Race instinct

Lecture



While avoiding generalizations, let us try to examine in more detail the main sources of racial psychology and worldview and, above all, their genetic aspect, which modern researchers have deliberately ignored, simplifying the causes of racism and nationalism to the linguistic, territorial and economic aspects.
An example of such one-sided research is the book “Nations and Nationalism after 1780” (Aletheia, St. Petersburg, 1998) by the modern British scholar Eric Hobsbaum, who concluded that “the peak of nationalism is behind”. Such conclusions are rather irresponsible and dangerous, especially against the background of intensifying ethnic conflicts of the last 10 years.
Serious researchers are well aware that even in Soviet Russia, research on the genetic and anthropological differences of races and nationalities did not stop. Already discovered open and closed dissertations, research institutes and laboratories from the 20s to the 90s on the above topics. And in interracial USA, such research has always been a priority, especially after the appearance of the AIDS virus and the hypothesis of its racial origin. But these studies will never be widely publicized. We will also try to figure out the reason for this mysterious silence.
Many psychologists and psychiatrists have always had the task of finding an explanation for the inheritance of acquired mental properties of a person. We begin the study of this issue with the concepts of conscience and archetypes proposed by Jung.
Jung Karl Gustav (1875-1961) - the world-famous Swiss psychiatrist, psychologist and philosopher, founder of "analytical psychology". Chaired at the Third and Fourth Psychoanalytic Congresses. In 1913, he abruptly departed from Freud and published the book Metamorphosis and Symbols of Libido, in which he rejected the sexual interpretation of Freud's libido. In 1921, Jung's work Psychological Types was published.
He was President of the International Society of Psychotherapists (1933-1939), which included the topics of differences in racial psychology in the program of the Society. In 1948, Jung opened the Institute of Analytical Psychology in Zurich. The decisive place in the analytical psychology of Jung is the position of the collective unconscious, in which the previous experience of the race is reflected in the form of archetypes. In his theory of archetypes, Jung emphasizes the importance of the initial images in the formation of the collective unconscious. In turn, the original images of Jung are the basis for the emergence of primary ideas, on which the content of secondary ideas, which are directly related to the thinking process, depends.
Speaking of instinct, Jung defined it as “impulsion to a certain kind of activity”, including “all mental processes not controlled by consciousness”. We know that repeated mental experiences end up being fixed in man at the level of instinct. I would designate these acquired instincts as rational instincts, since, unlike the data originally given by nature, human consciousness directly participates in their formation, and above all - the memory of the whole race. Jung is sure that a person has the ability to "directly, intuitively penetrate into this extraordinary world of" magical "ideas that are inextricably linked by instincts and not only reflect their form and way of manifestation, but also perform" trigger role "in relation to instinct. The complexity of studying this issue has always been the lack of evidence from the biology and genetics of the mechanism of this process. Phenomenon as a fact is determined by psychologists, but science cannot “touch with hands" the carrier of transmission of acquired mental properties by inheritance. It is not clear how the formation of the memory of a race capable of fixing itself at the genetic level occurs.
The “method of twins”, long tested in psychology, proposed by the English psychologist and anthropologist Francis Galton (1822-1911) in the study of identical (monozygous) twins, confirms the hereditary determination of not only intellectual abilities, but also mental and psychological. In particular, there are cases when identical twins, being separated in childhood or infancy, having met many years later, found that they not only wear the same style of clothing, love the same colors, but also listen to the same same music, love the same writers and artists. The highly informative "twin method" when analyzing the transfer of hereditary abilities is due to the fact that identical twins have the same genotype.
For the study of such phenomena, the border with the genetics of the field of psychology - psychogenetics. Studies conducted by psychophysiologists on monozygous twins confirm the determination of psyche characteristics and reactions by genotypic factors. (See The Problems of Human Genetic Psychophysiology. M., 1978.) But this does not convince skeptics based on the principle “This can not be, because this can never be.” This dispute has its roots in the XIX century, when supporters of the evolutionary theory of natural selection according to Darwin argued with the evolutionary theory of Lamarck (1744-1829), who insisted on the inheritance of signs acquired from the effects of the environment.
created: 2015-12-24
updated: 2021-03-13
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Ethnopsychology

Terms: Ethnopsychology