This article seeks to develop a vocabulary and conceptual framework for the discussion of cross-cultural religious encounters. The ubiquity of Christian missionaries in diverse parts of the world provides a basis for such an enterprise. For China, four patterns are postulated: selective inculturation, resistance, conversion, and selective acculturation toWestern secular knowledge with the aid of mission schools. ForWest Africa, the patterns are less distinct. There was less resistance and greater openness to Christianity, reflecting a different relationship between the sacred and the secular than in China. The article concludes by finding the theories of Jack Goody (on literacy) and Carl Jung (on introversion and extroversion) to be heuristically valuable.
This paper argues that Jung's notion of archetypes can be useful to the theory and practice of history, particularly cultural and intellectual history. It claims that a coherent model of depth psychology is needed to explain how collective states such as identity and memory are internalized by individuals and that Freud's theories, by placing so much emphasis on childhood and the Oedipus complex, do not fill that need. Jung's approach, by focusing on developmental changes that take place during adulthood, is more easily testable in terms of evidence that historians normally use. The distinctiveness of Jung's notion of archetypes and its limitations are presented by comparing his ideas to those of Freud, Levi-Strauss, Chomsky, and Lakoff. Jung sometimes speaks of a fixed repertoire of archetypal figures that reside in the collective unconscious; this notion cannot be sustained. At other times he speaks of archetypes as a more plastic set of dispositions whose specific manifestations are shaped by culture and situation. This is in accord with recent trends in evolutionary psychology. The key contribution of archetypes is to emphasize the importance of unifying, emotionally powerful images in discourse that serve to counteract the disintegrating tendencies of modern thought and society. The final section presents several ways in which Jung's ideas might be applied to the practice of history: by pointing out recurrent archetypal images in a discourse, and by re-examining the relationship between religious and secular thought with an eye to incorporating perspectives from non-western cultures.
This article is based on research in the Külpe archives in Munich, as well as on analysis of his published works. It addresses itself to some of the unresolved questions regarding Külpe's relation to the Würzburg School and seeks to explain this relation in terms of Külpe's changing philosophical views. Külpe's shift in the late 1890s from Machian phenomenalism to realism led to his interest in the psychology of thinking and may be seen as part of the “revolt against positivism” of that decade.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.