Patterns, Figures, Archetypes

Affective neuroscience argues that basic emotional responses originate in our need to negotiate our relationships with others and objects in the environment. For example feelings of sadness correlate with greater neural activity than feelings of happiness, suggesting that negative affect is a motivated survival mechanism. It is also well known and documented that anxiety and anger correspond to greater neural activity (see OCD and testosterone studies). Sexual desire too, in contrast to satisfied contentment, is correlated with seeking behaviors and increased neural activity. Too much activity, however, is maladaptive and thus we seek homeostasis through various forms of sedation—ideally meditative and mindfulness techniques though also often substance forms of substance abuse among a variety of addictive behaviors (Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience).

Neuroscience reserach has also identified many levels of behavioral patterns associated with affect from patterns of infant/mother interaction to patterns of brain region communication and neural activity, employing dynamic systems, chaos, and self-organization models . If our affective lives as the seat of consciousness (another argument of affective neuroscience) involve patterns associated with both animate and inanimate objects within our environment, a foundation for a scientific theory of archetypes can be laid. Significant others and objects are of primary importance to us affectively. Affective response involves patterns of thought and brain activity. Through top-down processes our perception is modulated by previous experience. Thus we will tend to see important others and objects through established affective lenses, filling in the blanks with various conscious and unconscious assumptions. The greater the emotional stakes, the more likely we are to project details in an effort to maintain an illusion of epistemic advantage as a means of control (Solms and Turnbull The Brain and the Inner World on top-down processes of perception).

And while we can speculate about the heritability of archetypal patterns drawing examples from evidence related to instinctive fears and desires, this argument is not necessary to explain the continuity of archetypal influence. As long as objects in the environment remain relatively stable and our relationships to them remains stable (paradigmatic) archetypes will regenerate themselves with every generation. Moreover, “universal” narratives and images can go a long way in explaining the transmission of archetypal information and responses through conventional developmental process such as story telling (narrative co-construction) as individual and communal identity formation. Whether we inherit these patterns of thought and behavior through nature or nurture is certainly a fascinating line of inquiry, but in the age of neuroscience nurture is certainly sufficient to explain how “archetypal” patterns of behavior and brain activity can be inherited via cultural transmission processes, as narrative co-construction is recognized as both a midna nd brain activity (Cozolino, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships).

What then is the relationship between rhetorical figures, archetypes, and neurological patterns? Of course rhetorical figures represent and reproduce abstract patterns of thought—comparison and contrast for example (Fahenstock “Rhetoric in the Age of Cognitive Science”). But how is rhetoric involved in the transmission of archetypes? Questions for further consideration:

• What is the role of value language in archetypal narratives?

• How do archetypal narratives serve to mediate internal and external realities (for purposes of survival)?

• Do archetypal narratives encourage or discourage individuation?

• Do archetypal narratives reinforce “tribal” thought and behavior patterns?

• How do archetypal narratives reinforce or challenge social orders?

• How does rhetoric enable or inhibit the evolution of archetypal modes of thought on various levels?