Think outside the box! Jung, Lévi-Strauss, and postcolonialism (individual, society, and institutes): spectrum of psychology and sociology

摘要

The resemblance between Claude Lévi-Strauss's structuralism and Carl Jung's theory of the archetypes of the collective unconscious has been occasionally discussed. However, Lévi-Strauss followed the foundation of émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, stressing the group dynamics of structural anthropology, whereas Jung's psychology is an individual psychology. Jung employed myths as a series of images to interpret symbols of the collective unconscious, whereas Lévi-Strauss adopted theories of linguistics to analyse myths as narratives. From Lévi-Strauss's point of view, a single cultural complex cannot be isolated from other groups of cultural complexes, as they are relational with regard to the exchange of symbols and signs. Lévi-Strauss's comparison of the European and Native American twin mythology is a case study of the cultural complex when it is read from the perspective of Jungian psychology. How can we approach the mythology that is not one's own culture? Do we impose our own mythology onto others'? Or do we analyse them more objectively as systems of thought? The trickster, for example, is a discourse by Western culture about Western culture, and it has a very different meaning for Native American people. With a prophetic warning to future generations, Lévi-Strauss died in 2009 – his centennial year.