Darwin, Marx, Freud and Jung were among the intellectual giants of the 19th and early 20th century. Many people consider them a bit outdated and less relevant nowadays. With Freud, Marx and Jung that may even be a bit obvious, however, I have read articles that doubt even the relevance of Darwin for homo sapiens. Evolutionary Psychology has made a lot of progress in the past 20 years but has hardly reached the level of mainstream awareness. You can even find high school psychology teachers who have no familiarity with it whatsoever.
Yet, despite some of Freud’s and Jung’s outlandish ideas, all the failed communist states and the problems of applying evolutionary principles to a very complex and varied human psychology, each of their theories has a core that is still relevant nowadays and which can be unified in my opinion.
Karl Marx hypothesized that modern man was alienated from our ancestral hunter-gatherer way of life in being too focused on production and status and less altruistic and caring. Jung discovered different personality types he called “sensors” and “intuitives”. His types were later grouped into four groups: SJ, SPs, NTs and NFs. Studying dating sites the psychologist Helen Fisher found four similar groups: builders (dutiful, routine-loving and conscientious), explorers (novelty-seeking and flexible), directors (logical and pragmatic) and negotiators (creative and idealistic). Moreover, these types prefer to choose each other as partners (a phenomenon called assortative mating).
Applying Darwinian logic to these groups, one has to ask if these traits are mere variations within one ancestral environment or adaptations to different environments. Evolutionary psychologists have tended to treat homo sapiens as a hunter-gatherer mostly. However, if traits occur in clusters, it seems much more likely that they are cases of fine-tuning to a specific environment. I have argued that these environments are our ancestral substance economies:
With the advent of farming and pastoralism status could be acquired with the accumulation of more material reproductive resources and be translated into more offspring. Of course, the sharing-caring attitude of hunter-gatherers would have been an obstacle and also reduced to a more in-group sociality. Conscientiousness, a love for routine and adherence to tradition and community rules were advantageous traits of early farmers as these traits increased their productivity.
Finally, Freud’s insight that early childhood is highly influential in the development and mental health of a person is still true. Of course, not many psychologists will be great fans of the “Oedipus complex” and similar Freudian ideas. However, we now know that even the environment inside the uterus can influence a child’s life trajectory. Moreover, early childhood adversity lies often at the root of many mental disorders, such a depression or sociopathology. There is a differential susceptibility to mental disorders and children who now often referred to as “orchid children” are at a higher risk. My hypothesis is that these orchid children highly correlate with a “hunter-gatherer” personality type. These children are often highly curious (openness), egalitarian and highly sensitive (to physical and/or social stimuli). These are all traits that served hunter-gatherers well in survival an reproduction.
Reproduction is also one of Freud’s central themes. Here again, Freud was often much too simplistic and crude. However, it is not unlikely that mental disorders are connected to reproduction after all. Roughly half of all lifetime mental disorders in most studies start by the mid-teens and three quarters by the mid-20s, i.e during the time when reproduction in our ancestral environments started. Social anxiety is higher in teens who are less-status conscious, less conformist and start puberty later. These teens are also more likely to be bullied by teens who start puberty early and are more status-conscious.
The onset of schizophrenia is typically around the late teens and associated with a higher degree of sociosexuality. It might be evolutions’ way of ensuring reproduction in a social environment where the chances seem very low. Seems like Freud was onto something after all. So were Darwin, Marx and Jung.
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