This directly brings us, of course, to the work of Carl Jung and his conclusion that the essential forms and motifs of the world's great mythologies—the "archaic forms" or "archetypes"—are collectively inherited in the individual psyche of each of us.

It is not often realized that Freud was in complete agreement with Jung about the existence of this archaic heritage. Freud was struck by the fact that individuals in therapy kept reproducing essentially similar "phantasies," phantasies that seemed therefore somehow to be collectively inherited. "Whence comes the necessity for these phantasies and the material for them?" he asks. "How is it to be explained that the same phantasies are always formed with the same content? I have an answer to this which I know will seem to you very daring. I believe that these primal phantasies are a phylogenetic possession. In them the individual stretches out to the experiences of past ages."

This phylogenetic or "archaic heritage" includes, according to Freud, "abbreviated repetitions of the evolution undergone by the whole human race through long-drawn-out periods and from pre-historic ages." Although, as we will see, Freud and Jung differed profoundly over the actual nature of this archaic heritage, Freud nevertheless made it very clear that "I fully agree with Jung in recognizing the existence of this phylogenetic heritage."

Piaget has also written extensively on his essential agreement with and appreciation of Jung's work. But he differs slightly with Jung in that he does not see the archetypes themselves as being directly inherited from past ages, but rather as being the secondary byproducts of cognitive structures which themselves are similar wherever they develop and which, in interpreting a common physical world, generate common motifs.

But whether we follow Freud, Jung, or Piaget, the conclusion is essentially the same: all the world's great mythologies exist today in each of us, in me and in you. They are produced, and can at any time be produced, by the archaic, the magic, and the mythic structures of our own compound individuality (and classically by the magic-mythic structure).

The question then centers—and here Freud and Jung bitterly parted ways—on the nature and function of these mythic motifs, these archetypes. Are they merely infantile and regressive (Freud), or do they also contain a rich source of spiritual wisdom (Jung)? Piaget, needless to say, sided with Freud on this particular issue. I have already suggested that I do not see these particular "archetypes" as being quite the high source of transpersonal wisdom that Jung believed; but the situation is very subtle and complex, and we will return to it later in this chapter, in connection with Joseph Campbell, and discuss it more fully.

Campbell, we will see, believes that in certain circumstances (which we will explore), the early mythic archetypes can carry profound religious and spiritual meaning and power. But even Campbell clearly acknowledges (and indeed stresses) that the early and late preoperational stages themselves are both marked by a great deal of egocentrism, anthropocentrism, and geocentrism.

"What are names for?" a child of five was asked. "They are what you see when you look at things." "Where is the name of the sun?" "Inside the sun." As one child summarized it: "If there weren't any words it would be very bad. You couldn't make anything. How could things have been made?"

"No" is the first form of specifically mental transcendence. Images begin this mental transcendence, but images are tied to their sensory referents. With "no" I can for the first time decline to act on my bodily impulses or on your desires. For the first time in development, the child can begin to transcend its merely biological or biocentric or ecocentric embeddedness, begin to exert control over bodily desires and bodily discharges and bodily instincts, while also "separating-individuating" itself from the will of others.

But "no!" can go too far, and therein lies all the horrors of the noosphere. The mind does not just transcend and include the body, it represses the body, represses its sensuality, represses its sexuality, represses its rich roots in the biosphere. Repression, in the Freudian (and Jungian) sense, comes into existence only with the "language barrier," with a "no!" carried to extremes.

Thus, if remaining stuck in the biosphere results in the borderline/narcissistic conditions, going to the other extreme and alienating the biosphere results directly in the psychoneuroses. It follows that our present-day worldwide ecological crisis is, in the very strictest sense of the term, a worldwide collective neurosis—and is about to result in a worldwide nervous breakdown.