Classification is in the eye of the beholder. But Jung formulated his theory in the spirit of a scientific thesis. The concept of the archetype is cast as an explanatory theory, attributing the observed pattern to the existence of certain dispositions. This is an ontological proposition. It is either true or false, depending on what is the real state of the world. To find out, we need some means for proving or refuting the proposition; that is an epistemological matter.
A remarkable feature of the theory of archetypes is its reflexivity: it explains its own occurrence in cultural discourses. Jung applied this insight throughout his work, examining his own