Adolf Bastian - The Psychic Unity of Mankind

The Psychic Unity of Mankind

In arguing for the “psychic unity of mankind,” Bastian proposed a straightforward project for the long-term development of a science of human culture and consciousness based upon this notion. He argued that the mental acts of all people everywhere on the planet are the products of physiological mechanisms characteristic of the human species (what today we might term the genetic loading on the organization and functioning of the human neuroendocrine system). Every human mind inherits a complement of species-specific “elementary ideas” (Elementargedanken), and hence the minds of all people, regardless of their race or culture, operate in the same way.

According to Bastian, the contingencies of geographic location and historical background create different local elaborations of the "elementary ideas"; these he called "folk ideas" (Volkergedanken). Bastian also proposed a lawful “genetic principle” by which societies develop over the course of their history from exhibiting simple sociocultural institutions to becoming increasingly complex in their organization. Through the accumulation of ethnographic data, we can study the psychological laws of mental development as they reveal themselves in diverse regions and under differing conditions. Although one is speaking with individual informants, Bastian held that the object of research is not the study of the individual per se, but rather the “folk ideas” or “collective mind” of a particular people.

The more one studies various peoples, Bastian thought, the more one sees that the historically conditioned "folk ideas" are of secondary importance compared with the universal "elementary ideas". The individual is like the cell in an organism, a social animal whose mind – its "folk ideas" – is influenced by its social background; and the "elementary ideas" are the ground from which these “folk ideas” develop. From this perspective, the social group has a kind of group mind, a social “soul” (Gesellschaftsseele) if you will, in which the individual mind is embedded.

Bastian believed that the "elementary ideas" are to be scientifically reconstructed from "folk ideas" as varying forms of collective representations (Gesellschaftsgedanken). Because one cannot observe the collective representations per se, Bastian felt that the ethnographic project had to proceed through a series of five analytical steps (see Koepping, 1983):

• 1. Fieldwork: Empirical description of cross-cultural data (as opposed to armchair philosophy; Bastian himself spent much of his adult life among non-European peoples).

• 2. Deduction of collective representations: From cross-cultural data we describe the collective representations in a given society.

• 3. Analysis of folk ideas: Collective representations are broken down into constituent folk ideas. Geographical regions often exhibit similar patterns of folk ideas – he called these “idea circles” which described the collective representations of particular regions.

• 4. Deduction of elementary ideas: Resemblances between folk ideas and patterns of folk ideas across regions indicate underlying elementary ideas.

• 5. Application of a scientific psychology: Study of elementary ideas defines the psychic unity of mankind, which is due to the underlying psychophysiological structure of the species – this study is to be accomplished by a truly scientific, cross-culturally grounded psychology.

What Bastian argued for was nothing less than what today we might call a psychobiologically grounded, cross-cultural social psychology. The key to developing this robust science of human consciousness was to collect as much ethnographic data as possible from all over the world before folk cultures became too “tainted” by contact with European imperialist powers. Through ethnographic research, he wrote, we can study the psychological laws of mental development as they reveal themselves in diverse geographical settings. Thus in modern day parlance, our different sociocultural forms are due both to trans-culturally shared (i.e., archetypal) processes inherent in our very distinct human psychophysiology—much of it operating at a non-conscious level—and to our development (or enculturation) within a particular environment.