Psychology and Politics

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I have long been a devotee of Carl Jung's theories, particularly his Psychological Type and his Archetypal Psychology. Many contemporary psychologists have extended his work, and one of those is Carol Pearson, who writes particularly on Archetypes. A definition: Archetype is a universally understood symbol, term,[1] or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior. Pearson works with a twelve archetype model, in three sets of four representing three life stages: development, achievement, and maturity, which she calls Ego, Soul, and Self. What I'm interested in for this discussion is her four developmental (Ego) archetypes, which are in two pairs. The Innocent provides the knowledge of what we want and need; the Orphan defines the shape of our growth; the Warrior sets goals and defends the boundaries of our identity; the Caregiver provides the balancing compassion that refines that identity. The Innocent and the Orphan are the issue of Security. The Caregiver and the Warrior are the issue of Responsibility. Again, for this discussion I am only interested in the first two. The Innocent is the archetype of Trust: that is, the desire to be trusting, to see the good in things, to be optimistic and positive. The Orphan is the archetype of Discrimination: that is, the ability to recognise who, and when to trust, and how much, but it is also an archtype of pessimism and cynicism. In sociology there are two major themes regarding the development of society, and they can be summed up in the work of two men, Hobbes and Rousseau. Hobbes wrote Levaithan, and is famed for a statement that could be the motto of the Orphan. He saw that life was a constant war of man against man, and for that reason the political state was an absolute necessity to avoid anarchy and the rule of brute strength, and in this sense he would not be a favourite of the far Right with its belief in "small" government. But he also described life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". The far Right seems to take this latter to heart, see everything as a war, and take no prisoners. People deserve only what they can get by their own efforts, and if that means the poor and incompetent starve or live lives of unmitigated misery, so be it, this is a Darwinian world and the weak must perish. It seems to me that this Orphan approach to life, if not softened by at least some development of either the Innocent or the Caregiver, is why there appears to be no way of reconciling Right and "liberal" views. A person with "liberal" views, in the sense of having some of that innocence and compassion, can be a committed conservative, or they can be a radical socialist Greenie, but whichever, they can come to no understanding with far Right Hobbsian Orphans. In other words, in this rather roundabout way I have stated that the differences in political belief systems are more a matter of innate psychology, of character or temperament, than they are of learning, knowledge, or thought. What think you? Lash