FIVE BASIC CONSCIOUSNESS STRUCTURES


INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the basic framework to be applied to various 
issues in later chapters. I want to stress that the rather detailed 
discussion of the hierarchy of consciousness structures should be 
regarded as a heuristic framework, i.e. its main value is to offer a 
perspective which might generate further questions, insights, and 
research issues, without claiming to present a 'truth.' We humans 
are different and alike in so many different respects that any 
framework must necessarily be inaccurate because it focusses on a 
narrow range of issues, disregarding variety and other aspects. 

[What is meant by a 'consciousness structure'?]
[The directions of the evolution of consciousness]
	[The cognitive dimension]
	[The emotional dimension]
	[Identification and motivation]
	[Self and other]
[Ken Wilber's 'Atman project'] 
[Four perspectives on evolving consciousness structures]
	[The ontogenetic perspective: individual development]
	[The phylogenetic perspective: social evolution]
	[The structural perspective: layers of consciousness 
structures in the 
	adult individual]
	[The dynamic perspective: consciousness structures in action]
[Mode of presentation]

In this chapter, the structures of consciousness are primarily 
discussed from a generalized phylogenetic perspective. The 
ontogenetic perspective is almost completely absent. This means 
that I have tried to describe how each consciousness structure 
functions when it is the dominant structure for the adults in a 
society. The influence of Piaget's cognitive-developmental 
psychology is evident in the structure of the description of each 
consciousness structure. All consciousness structures are 
described using the same headings: 1. Cognition, self-sense and 
perception of causality; 2. Motivation; 3. The individual and the 
group; 4. Ingroup/outgroup relations; and 5. Remnants ...
	The first subsection, Cognition, self-sense and perception of 
causality, starts with a description of the nature of the structure's 
cognitive abilities. This includes the individual's capacity to 
develop mental representations of objects in the environment, 
persons, relationships, social systems, the self, etc. The capacity 
to form stable mental representations is crucial to the time sense, 
i.e. to what extent a person can orient towards the past and the 
future. The range of emotions available to the individual is also 
intimately related to cognitive abilities, and is therefore 
discussed in the same section. The self-sense and the self-image 
both depend on the sophistication and stability of mental 
representations. As a last element of the first section, the 
conception of causal relations characteristic for each 
consciousness structure is discussed. 
	The second subsection, Motivation, discusses some aspects of 
the basic nature of motivation in each structure. The type of 
motivation propelling a person is intimately related to what part 
of the body/psyche system the self is primarily identified. In the 
'lower' structures, the self is primarily identified with the body 
and its impulses, whereas in later structures the self comes to be 
identified to an increasing degree with mental conceptions. The 
nature of motivation is crucial to an analysis of social 
development and serious social conflicts. 
	The third subsection, The individual and the group, delineates 
some aspects of the relationship between the individual and the 
group of which he or she is a member. The group and its culture 
plays a decisive role in the individuation process, not least by 
taking over psychological functions which the individual is unable 
to provide. This may be support for impulse control, value systems, 
and 'prefabricated' identities (roles). A crucial part of this 
subsection is the nature of morality, i.e. how individuals come to 
adopt standards of behaviour that take the interests of others into 
consideration. 
	The fourth subsection, Ingroup/outgroup relations, draws on 
previous discussions of motivation, psychic structures, and 
morality for discussing how members of a group perceive and 
behave in relation to outgroups. 
	The final subsection, Remnants ..., makes some brief 
comments on in what forms a specific consciousness structure 
remains as a layer beneath the surface in higher consciousness 
structures. 


THE ARCHAIC STRUCTURE: THE UROBORO

Cognition, self-sense and perception of causality

The Archaic structure must,  as a free-standing structure, be 
regarded as pre-human. However, it is highly instructive to follow 
the gradual development of consciousness structures from the 
distant origins, in order to understand the developmental tasks 
that must be mastered in order to reach full ego-consciousness. 
The primordial form of consciousness is very far from our present 
experience. We can only make guesses about the subjective 
experience and the psychic structures of our distant ancestors. 
Even if we knew the 'facts', it would still be very difficult to 
imagine what the subjective experience (the 'feeling') of a person 
at the archaic stage would be like, since we cannot draw on 
aspects of our everyday experience. However, since we cannot step 
out of our own consciousness structure, we must to some extent 
rely on defining the archaic structure in terms of what it is not, 
i.e. in terms of the parts of our own experience that would not be a 
part of the archaic structure. 
	Characteristic of the archaic structure is a narrow range of 
cognitive 'instruments.' According to Arieti, the lowest form of 
perceptions is 'physio-perceptions', i.e. a feeling of pleasure or 
unpleasure in the organism (Arieti, 1967:15ff). In the most 
primitive forms of (proto-) consciousness, the feeling aspect of 
organismic states is central. Different forms of behaviour are 
elicited by the internal state of the organism. The environment is 
not perceived directly, but only by mediation of how external 
stimuli affects the pleasure/unpleasure state of the organism. A 
slightly more advanced form of experience is connected to the 
instincts, which involve a more direct relation between external 
stimuli (e.g. a smell) and internal processes. Certain external 
stimuli elicits instinctual behavioural patterns, which are 
coordinated, purposeful, and stereotyped (ibid., p. 21f). Crucial to 
the development of cognition is the ability to sustain psychic 
representations of external and internal objects and events. Arieti 
believes that the first form of inner representation, the exocept, is 
connected to motor behaviour (ibid., p. 43). The exocept is a 
representation of a specific pattern of body movements, which is 
activated in response to certain stimuli.  The exocepts are, 
however, unconscious, and do not enable any form of cognitive 
processes. The simplest form of mental representations is the 
image (ibid., p. 61). Images are inner reproductions of (visual) 
perceptions, stored as memory traces. The images, as mental 
representations, are fleeting and vague. This must perhaps be 
emphasized, since we are used to employ verbal concepts, which 
are far more stable than images. However, concepts only start to 
emerge in the mythical structure. 
	What does this mean? The emergence of the capacity to 
sustain images is a crucial event in the development of 
consciousness. Without images, there is no awareness of past or 
future, only a fleeting present filled by impressions, emotions and 
impulses. There is no differentiation of inside and outside; no 
awareness of a boundary between self and other; no different 
categories for internal experience and perception of external 
objects and events. Everything has the same reality-value by virtue 
of being experienced. The emergence of the image enables the 
protoindividual to re-evoke objects which are not present. A 
primitive sense of time can develop, since object representations 
can be retained in the mind. 
	The repertoire of emotions is intimately related to cognitive 
abilities. Before the emergence of images, Arieti speaks of 'proto-
emotions' (ibid., p. 31). These are few, undifferentiated, and tied to 
the immediate present. Arieti enumerates tension, appetite, fear, 
rage, and satisfaction. The access to images permits an extension 
of the emotional repertoire. Since objects can be retained in the 
mind, it becomes possible to wish for absent objects, and to feel 
anxiety (imagined fear). However, these second-order emotions 
(ibid., p. 70) develops fully first in the magical structure of 
consciousness. 
	The restricted repertoire of cognitive instruments implies 
that no distinct self-sense can develop. This means that the proto-
individual does not have a sense of him- or herself as a separate 
being with boundaries, individuality, will, etc. Neumann expressed 
his conjecture about this level in poetic terms: 
The world is experienced as all-embracing, and in it man 
experiences himself, as a self, sporadically and momentarily only. 
Just as the infantile ego, living this phase over again, feebly 
developed, easily tired, emerges like an island out of the ocean of 
the unconscious for occasional moments only, and then sinks back 
again, so early man experiences the world. Small, feeble, and much 
given to sleep, i.e., for the most part unconscious, he swims about 
in his instincts like an animal. Enfolded and upborne by great 
Mother Nature, rocked in her arms, he is delivered over to her for 
good or ill. (Neumann, 1949/1970:15)

       The lack of self-consciousness and of an awareness of time 
implies the absence of a sense of mortality, vulnerability and 
dependence. It is this quality of the archaic structure which is 
portrayed in myth as the Garden of Eden, the primordial paradise of 
harmony, immortality and innocence. 
	As is evident, there can be no conception of causality at this 
level. Events just happen, and are responded to, without a sense of 
cause and effect, and without a sense of an acting subject. 


Motivation

In the absence of a conscious subject, the motivation is 
constituted by instinctual drives, bodily impulses and primitive 
emotions (e.g. pleasure/unpleasure). No conception of will or 
conscious intentions, whether in the individual or in the 
environment, is possible. The restricted cognitive capabilities 
means a restricted ability to accumulate personal experience, and 
to act on the basis of this experience (Neumann, 1949/1970:292). 
Neumann discusses three classes of instincts: instinctive reactions 
to the psychophysical organism; to the natural environment; and to 
the human environment. The latter category comprises patterns of 
behaviour in relation to human groups (ibid., p. 292). 
	Psychologists and philosophers have little to say about the 
specific nature of instinctual motivation. The experts on this field 
are the ethologists and the sociobiologists. It is extremely 
difficult to achieve any kind of certainty concerning specific 
instincts in humans. Evidence is indirect, but draws from many 
different sources, e.g. brain research, ethological research on 
primates, psychiatry, and paleoanthropology. Most scholars writing 
about human instincts relevant for social situations emphasize the 
fact that our genetic endowment was developed during a very long 
period of hunter and gatherer cultures. Consequently, the needs of 
gathering and hunting must have shaped any genetic patterns 
relevant to social behaviour. However, all we have is conjectures 
which are more or less well substantiated. 
	It might be useful to differentiate between two types of 
instincts; drives and behavioural patterns. The former is 
epitomized by the sexual drive, which arises cyclically and exerts 
a compelling influence on perception and motivation. However, 
most instincts are of the second type, i.e. behavioural patterns 
which may be elicited under certain circumstances. In the case of 
humans, two conditions must be fulfilled for actual acting out of 
instinctual behavioural patterns: relevant stimuli and the absence 
of other modes of regulating behaviour. Most scholars agree that 
aggression is not a drive, but that there are powerful behavioural 
patterns associated with aggressiveness. 
	For our purposes the 'social instincts' are most interesting 
aspect of instinctual behaviour. A relatively strong case can be 
made for the existence of the following instinctual patterns of 
behaviour:
-	A preparedness to conform to a social order, comprising a 
hierarchy of dominance/submission. Acceptance of the existence of 
legitimate leaders, who must be obeyed in critical situations 
(Bailey, 1987:199; Stevens, 1989:130ff). This pattern serves to 
enhance the efficiency of a group to hunt, defend itself, and deal 
with sudden threats. 
-	Male competition for dominance in forms that do not threaten 
the basic efficiency of the group (Bailey, 1987:409ff). 
-	A propensity to form functional groups when threatened, 
comprising leaders (old men), warriors (young men) and defended 
(women and children) (Stevens, 1989:124ff). 
-	Ingroup�outgroup differentiation, implying a propensity to 
draw boundaries, where inhibitions against aggression only apply 
to ingroup members (Steven, 1989:42ff). Outgroup members can 
potentially be regarded as non-humans, or even as prey.
-	Predation behaviours, including the formation of groups of 
males acting cooperatively to stalk and kill prey (Bailey, 
1987:372ff; Stevens, 1989:38ff, 49). 
-	Sex role differentiation, where women gather food and care 
for children, and men hunt, explore, and defend the group. At the 
level of instincts, gender-specific roles are, so to speak, built into 
the structure, in contrast to higher consciousness structures, 
where sex roles are defined by culture and psychological 
propensities. 
-	Territoriality, i.e. a tendency to establish, mark and defend 
territories in order to defend scarce resources or integrity (Bailey, 
1989:402ff). 
-	Centroversion (Neumann, 1949/1970:286f), i.e. a tendency to 
contribute to a stabilization of whatever social systems an 
individual is a part of. The existing order is defended against 
internal and external threats. 
-	A set of non-verbal universal signals of various emotional 
states, primarily expressed through facial expressions (Bailey, 
1987:175). 
	All of these behaviours are wired-in patterns that can be 
called upon, or that appear by default, in certain situations. None of 
them should be regarded as compulsive drives. However, I would 
suggest that there is something like a drive in the tendency of 
young males to explore the environment, to test their strength in 
competitive encounters with other males, and to band together in 
order to pursue challenging projects. 


The individual and the group

In the archaic structure, it is misleading to speak about the 
relation between the individual and the group, since there are no 
individuals in the psychological sense of the word, only in the 
physical sense (i.e. as biological organisms). 
	In the absence of symbolic and verbal cognition, the social 
order cannot be regulated by culture. Rules, norms, myths and 
symbols cannot be formulated or communicated. Nor can social 
roles become the fundament of a complex society (Habermas, 
1976:151). The only way of achieving some kind of social 
organization is that each 'individual' in a group is born with 
similar behavioural patterns imprinted in their basic (genetic) 
structure. In other words: in the archaic structure, social behaviour 
and social organization relies heavily on instinctual behavioural 
patterns. A great drawback of this arrangement, and probably the 
cause of its transcendence, is its inflexibility. Instincts work in an 
unchanging (or very slowly changing) environment, but does not 
equip the species to deal with new problems. 


Ingroup/outgroup relations

In the archaic stage, cognitive conceptions of ingroups and 
outgroups have not yet developed, and can therefore not play any 
part in the relations between the primary group and outsiders. The 
behaviour in relation to strangers is regulated by instincts and 
reflexes. Spillmann & Spillmann (1990) point out that the fear of 
the unknown is a fundamental and phylogenetically very old 
reaction, essential to survival in a dangerous environment. The 
archaic structure is therefore restricted to social organization 
patterns comprising small autonomous groups, mistrusting any 
other similar groups they may encounter. 


Remnants of the archaic level in higher structures

What remains of the archaic structure when consciousness evolves 
to higher levels? The most important mode of functioning that do 
remain is the instinctual behaviour patterns. They can be regarded 
as 'programs' stored in the cellar, seldom used in the social arena 
since behaviour at the higher levels is regulated by other means, 
related to conscious or unconscious cognition. However, if the 
higher levels fail to engender appropriate responses, e.g. in 
emergency situations, the instinctual programs provide ready-made 
behavioural patterns which do not require reflection. 
	In a weaker sense, there are other ways in which the archaic 
structure influences later levels. The archaic structure is closely 
related to the material realm, i.e. life on the physical level, as 
eating, metabolism, manual labour, pure survival. 
	The most primitive level of fantasy draws upon the archaic 
mode of being, although symbolic imagination in itself is not 
present at the archaic level, but is a later achievement. 
Unconscious fantasies often operate through analogies to 
swallowing, biting and excreting (e.g. Neumann, 1973/1990:35). 
Aggression is, on this level, equivalent to biting and swallowing, 
whereas fear is primarily fear of being swallowed. Excretion is the 
most primitive experience of creation. 


THE MAGICAL STRUCTURE: THE TYPHON

Cognition, self-sense and perception of causality

The development of consciousness is intimately related to the 
ability to differentiate, or, in even stronger terms, to separate the 
experiential totality into distinct cognitive objects (or gestalts). 
The crucial step taken at the magical level is the differentiation of 
the self from the environment, the nascent awareness of the 
existence of a subject, though preverbal and body-centered. Again, 
Arieti's treatise on the gradual development of cognitive abilities 
gives an insight into the nature of this process. 
	The image, in Arieti's terminology, is a straightforward 
mental reproduction of visual perception, and does not allow 
cognitive processes. The first form of symbols to develop is, 
according to Arieti, the paleosymbol (Arieti, 1967, p. 68). The 
paleosymbol is a mental cognitive construct that represents a 
specific object in the external world. The paleosymbol is an 
advance on the image, in that it now is possible that one object 
symbolizes another object. Arieti takes the example of a tame 
chimpanzee, attached to her owner. It became highly agitated each 
time the owner showed signs of leaving, but could comfort itself 
with a piece of clothing used by the owner. This is still an 
extremely limited form of symbolism, since the symbol is private. 
It has its specific meaning only for one individual, and this 
meaning cannot be communicated to others without more advanced 
forms of symbolization. A slightly more advanced form of cognition 
is the endocept (ibid., p. 85), a term Arieti chose to denote a vague 
and conceptless mental construct, consisting of a primitive 
formation of perceptions, memory traces, images and exocepts. It 
is experienced as a mood, an atmosphere, or a kind of holistic 
experience. Like the paleosymbol, the endocept is to personal and 
vague to permit communication. The absence of language precludes 
consensual validation, i.e. the comparison of one's own perception 
and cognitions with those of other people. It also precludes 
internal validation, i.e. testing of perceptions and cognitions by 
systematic thought processes (ibid., p. 80). 
	Arieti calls the experiential world of images and 
paleosymbols phantasmic (ibid., p. 79f). In the phantasmic world it 
is very difficult to distinguish the inner world of images from the 
external reality. A person at this level does not have the means to 
fully understand that physical objects in the environment and 
objects in the imaginating mind are of different natures. Physical 
objects may be perceived as full of emotion and intention, whereas 
inner images may be reacted to as if they had an objective 
existence of their own (e.g. ancestral spirits). The same 
'confusion' applies to animate vs. inanimate objects, and human 
beings vs. other living beings. The lack of differentiation between 
different classes of objects explains a tendency to 
'anthropomorphized' perception, an unconscious assumption that 
other objects are analogous to oneself, i.e. even a tree, an animal or 
a place may have moods, emotions or intentions. The world is 
animistic, full of life. Images, wishes, perceptions and emotions 
have the same reality-value, just because they are experienced. 
Here is the root of the so-called omnipotent feelings described in 
the psychoanalytic literature. The lack of validation possibilities 
means that omnipotence cannot be put into perspective. 
	The new cognitive abilities of the magical level allows for 
the development of a more complex emotional life, what Arieti 
calls second-order emotions (ibid., p. 70). The existence of inner 
representations makes emotional responses to absent objects 
possible. Two important second-order emotions are anxiety and 
wishing. The recollection of images of an intensely unpleasant 
nature evokes anxiety, whereas the recollection of pleasant images 
may evoke wishes. The protoemotions of the archaic level are bound 
to the present experience, and are therefore of short duration. 
Second-order emotions may be sustained over longer time-spans. 
The anticipation of future dangers and their unpleasant 
consequences can create enduring anxiety not possible at lower 
levels of development. The anticipation of possible future events 
paves the way for more complex forms of behaviour, intended to 
avoid potential dangers. Anger is a form of rage sustained by 
images. Whereas rage usually leads to immediate action, anger can 
persist over a long time. 
	The development of a larger repertoire of emotions is a very 
important occurrence, because of the predominant role of the body 
in the lower consciousness structures. The archaic individual had 
little more than instincts and proto-emotions to constitute his/her 
internal world. On the magical level, in contrast, the role of the 
instincts is sharply reduced by the existence of a rich and 
compelling world of emotions. As usual, Neumann's 
characterization is vivid and evocative: 
This fluid world of emotions which fills existence with what it 
finds striking, appealing and significant, is dominated by the 
symbolic life of mythological apperception, in which the categories 
of experience are not concepts of consciousness but symbols and 
archetypes. [...] Here we have not yet a world of things among which 
man moves and which he deals with, but an image world which 
stirs and moves him from both without and within, which directs 
him and which he circumambulates in ritual. From the standpoint of 
consciousness this symbolic experience is an unconscious view of 
the world, in which the world or a segment of the world is 
apperceived (from an ethnological standpoint one might speak here 
of animism or preanimism) as a unitary, thoroughly animated 
world. (Neumann, 1973/1990:152)

Let us not rush over this, because it is essential: man at the magic 
level lived in a world full of life, impressions and moving events, 
and he/she did not make any clear difference between the external 
objects and events, and the mental images representing them. One 
aspect of this is an inability to perceive the environment from a 
perspective which is independent of one's own standpoint 
(Habermas, 1976:15). For the person at this stage, the world is his 
or her perceptions. It is not possible to imagine that the situation 
might look different from the perspective of another person.  
	In the absence of language, the self is still largely a body-
self, i.e. the self is highly identified with the bodily impulses, 
emotions and instincts. In contrast to the archaic structure, 
however, the typhonic consciousness starts to perceive itself as 
different from the environment. This nascent awareness enables 
the development of a primitive form of intentionality. Since the 
environment is perceived as something separate from oneself, it 
becomes possible to imagine operating upon the environment, e.g. in 
order to satisfy wishes and needs. However, the differentiation of 
self and environment is still vague and incomplete, and one cannot 
yet talk about boundaries between the self and the external world. 
The self-sense is consequently more a transient feeling than a 
distinct and continuous awareness. 
	As Neumann points out, myth beautifully depicts the nature of 
the magical structure in the image of the Mother Goddess and her 
Son-Lover (Neumann, 1949/1970:46). In these myths, the Great 
Mother rules, and her consort, simultaneously son (man as child of 
Mother Nature) and lover, is only a transient appendage. The son-
lover is weak, dependent and unindividualized, completely 
subjected to the rule and will of the Goddess. 
	The unfocussed self-sense is fragile and easily effaced by 
external or internal stimuli. Physical threats or strong emotions 
floods and submerges the self-sense, and the proto-individual falls 
back into instinctual patterns of behaviour. 
	Gebser (1949/1992:36; 92) put considerable emphasis on the 
absence of time and space consciousness in the magical structure. 
Experience is bound to the concrete, and there is neither an 
awareness of the existence of a continuous landscape extending in 
all directions, nor a conception of historical/developmental time 
with a past and a future. Time is, on the whole, only a passing 
present (Wilber, 1983:63). Hence, planning for the future is an 
impossible notion. The conjecture of future consequences of 
present acts is very difficult. 

As pointed out above, the differentiation of self and environment 
opens the possibility of intentionality. However, the cognitive 
abilities of the magical structure only allows a very limited 
understanding of causality. As in the case of children at the pre-
operational level (Piaget), there is no recognition of processes. A 
situation is reacted to as it is perceived in the immediate present, 
not from an understanding of how the situation evolved (Montada, 
1987:424). Events just happen, sometimes according to 'habits' 
whose sources are not understood, but not as a result of definitive 
causal relations. Whitmont (1982:46) elaborates: 
From the magical point of reference, events are not caused and 
cannot be rationally planned. They happen as fated manifestations 
of powerful and unknowable forces beyond man's control. They 
express inexorable natural forces. They are inevitable, not subject 
to challenge, change, responsibility, or understanding. One can only 
invoke, accept, propitiate, and adapt to one's fate.

Moreover, the absence of a conception of extended time, in which 
present actions can affect future states, precludes the 
development of a sense of being a subject capable of shaping the 
future. It should be noted that the emergence of a separate-self 
sense introduced an urge to have some kind of notion about 
causality. Awareness of separateness is equal to awareness of 
vulnerability. The more one is aware of one's vulnerability and 
mortality, the more pressing is the need to perceive the cosmos as 
ordered, so that events are, to some extent, predictable. 
	In later phases of the magical structure a notion of causality 
evolves, but true to the anthropomorphic 'thinking' the anonymous 
forces of causality take form as mythological images: spirits, gods 
and other similar creatures. Through this process it becomes 
possible for man to enter into a relationship with the causal forces 
of the world, and thus to try to influence the course of events. 
While the cognitive abilities are still relatively undeveloped, these 
causal forces are perceived as a multitude of spirits. Each spiritual 
force stands more or less for itself. A conception of a coherent 
world-image, where all the different elements are integrated into 
a system, has not developed because of a restricted capacity to 
sustain large mental symbolic systems. Only at higher stages do 
conceptions of a single god or of universal principles emerge. 
	It appears that the early conceptions of causality were 
impregnated with the notion of reciprocity. The world was 
experienced as a whole, a totality. Habermas points out, that in 
early phases of cognitive development one is not able to 
differentiate the environment in a natural and a social sphere 
(Habermas, 1976:15, 26). The same forms of interaction may be 
used indiscriminately for both spheres. Physical objects may be 
experienced as full of intentions and emotions, which are 
communicated with through magical practice. Imperatives, whether 
in the natural or the social world, are experienced as the result of 
concrete wishes (Habermas 1976:81). This understanding has 
wideranging consequences: 
In the unitary world experienced by the magical ego there is a 
universal relatedness; everything is connected with everything else 
and one thing can and must stand for the rest. The notion of 
unconscious identity, of participation mystique, stems from this 
world, as does the notion, valid for the early world, of the identity 
of the part with the whole. [...] In return for everything that he 
takes for himself from nature as a whole, for everything he uses 
and so withdraws from the totality of being, he always restores a 
representative as a sacrifice, in order that the totality of being 
may be preserved. This emotional bond with existence determines 
the actions of man in the world just as the symbolic image 
determines the form of his world-experience. Both are 
consequences of the anthropocentric world-relatedness of early 
man and the child, which is a part of their magical world 
orientation. (Neumann, 1973/1990:153)

The sacrifice is thus intrinsic to the magical world-view. However, 
the full development of sacrifice as a 'technology' occurs at the 
mythical level, and we will return to the issue in the corresponding 
section. 


Motivation

The evolution of second-order emotions widens the motivational 
spectrum by introducing a (rudimentary) temporal dimension. The 
archaic person could not form conceptions about future states, and 
therefore had to rely on unconscious instinctual patterns for need 
satisfaction. The images and paleosymbols of the magic structure 
engenders wishes and anxiety. The motivation of the magic 
structure is therefore increasingly dominated by wish fulfillment 
and search for security. However, the scope of the wishes is still 
very restricted by a limited conception of time and a narrow range 
of mental representational capacity. The 'pleasure principle' is 
characteristic for the magical stage, even though some deeper 
strata of motivation may be traced as well. 
	In Jungian psychology, it is emphasized that consciousness is 
born out of the unconscious (e.g. Neumann, 1949/1970:46). The 
nascent ego must struggle for its emergence out of the sea of the 
unconscious, and it must wrest psychic energy from an unconscious 
which is basically hostile to the ego's existence. This perspective 
implies that the early form of consciousness is perpetually 
threatened by sinking back into the unconscious, either by sheer 
exhaustion, or by being overwhelmed or flooded by strong emotions 
or other stimuli:
It [consciousness] feels itself a tiny, defenseless speck, enveloped 
and helplessly dependent, a little island floating on the vast 
expanse of the primal ocean. [...] Exposed to the dark forces of the 
world and the unconscious, early man's life feeling is necessarily 
one of constant endangerment. (Neumann, 1949/1970:40)

One of the central theses of Wilber is that the emergence of a 
sense of separate existence inevitably engenders fear: 'Wherever 
there is other, there is fear' (after the Upanishads, cited in Wilber, 
1983:58). This means that fear for dissolution emerges as a part of 
motivation as soon as some kind of self-sense evolves: 
To be able to live with this increasingly precarious situation, he 
had to (1) start defending his increasingly separate self (against 
death and Thanatos), while (2) trying to make it appear stable, 
permanent, enduring, immortal, and cosmocentric (life and more 
life�Eros). (Wilber, 1983:40)

In other words, man at the magical stage tried to avoid taboo 
(death, badness) and accumulate mana (life, power, goodness). 
Wilber also cites Joseph Campbell, who formulated the basic 
reaction to this predicament: 'Where there is magic there is no 
death' (Wilber, 1983:66). This sentence captures two essential 
themes in the psychology of the magical structure: basic human 
motivation on the one hand, and the available means to act upon the 
motivational urges on the other hand. 
	Two preconditions for the development of conscious acting 
evolves slowly in the magical structure: the sense of being 
separate from the environment, and conscious wishes (in contrast 
to unconscious instincts). However, the capacity to influence the 
environment in order to satisfy wishes is highly dependent upon, 
and circumscribed by, how the world and its causal relations are 
perceived. There are many indications that a primary characteristic 
of magical cognition is that objects which from the viewpoint of 
the egoic structure are perceived as separate, may in the 
phantasmic world be magically connected. When the person at the 
magic stage tries to conceive of causal relations, connections are 
made on the basis of similarity or proximity (Frazer, 1922/1951, 
ch. 3). This might mean that objects which share some type of 
characteristic, e.g. a lion and a warrior, are perceived as being 
identical. The man and the lion are magically one. This kind of 
'logic' operates in voodoo, where a doll and the person represented 
by the doll are experienced as magically connected. By manipulating 
the doll, the person is influenced. Likewise, the magical person 
might perceive a part of an object as embodying the essence of the 
object. A lion's fang worn in a necklace might give the bearer share 
in the lion's strength. 
	As a direct consequence of the birth of the self-sense, the 
proto-individual is attracted to experiences which gives him a 
sense of power, an enhanced life-feeling. Unfortunately, one source 
of such feelings is aggressive acts toward others. Inflicting pain or 
death upon other living beings induces a sense of power, and 
thereby death is denied. I deliberately used the masculine pronoun 
'him' above, because it is primarily men who are attracted to 
experiences that give a sense of power. Apart from genetically 
inherited sex-specific dispositions, it might be suggested that men 
are more prone to feel threatened by a separate self-sense than 
women, because women are usually more oriented towards building 
relations. The imbeddedness in a network of relations reduces the 
sense of vulnerability, and thereby also the attraction to self-
enhancing acts. Men, on the other hand, are usually more task-
oriented and more self-assertive. 
	A circumstance which may aggravate aggressive behaviour at 
the magical stage is the limited capacity to form a mental 
conception of mortality and death. This inability to imagine a 
future death may lead to behaviour which give an intense sense of 
pleasure (and hence life-feeling), but at the same time entails 
great risks. 
	The weak and inconsistent self-sense makes resolute action 
a difficult achievement. The difficulties are furthermore greater 
the greater the distance is between act and result. Immediate 
action on present wishes or drives for immediate gratification can 
be mastered, but acts that require prolonged effort and foresight 
are almost impossible. In this predicament, the ritual is an 
indispensable technique. The ritual uses recognizable and 
invariable behaviour and symbols for mobilizing and focussing the 
dispersed psychic energy of the group on a particular task. 
Neumann:
'[...] every action must be prepared by libido-harnessing rituals, 
since the libido of the will is not yet available at all times as in 
the more mature ego. Just as a child must learn painstakingly to 
act willfully, to carry through its intention, to think consequently, 
to objectify itself and to become independent, directing system in 
its confrontation with the world, so the conscious activity of the 
magical ego is an exceptional, trying state which, because it is 
determined by accidental factors in the world, is time and time 
again reabsorbed into the matriarchal world of the unconscious, of 
the body and the world.' (Neumann, 1973/1990:149)

The ritual is one of the first examples of external, collectively 
sustained, supports for individual coping. The group members 
collectively reproduce the rituals, relieving the individuals of the 
difficult task of keeping a goal in mind and of sustaining 
concentration and effort. In the pre-individuated consciousness 
structures, where the individual has developed beyond purely 
instinctual behaviour but has not yet achieved a genuine 
individuality, the group must provide an external support structure. 


The individual and the group

One of the characteristics of consciousness development which is 
difficult to grasp from the perspective of modern ego-
consciousness is that individual consciousness is a late 
achievement. We tend to think of the relation between the 
individual and the group in terms of the individual identifying with 
the group. In a developmental and phenomenological perspective, 
the group came first, and individual consciousness later. In the 
early stages of consciousness development, the human being was a 
part of a group-organism. The 'proto-self' was symbiotic. 
Within the containing organic group, family or clan, the single 
person functions like a cell in a larger mother organism. Activities 
are coordinated by instinct, fixed action patterns, ESP-determined 
knowing, and by imitation. Rule, law, and individual ethos do not 
yet exist. (Whitmont, 1982:47)

The lack of firm boundaries between self and other meant that the 
proto-individual was wide open to the emotional currents in the 
group. At the stage of magical consciousness, with only 
rudimentary language at most, communication between the group 
members was mostly emotional. Moods, sudden fears, agitation, 
aggressiveness, etc, flowed freely due to the absence of competing 
cognitive faculties. There was a strong psychic connectedness in 
the group (Feuerstein, 1987:66f). Exclusion from this group-
awareness through physical separation or rejection was highly 
anxiety-evoking. 
	Apart from instincts, more complex intentional acts depended 
on the collective mobilization of will power through ritual. This 
means that the individual is highly dependent on the group for 
his/her survival. 
	The absence of language precludes a social order built upon 
rules and norms. Instinctual patterns may play a certain role in 
shaping the social order, but there is also another force at work. 
Neumann gave a hint of its nature: 
When we speak of the order of this matriarchal stage, it must be 
understood that this order is not that of the later patriarchal logos 
principle, but pertains to an earlier matriarchal principle, namely 
the principle of Eros, an experience of order and meaning that is 
largely determined by feeling. [...] The matriarchal consciousness is 
a relatedness-consciousness of nearness, its highest form is a 
wisdom contrasting with the objective, abstract wisdom of the 
patriarchal logos which looks at things from a distance. [...] This 
Eros-character of unconscious, instinctive wisdom always applies 
to relations between living things. (Neumann, 1973/1990:52f)

What Neumann hints at is the non-verbal empathic bonding between 
members of a group (see also Houston, 1980:44). These emotional 
ties contribute to the cohesion of the group, and restricts socially 
disruptive behaviour within the group. However, there is still no 
conscience in the modern sense of the word. The development of a 
conscience rests on the ability to internalize linguistic scripts, 
and on the ability to role-taking, to take the perspective of others. 
In this sense, the typhonic proto-individual is pre-moral. The 
beginning of prosocial behaviour can be traced to a non-verbal 
sensitivity to the emotional state of others. Prosocial acts may 
result from actions to reduce distress that 'leaks in' from other 
group members. By comforting others one may reduce tension in 
oneself (cf. Krebs & Van Hesteren, 1994, table 2). This represents a 
growing awareness of the other. However, this awareness is almost 
exclusively emotional, and therefore restricted to the immediate 
present. More sophisticated forms of prosocial behaviour require 
cognitive abilities to create an inner gestalt of the other. The 
'proto-altruistic' acts and intentions of the magical individual are 
restricted to persons with whom one is in immediate (emotional) 
contact. 
	Habermas (1976:151) points out that social roles can only be 
constituted when the group members are able to cognitively 
sustain a certain time horizon. Roles are generalized behaviour 
expectations, forming a system of mutual relations. The cognitive 
abilities at the magical level only permit rudimentary forms of 
social roles to develop, which is restricts the spectrum of possible 
forms of social organization to a narrow range. Groups remain 
relatively small and undifferentiated, and the social structure of 
the group is determined primarily by the concrete characteristics 
of the individuals: physical strength, age, appearance. 
	In the absence of an individual conscience, internalized norms 
and a superego, social rules could only exist in quite rudimentary 
non-verbal forms. The notion of taboo fits well into this setting, as 
taboo to a high degree is an emotional experience. Certain places, 
acts or objects are experienced as charged with badness and death, 
or simply as forbidden (Feuerstein, 1987:63). Since the spheres of 
the natural world and the social world are not cognitively 
differentiated, the nature of moral prescriptions is not clearly 
differentiated from other types of imperatives. Both taboos and 
natural laws are experienced as parts of a common cosmic order, 
unavailable to modification by man (Eder, 1980:152). The taboo is a 
crude and inflexible form of collective norms, but a form which 
does not require much of linguistic or cognitive capability. There 
was no conscious intentionality behind the taboos, they rather 
emerged as results of primary-process 'thinking.' Thus the first 
expressions of self-regulation were experienced as something 
external, attributes of the cosmos. 
	The socially instituted forms of morality are restricted to 
concrete retribution. Moral judgments are made only according to 
the physical consequences of an act, whereas the intentions of the 
perpetrator are not considered. The aim of 'justice' at this stage 
is to restore a disturbed equilibrium by retaliation or 
compensation for concrete damages (Habermas, 1976:135; Eder, 
1980:163).


Ingroup/outgroup relations

In the magical stage, the ingroup is defined by common ancestry. 
This means that the ingroup can be larger than the immediate band 
of individuals who live together and have mutual personal bonds. By 
referring to common descent, the primary group can be extended to 
include related groups. The common cosmogonic origin of the 
members of a tribal group secures a place in the natural order of 
things for the individual. Because of the confusion of the social 
world and the natural world, the boundaries of the tribe is confused 
with the boundaries of the world in general (Habermas, 1976:26). 
This means that only that which is part of the tribe counts as 
significant parts of the world. Members or outgroups therefore do 
not have a real existence in the subjective universe of the magical 
individual. They are shadowy and insignificant objects that might 
be used for instrumental purposes, e.g. in war rituals to avert the 
wrath of the ancestors (Mansfield, 19XX:XX).


Remnants of the magical structure in the modern mind

The typhonic realm is bioenergy, i.e. the body's emotions and 
impulses. The pleasure principle, sexuality, and other sensual 
impulses belong to the typhonic layer. Non-verbal, emotional 
bonding in a group occurs without conscious participation, and may 
exert a considerable influence on our motivation and behaviour. 
	In the cognitive sphere, the typhonic structure lives on in the 
form of unconscious fantasy and dreaming. The most primitive 
typhonic fantasy operates with oral experiences: swallow or being 
swallowed, smearing, aggressiveness as biting. An important 
aspect of the unconscious is that no difference is made between 
the inner world and the outer world (von Franz, 1985, p. 19). This is 
the basis of projections, where aspects of the inner world are 
experienced as attributes of external objects. 
	Another trait of magical cognition which may linger on and 
give reminiscences in later structures is the tendency to 
concretistic interpretations. Physical size or material wealth may 
be equated with more subtle values, such as moral superiority, 
significance or authority. 
	A peculiar, and highly significant, aspect of the typhonic 
structure is the low level of differentiation of pain and pleasure, 
destructiveness and sexuality. Pleasure, pain and aggressivity are 
closely intertwined, especially in sexuality. Each one of these 
emotions may evoke the others. The pleasure-seeking orientation of 
the magical structure in combination with the absence of a 
capacity for realizing what future death and pain means can lead to 
death-orgies. Ultimate pleasures in a release of typhonic drives 
may be sought without regard for the consequences. 
	We still use rituals to mobilize and direct energies, even 
though we usually put more emphasis on symbols (which belong to 
the mythical stage), than on collective ceremonies involving 
rhythmic movements. A trivial example of energy-mobilizing ritual 
can be seen when icehockey teams are about to start a match. A 
less trivial example is divine service and common prayer on the eve 
of going to war. Besides mobilizing and directing energy, the ritual 
affirms the collective, transpersonal value of the intended action. 
In this way, the killing of game or of an enemy is not an individual 
act, for which the individual must fear retribution, but an act 
imbedded in the cosmic order (Neumann, 1973/1990:173). 


THE MYTHICAL STRUCTURE

Cognition, self-sense and perception of causality

The crucial event leading to the mythical structure is the 
acquisition of an elaborate language. Language permits conceptual 
thinking, which has a wide range of implications. Through 
conceptual thinking, the mind can be differentiated from the body, 
allowing the mind to 'operate on' the body. By impulse control, the 
mind can set the body to work in order to realize ideas (Wilber, 
1983:181). Another central element of language acquisition is that 
learning a language is equal to becoming member of a shared 
system of meaning (ibid., p. 22ff; 104). Before discussing the 
implications of these important themes, we shall use Arieti's 
account of cognitive development for gaining a more detailed 
insight in the process.
	The ability to operate with concepts is a great advance on 
earlier forms of mental representation (Arieti, 1967, ch. 7). Words 
are far more reliable and versatile than the fleeting and 
incommunicable images, paleosymbols and endocepts. By putting 
names on things, it becomes easier to differentiate between inner 
and outer reality. In the early phases, the concepts are mainly 
names for specific things or actions. At later stages connotative 
words emerge, i.e. words that stands for a class of objects or 
actions. 
	Full-fledged conceptual thinking developed only slowly. 
Before systematic thinking evolves, the mental processes are 
dominated by primary aggregations, loose mental constellations of 
images, endocepts, and denotative words covering a whole sphere 
of experience or meaning (ibid., p. 106). The level of specification 
and differentiation is still very low. Since the primary 
aggregations contain verbal elements, they can, to some extent, be 
communicated. The primary aggregations are perceived as 
undifferentiated wholes, where one part (e.g. a word) stands as an 
equivalent for the whole aggregation. Because of the totalistic 
character of primary aggregations, only very undifferentiated 
forms of communications are possible. 
	The next stage of cognitive development is the paleologic 
(ibid., p. 108ff.). In paleologic thinking, the mental constructs are 
more differentiated and organized than in the primary 
aggregations, but still less differentiated than in so-called 
Aristotelian logic. At the paleologic level, classes of objects are 
formed. The characteristic trait of paleologic is that objects that 
have a part in common become members of one class, and are 
perceived as identical and therefore interchangeable. Arieti calls 
this type of class primary. In secondary classes, on the other hand, 
objects are recognized as similar, but not identical. 
	Paleologic cognition allows an advancement on earlier levels. 
Whereas in the phantasmic world there is no sense of causality, the 
person who has access to the paleologic mode can ask why events 
happen. However, because of the low level of differentiation, the 
perception of causality is distorted. In the paleologic world, events 
are perceived as caused by anthropomorphized forces (ibid., p. 
113f). Things happen because someone, or something (the Gods, the 
Devil, Fate), wants them to happen. Causality is understood only in 
terms of intentionality. Events happen because their result was 
wanted. The conception of events happening just because of non-
teleological causal relations, such as natural laws, is a later 
achievement. 
	The access to language permits communication and 
consensual validation. It also permits organized chains of thoughts, 
which means that the individual can reflect on things. With words a 
verbal representation of sequences of events becomes possible, 
which implies that a consciousness of a past and a future can 
develop. 
	The cognitive process is still imprecise. Generalizations 
made from one object are often applied to other objects of the 
same primary class. Mental objects lack constancy and definition, 
and transmute incessantly. 
	The focus of Arieti's treatise is on how the perception of the 
external world develops, and the consequences of this process for 
the range of emotions and the self-sense. The process is one of 
moving from concrete mental reproductions of unique physical 
objects, towards increasingly generalized conceptions. However, 
the cognitive process regarding the internal world of emotions, 
intentions, drives, and unconscious contents had a different 
character. In early stages of cognitive development, it is extremely 
difficult to create distinct mental representations of invisible 
entities, such as psychic contents. There was still no clear 
differentiation of an external, 'objective', reality and an internal, 
subjective, world. When internal, invisible elements started to be 
perceived, they often took concretistic and personalized form. The 
pantheon of gods found in many early cultures can be regarded as 
personifications of human traits and tendencies. However, these 
aspects of the inner world could only be experienced in the form of 
external deities. Only slowly the realization dawned that there was 
an intimate connection between these mythological images and 
subjective experience (von Franz, 1985). A mind struggling to grasp 
invisible and abstract notions usually facilitates the process by 
thinking in opposites. Neumann emphasizes the portrayal in myth of 
the birth of the conscious, subjective world. Many creation myths 
attribute the origin of the world as an act of separation. A god or a 
hero separates the World Parents united in embrace, and thereby 
creates heaven and earth (Neumann, 1949/1970:103). The unity of 
pre-conceptual experience is split through the separation of the 
world into opposites: 
Only in the light of consciousness can man know. And this act of 
cognition, of conscious discrimination, sunders the world into 
opposites, for experience of the world is only possible through 
opposites. (Ibid., p. 104)
Not only do day and night, back and front, upper and lower, inside 
and outside, I and You, male and female, grow out of this 
development of the opposites and differentiate themselves from 
the original promiscuity, but opposites like 'sacred' and 
'profane', 'good' and 'evil', are now assigned their place in the 
world. 
	Besides disentangling itself from its fusion with nature and 
the group, the ego, having now opposed itself to the nonego as 
another datum of experience, begins simultaneously to constellate 
its independence of nature as independence of the body. (Ibid., p. 
109)

The tendency to gain consciousness by splitting the world into 
opposites is a familiar theme from Kleinian object relations 
theory. The infant perceives the world in opposites, because this is 
the only way of throwing light over the bewildering flow of stimuli 
the infant perceives. As object relations theory emphasizes 
(Volkan, 1988), a major task in development is to integrate the 
splits between good and evil to form differentiated gestalts. Few 
of us come very far in this respect. 
	A more sophisticated repertoire of mental representations, 
of which verbal concepts are central, widens the cognitive 
abilities considerably. Objects and events may be represented in 
the mind without there being a direct correspondent in the 
external, physical reality (Feuerstein, 1987:77). Past events may 
be recalled, and future events may be imagined. Access to concepts 
permits the mental representation of a sequence of events. A more 
sophisticated conception of time and causality can therefore 
develop. Moreover, it becomes possible to use hypothetical 
thinking, i.e. to imagine different possibilities. Operating with 
verbal concepts, the possibility opens to use consensual validation, 
i.e. checking out one's perceptions, interpretations and conclusions 
with others. A collective cognitive process becomes possible, 
where a group can accumulate a body of commonly held views, 
values, thoughts, etc. 
	However, there are several stages of cognitive development 
between preverbal primary-process 'thinking' and full logical 
thinking. At the mythical stage, the basic principles of thinking are 
still highly influenced by the magical world-view. The early mythic 
images are too undifferentiated to permit precise conceptual 
operations. Thinking rather operates unconsciously in terms of 
associations and magical connections. In the absence of thinking in 
terms of abstract principles, narration is a central tool for 
forming explanations, formulating world-views, and conveying 
norms (Habermas, 1976:18). By telling stories and relating myths, 
solutions to problems can be advanced by reference to role models 
and examples, without recourse to abstract principles. The limits 
of this form of knowledge transmission is the lack of reflexivity. 
The individuals lack the cognitive instruments for applying general 
principles to special circumstances. The mythic consciousness 
structure is therefore rather rigid, relying heavily upon the 
accumulated resevoire of myths and unreflected norms. 
	The characteristic time-awareness of the mythical level is 
more developed than at the magical level. The cognitive 
instruments allows a conception of seasonal time, and hence the 
development of agriculture, which requires planning in a seasonal 
cycle. However, there is still no conception of historical time, i.e. 
of time as an extended process where the distant past is different 
from the present and the future. The awareness of space is also 
limited, in the sense that the mental world does not incorporate a 
notion of landscapes extending in all directions (Feuerstein, 
1987:112f). The imagination of the existence of distant lands 
which may be very different from the known surroundings does not 
occur spontaneously. This state can be compared to that of children 
who live in a concrete lifeworld, and don't reflect on what is 
beyond the horizon.  
	The self-sense of the mythical structure is marked by a 
growing differentiation of mind and body. At the magical level, the 
self was basically identified with the impulses. At the mythical 
stage, the identifictation is gradually shifting towards the mind. In 
this process, the person no longer is his or her impulses, and 
therefore can start to see various spontanteous impulses in a new 
perspective (see further below). By identifying the self with the 
slowly consolidating verbal mind, the self gained in consciousness, 
but also in the sense of vulnerability and fragility. The nascent 
consciousness feels weak and powerless in comparison to the great 
forces of nature and fate. Apparently the paradigmatic 
(mythopoetic) way of conceiving this sphere of experience 
historically was the relation between the human and the Great 
Mother (Neumann, 1949/1970). The Great Mother/Goddess was a 
mythical personification of the sense of being at the mercy of 
nature (including the bodily impulses). 
	At the magical level, there was no awareness of causal 
relations, only a vague recognition of regularities as 'habits' of 
the world and a feeling of living forces operating on all levels of 
existence. Conceptual thinking enables the individual to mentally 
represent causal connections. As Arieti points out, the early 
efforts to grasp causality are highly influenced by paleologic 
principles.  


Motivation

In the mythical structure the mind is still only weakly 
differentiated from the body, and motivation continues to be highly 
related to impulses and spontaneous wishes. However, the birth of 
the membership mind introduces new spheres of motivation, 
especially security and self-protection, as a consequence of the 
increased awareness of a separate self; and belongingness, as a 
consequence of the membership character of the mythical mind. 
Fear of being rejected by the group is consequently an important 
motivating factor at this stage, partly because without being a 
part of the group, the individual is nothing. 
	The capacity to imagine future events introduces the 
potential of choice of action in human behaviour. The mental 
conception of a chain of events leading to a desired goal is not 
enough for conscious action, though. In earlier stages behaviour 
was spontaneous, arising from instincts and immediate emotions 
through impulses. In order to carry through willed acts, a certain 
amount of impulse control must be achieved. The individual must be 
capable of delaying, and possibly suppressing, the motor discharge 
upon upcoming impulses. In the beginning stages, this is very 
difficult, because the mind is weak, and the impulses are strong. 
The individual may need the help of external structures and 
internalized commands to be able to tame the animal within. 
Language permits the formulation of imperative scripts. In early 
stages these scripts were probably experienced as something 
coming from the outside, in the form of voices, the authority of the 
group leader, or as holy laws inherent to the cosmic order. 
	Increasing awareness of the separate self breeds an 
intensified search for enhancing life and denying death. Arieti 
formulated the new dynamic in the following way: 
Man is always short of what he can conjecture; he can always 
conceive of a situation better than the one he is in. [...] But being 
able to conceive of the infinite, the immortal, the greater and 
greater, he cannot accept his littleness. He feels frustrated about 
his own nature and desperately searches for ways to overcome his 
condition [...]. (Arieti, 1981:291)

Ernest Becker built his analysis of the human condition on the 
inability of the human being to cope with an increasing awareness 
of vulnerability and mortality. The answer to this predicament 
was, according to Becker, grandiosity: 
Man, the animal who knows he is not safe here, who needs 
continued affirmation of his powers, is the one animal who is 
implacably driven to work beyond animal needs precisely because 
he is not a secure animal. The origin of human drivenness is 
religious because man experiences creatureliness; the amassing of 
a surplus, then, goes to the very heart of human motivation, the 
urge to stand out as a hero, to transcend the limitations of the 
human condition and achieve victory over impotence and finitude. 
(Becker, 1975:31)

In the paleologic world, the means for achieving more life and less 
death were highly influenced by the understanding of causality 
outlined above. The 'cosmic balance philosophy' holds that life can 
only be bought by life. If you want more life, fertility, power, 
mana, you have to offer something valuable in return, preferably 
something with life in it. Whitmont (1982:56): 
By the magico-mythological view, nothing can come into existence 
unless something equivalent goes out of existence. Therefore all 
creation requires sacrifice. We may perhaps choose the how and 
when of sacrifice or loss, and sometimes even the what, but we 
cannot avoid sacrifice as such. [...] The nonpersonal psyche 
perceives sacrifice as the core of the creative process and as a 
fundamental condition for every new step of life development. 

In contrast to the magical level, the mythical level conceived of 
the forces of the cosmos as personalized powers, more consistent 
and distinct than the magical conception of an animistic 
environment. The belief in one's own magical manipulations of 
events fades away, making place for a belief in anthropomorphic 
powers who can grant favours under certain circumstances (Wilber, 
1991:199). The one who presided over life and death, fertility and 
destruction was, of course, the Great Mother. As Neumann 
(1949/1970:54ff) points out, blood played a crucial role in the 
sacrificial ceremonies. The obvious connection between blood and 
life is corroborated by the fact that when a woman gets pregnant, 
menstruation stops. This is understood as evidence that the new 
life is created by the blood held back. It lies near at hand to use use 
blood as a currency for bartering about new or more life with the 
Great Mother. 


The individual and the group

By the advent of verbal concepts, the mind can be differentiated 
from the body, and the self can be constituted as a verbal self, in 
contrast to the body-self of earlier structures. Cognition by 
concepts permits verbal communication, collective accumulation of 
experience, and a social order based on rules and norms. Wilber is 
very explicit in pointing out that in the shift from body-self to 
mind-self, the individual becomes a group-member in a very far-
reaching sense: 
'Reality, or the world we all know, is only a description . . . , an 
endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we, the 
individuals who share a specific membership, have learned to make 
in common' [citation from Castaneda]. This large, unconscious 
background of membership cognition, basically linguistic in nature, 
of shared sentiments, shared descriptive realities, and shared 
perceptions, alone can serve as the psychological support of a 
coherent society. And it is a largely unconscious form of social 
control: the controls are built into the particular description of 
reality itself, and are not something consciously added onto them. 
Once an individual responds to a description of reality, his behavior 
is already circumscribed by that description. 
	On the other hand, the membership structure, precisely 
because it is the first to contain large blocs of linguistic 
elements, can also float specific, internalized, verbal instructions 
or commands, the earliest of which are usually received from the 
parents�the so-called proto-superego, which is instrumental in 
this stage and almost, as it were, embedded in it. (Wilber, 
1983:104)

If this view is correct, the individual-group relation should not be 
conceived as a process of identification from the part of the 
individual with group norms and self-image. The individual is not 
first a separate individual, who then identifies with a group. By 
constituting him- or herself as a mind-self, the identity of the 
individual is from the very beginning built up of collective 
elements (shared concepts). In fact, it takes a long time to learn to 
differentiate the personal, unique identity from the collective self. 
	An increasing sense of individuality means an increasing 
sense of vulnerability. One of the uses of the culture from the 
individual's point of view, is to reduce the sense of vulnerability 
by providing a cosmology that explains how the cosmos is ordered. 
The mythical worldview provides a system where each object and 
each event is given a meaning. Misfortunes and accidents can be 
explained as a part of an intelligible order (Habermas, 1976:98). By 
providing rules that, if followed, give a certain amount of 
immunity against calamities, the mythological systems reassures 
the individual. 
	In the mythical structure, a process of internal 
differentiation of the psyche starts. By internalizing a set of rules, 
norms and instructions, the individual develops the beginning of a 
superego (Wilber, 1983:106). The potential for internal conflicts 
therefore grows considerably, often forcing the self to take the 
side of the super-ego and repress the impulsive nature of the body-
self. Failure to complete this task leads to socially disruptive 
behaviour, which is persecuted by other group members. 
	The gradual differentiation of the mind from the impulsive 
body means that it becomes possible to take a stand on spontaneous 
impulses. A particular spontaneous impulse to act in a specific way 
can now be compared to a mental conception of how one should act 
(Habermas, 1976:81). A major theme of this level is the struggle 
between these two poles. The first steps in the development of a 
rule-based morality (in contrast to unconscious empathy) appear in 
this structure. However, at the mythical stage, the individual is 
still incapable of role-taking, i.e. developing a full mental 
representation of another person, and imagining what this person 
feels and wants. This means that empathy is restricted to the pure 
emotional level. A person at this stage may feel empathy with 
someone with whom he or she has a direct relation (an emotional 
bond), and whose distress is perceived non-verbally, through direct 
transmission of emotions. However, he or she is unable to feel 
empathy only on the basis of a mental representation of the other's 
situation. Whitmont (1982:60) points out that the functions of the 
psyche are not differentiated from each other at this stage. 
According to Jungian psychology, we have two valuing functions in 
the psyche, feeling and thinking. At this stage they are not 
separated, which means that something which evokes fear is 
deemed evil and wrong. 
	A beginning understanding of causality opens the potential 
for a feeling of responsibility for one's own actions. However, a 
fully developed sense of responsibility can only emerge when the 
individual has a firm sense of being a separate person. 
	An important aspect of the 'morality' of the mythical stage 
is that beginning verbal capacity permits the communication and 
internalization of rules (Wilber, 1980:27). However, these rules 
must be kept fairly simple and unambiguous in order to be retained 
and understood. In this stage, rules are accepted as absolutes, and 
they are interpreted literally. In terms of practical moral 
judgment, justice is now no longer based on concrete consequences 
(as in the magical stage), but oriented towards the keeping or 
breaking of rules. Individuals are expected to conform to norms and 
roles, not out of fear for immediate sanctions, but out of respect 
for the conventional order (Habermas, 1976:150). The capacity to 
reflect upon the rules, and to evaluate their legitimacy according 
to universal moral principles does not emerge before the mental-
egoic structure. Since this type of mental structure permeates both 
earlier and contemporary societies to a high degree, it is important 
to discuss it quite extensively. Neumann devoted one of his books 
entirely to the issue of ethical development (Neumann, 
1949/1990). He points out the group character of morality at this 
stage: 
Since the individual only functions as a member of the group, and 
group consciousness is more important than individual 
consciousness, not unnaturally we always find also group 
responsibility and a group ethic at this level. The condition of 
participation mystique, of the unconscious mutual identity of 
persons, is expressed in the fact that the group is responsible for 
the individual and that each individual, for his part, is regarded as 
an incarnation of the whole group. 
	Whatever happens to the individual happens at the same time 
to the whole group, and the whole group reacts as such to what 
happens to any individual member (cf. the phenomenon of the blood 
feud). Responsibility is located not in the individual but in the 
group. And just as the whole group is regarded as affected by an act 
of murder, so too it is not the intention of the group to strike back 
at the individual murderer. As the whole group to which the 
murderer belongs is guilty, blood revenge can be exacted from any 
given member of it. (Neumann, 1949/1990:60)

An ordered society at this stage must be able to limit the asocial 
expressions of the still strong body-centered impulsiveness, but 
the individuals are not yet capable of sustaining a firm self-
control based on self-evaluated individual norms. I will cite 
Whitmont at some length, since he formulated the key issues 
involved: 
Structured group life and social order mean ethics and morality, 
although a collective, not an individual morality. Order rest upon 
sheer approval and respect for taboo. What is to be shunned and 
what is required of each member are regulated. This curbs the most 
disruptive asocial impulses and imposes elementary social 
obligations. [...] Good is what is practical and collectively approved. 
Bad is what brings about visible harm or damage and is not in 
keeping with custom. Damaging group property and violating taboo 
are bad because they invite retribution from a superior force, 
whether leader, god, or demon. The violation of a custom is bad 
because it invites rejection and isolation. [...] Lying, stealing, 
cheating, brutality, torture, cruelty, and killing are commonplace 
and seemingly acceptable if they suit one's own group or the 
group's purpose. The practical effect is what counts, and whether 
one has successfully avoided retribution from superior powers. 
Only toward the end of the mythological phase, as patriarchy begins 
to dominate, does a new sense of a more encompassing ethic turn 
taboo into God-given law. (Whitmont, 1982:53)

The moral behaviour of the individual at the mythical stage is 
highly dependent on the existence of what Neumann called a 
'cultural canon' (Neumann, 1949/1970:381; 405), a body of values, 
norms and rules. From the perspective of the individual, this 
'cultural canon' is taken as a given: 'For a mind without historical 
consciousness, custom is custom and law law, for the simple 
reason that it always has been so [...]' (Neumann, 1949/1990:63). If 
the cultural canon withers away due to social upheaval or other 
reasons, there exists, for the mythical mind, little in the way of 
internalized norms which can provide the basis for a civilized 
social order. 
	In cultures dominated by the mythical consciousness 
structure, there is often a ritualized provision for letting the 
typhonic structure loose: carnivals, extatic rituals, and the like. In 
this way, the pressure of controlling and repressing the body-
impulses can be reduced in forms which do not threaten the basic 
social order. 
	The research on moral development and ego development  by 
Kohlberg and Loevinger reveals similar structures in ontogenetic 
development. Kohlberg's (1971, table 1) description of the 
preconventional level of moral development roughly corresponds 
with Neumann's, Whitmont's and Wilber's analysis of the mythical 
structure. The individual at the preconventional level is highly 
self-centered in his/her outlook, but at the same time highly 
dependent on a social environment which is perceived as given. The 
thinking is concrete, which means that the individual primarily 
perceives the physical aspects of events and relations. Strong and 
big are equated with right. Acts which have 'bad' (physical) 
consequences are perceived as morally bad. Kohlberg differentiates 
two stages of moral thinking at the preconventional level: 
'Punishment and obedience' and 'Instrumental relativist,' of 
which the former is perhaps better characterized as magical rather 
than mythical. 
	At the 'punishment and obedience' stage, the moral of the 
individual extends to avoiding getting punished. Action is 
dominated by immediate impulses, but there is a nascent 
awareness of the self-interest in avoiding acts which lead to 
punishment. There are superior powers capable of punishing 
transgression of rules, but there is no understanding of the 
rationale for the rules. Since the individual is incapable of role-
taking, there is no ability to consider the interest of other 
individuals or imagining the view-point of others. There is still no 
awareness of that social rules have a different character in 
comparison to physical laws. 
	At the next stage, 'instrumental relativist', a higher 
cognitive ability implies that immediate impulses become 
accompanied by wishes for rewards. The individual can recognize 
that other people have their own interests. This gives rise to a 
barter mentality. The motivation and outlook is still self-centered 
and close to impulses. Rules are followed when they are in one's 
own interest. Ability to make deals, but still primarily on a 
concrete, physical level. 
	Loevinger developed a model of ego development which also 
shows some interesting parallels to the framework of 
consciousness structures employed here. The mythical structure 
corresponds in some measure to Loevinger's 'Self-Protective' 
stage: 
The first step towards self-control of impulses is taken when the 
child learns to anticipate immediate, short-term rewards and 
punishments. Controls are at first fragile, and there is a 
corresponding vulnerability and guardedness, hence we term the 
stage Self-Protective. The child at this stage understands that 
there are rules, something not at all clear to the Impulsive child 
[the foregoing stage]. His main rule is, however, 'Don't get caught.' 
While he uses rules for his own satisfaction and advantage, that is 
a step forward from the external constraint necessary to contain 
the impulsiveness of the previous stage. 
	The Self-Protective person has the notion of blame, but he 
externalizes it to other people or to circumstances. [...] Getting 
caught defines an action as wrong. 
	The small child's pleasure in rituals is an aspect of this 
stage. An older child or adult who remains here may become 
opportunistic, deceptive, and preoccupied with control and 
advantage in his relations with other people. For such a person, life 
is a zero-sum game [...]. There is a more or less opportunistic 
hedonism. Work is perceived as onerous. (Loevinger, 1976:16f)

In Kohlberg's and Loevinger's models, the stages corresponding to 
the mythical structure are usually transcended long before 
reaching adulthood, and they occur in a cultural context dominated 
by a morality anchored in higher stages. In mythical cultures the 
cultural canon is enforced and borne by the majority of adults. This 
implies that in the conflict between a self-centered egoism, 
natural to the self-sense of this level, and an unquestioning 
acceptance of the existing rules, the emphasis is more on the 
latter. 
	The administration of justice at this stage emphasizes 
punishment rather than retaliation. Not only the concrete 
consequences of an act are considered, but also the intentions of 
the person involved. The birth of the person is recognized by making 
individuals accountable, a progress from the collective 
accountability of the magical structure. 


Ingroup/outgroup relations

The collective identities conceived in the magical structures were 
confined to kinship structures. The cognitive level of the mythic 
structure was capable of holding together more complex social 
systems. This was achieved by transcending tribal identities in 
favour of a mythologically organized collective identity. Instead of 
sharing common ancestors, the mythical consciousness structures 
emphasized the common ruler (Habermas, 1976:26). The collective 
shared a common mythological origin, and a common mythological 
destiny. The myths also legitimated the authority of the ruler, by 
specifying a special relationship between the ruler and the gods 
(Habermas, 1976:18). This transformation of the political 
structures was also a transition from kinship systems to systems 
based on territorial organization, i.e. states. 


Remnants of the mythical structure at later stages

Paleologic thinking permeates the unconscious processes, and pops 
up in our lives wherever we do not apply fully conscious reflection. 
There is a persistent tendency to revert to the basic assumption of 
a balanced cosmos where all events are based on reciprocal 
relationships and everyone gets exactly what they deserve. In this 
mental world there is no chance. If evil befalls you, it is a sign of 
your inherent badness, or of previous bad acts. If you are happy, the 
fates will soon demand payment in the form of a catastrophe or 
loss. 
	Regression to the mythical level may entail a reduced ability 
to differentiate between feeling and moral judgment (thinking). 
Objects and events evoking positive feelings are automatically 
perceived as morally right, whereas negative feelings are equated 
with moral evil. 


THE MYTHIC-RATIONAL STRUCTURE (CONFORMIST)

Cognition, self-sense and perception of causality

In the mythic-rational structure, the separation of the internal and 
the external objects continues. Magical conceptions recede further 
into the unconscious, increasing the differentiation of sentient vs. 
insentient objects. A clear distinction is made between the natural 
world and its objects and events, and the social world of subjects 
who can communicate and act intentionally (Habermas, 1976:15). 
The perception of the external world of physical objects is close to 
the mental-ego structure. However, the perception of the social 
sphere and of the internal nature of human individuals is still 
rather undifferentiated. In terms of cognitive abilities, the 
individual at this stage is capable of rule-based thinking and of 
mentally taking the role of another person (Wilber, 1991:192f). 
There is still no ability to formal-operational thinking, i.e. to 
reflect on rules and roles from an independent perspective. 
Therefore the individual tends to accept uncritically any rules and 
norms provided by what is perceived as legitimate authorities 
(Wilber, 1988:219). A central task of this stage is to develop a 
more sophisticated and differentiated insight into the internal 
world of individuals, both of the self (introspection) and of others. 
	A key characteristic distinguishing the conformist structure 
from the mythical structure is the recognition of the social order 
as a man-made reality. The individual's capacity for abstract 
thinking allows the construction of a 'generalized other,' i.e. the 
notion of a social role (Habermas, 1976:15; Krebs & Van Hesteren, 
1994, table 2). The conception of social roles requires a cognitive 
ability to  form coherent gestalts of behaviour expectations that 
are stable over time (Habermas, 1976:151). Furthermore, it 
requires an ability to see the social roles 'from the outside', i.e. 
as an observer. With this ability, the individual can see that my 
own expectations on others and the expectations of others on me 
form a reciprocal system which is stable over time and forms the 
basis of the society (Habermas, 1976:150f). In this phase, 
therefore, the notion of a citizen with certain rights and 
obligations develops. The rules regulating social life are no longer 
absolutes given by anonymous powers, but instituted by the society 
itself. However, there is still no ability to take an independent 
stand on the cultural canon in terms of individually evaluated 
universal principles. 
	The world-view at the mythic-rational stage goes beyond the 
mythical world-view by exchanging the narrative explanations for 
argumentative reasoning, providing rational arguments for the 
explanations given (Habermas, 1986:19). However, the worldviews 
do not exploit the full potential of rational thinking, since there 
are still basic dogmas that cannot (and must not) be questioned 
(Habermas, 1976:18). This kind of thinking dominated the medieval 
scholastic, where great ingenuity was developed to rationalize the 
Christian cosmology.  The worldviews (and therefore the 
ideologies, moral systems and norms) of the mythic-rational 
structure are therefore quite rigid. There is no open space for 
considering evidence about the truth or falseness of the basic 
dogmas. 
	The conformist person has still to develop a full capacity for 
forming gestalts containing contradictory elements and tendencies. 
That a person may simultaneously harbour negative and positive 
feelings and intentions toward the same object is hard to grasp. 
Loevinger is perhaps the scholar who has made the most explicit 
attempt to delineate the characteristics of this structure. Two of 
Loevinger's stages fall within the mythic-rational structure: the 
'Conformist' stage and the 'Self-aware' level. Loevinger 
characterizes the typical Conformist's perceptions of the social 
environment in the following way:
While he observes group differences, he is insensitive to individual 
differences. The groups are defined in terms of obvious external 
characteristics, beginning with sex, age, race, nationality, and the 
like. Within groups so defined, he sees everyone as being pretty 
much alike, or at least he thinks they ought to be. [...] The 
Conformist's views of people and of situations involving people are 
conceptually simple, admitting few contingencies or exceptions. [...] 
he sees behavior in terms of its externals rather than in terms of 
feelings, in contrast to persons at higher levels. Inner life he sees 
in banal terms such as happy, sad, glad, joy, sorrow, and love and 
understanding.(Loevinger, 1976:18)

In terms of self-sense and individual identity, the individual is 
more or less exclusively identified with what the Jungians call the 
persona. The persona is a role-personality, i.e. a personality 
primarily defined in terms of role in the social system (Jung, 
1966/1990, ch. 3; Neumann, 1949/1990:37). The full emergence of 
the persona is an event with wide-ranging consequences, some of 
which are the focus of Neumann's analysis in the book Depth 
psychology and a new ethic (1949/1990). The persona is the key to 
the taming of impulsive body-self in the service of an ordered 
society based on roles and discipline. Neumann characterizes the 
persona in the following way: 
The persona is the cloak and the shell, the armour and the uniform, 
behind which and within which the individual conceals 
himself�from himself, often enough, as well as from the world. It 
is the self-control which hides what is uncontrolled and 
uncontrollable, the acceptable fa�ade behind which the dark and 
strange, eccentric, secret and uncanny side of our nature remains 
invisible. 
	A large part of education will always be devoted to the 
formation of the persona, which will make the individual 'clean 
about the house' and socially presentable [...]. 
	The ego will receive the reward of moral recognition by the 
collective to the exact extent to which it succeeds in identifying 
with the persona, [...] the simple reason being that this fa�ade 
personality is the invisible sign of agreement with the values of 
the collective. (Neumann, 1949/1990: 37-38)

Because the individual is still incapable of living with a conception 
of him- or herself as a complex personality with internal 
contradictions (e.g. between spontaneous egoistic impulses and a 
wish to conform to social standards), the parts of the personality 
which are incompatible with the persona must be denied. This 
entails a split of the psyche into a conscious part and an 
unconscious part, the shadow, charged with the anti-social 
tendencies. 
	The step beyond the Conformist in Loevinger's model is 
defined by two new dimensions: 'an increase in self-awareness and 
the appreciation of multiple possibilities in situations' (Loevinger, 
1976:19). Loevinger points out that the majority of the adults in 
'our society' are probably at this level of ego development. There 
is a growing, but still rather vague, sense of not only being a group 
member, but also an individual. This is experienced as vague 
feelings of loneliness, embarrassment and self-consciousness in 
social situations (ibid., p. 19). The increasing ability to 
differentiate in the psychic world also extends to others:
Where the Conformist lives in a conceptually simple world with the 
same thing right always and for everyone, the person in the Self-
Aware Level sees alternatives. Exceptions and contingencies are 
allowed for, though still in terms of stereotypic and demographic 
categories like age, sex, marital status, and race, rather than in 
terms of individual differences in traits and needs. (Loevinger, 
1976:19)

 In Jungian terminology, what Loevinger describes is the dawning 
awareness of there being an individual behind the persona. 
	In the mythic-rational structure, the notion of causality 
becomes increasingly differentiated. Causality in the material 
world is understood as different from causality in the social and 
spiritual world of intentional beings. The worldview becomes 
increasingly rationalized, but the belief in a set of fundamental 
dogmas blocks the ability to reflect critically on the basic 
explanations given. However, the retreat of the gods from 
capricious involvement with daily events in the physical world 
creates a field of events which is not permeated by the concrete 
intentions of gods (Eder, 1980:154). In this field, humans can 
create new things, things that are human artefacts and not threads 
in an eternal cosmic order. Indeed, human must take responsibility 
for what happens in this field. Events can no longer be interpreted 
away as caprices of the gods, but must be controlled through 
intentional human action (Habermas, 1976:98). 


Motivation

The ever increasing separate-self sense increases the potential 
sense of vulnerability and mortality. Since persons at this stage no 
longer live in a world completely reigned by divine powers, it 
becomes imperative to defend the social order. The society, not the 
gods, are what guarantees a certain amount of security and 
satisfaction of needs. Therefore, the individual is personally 
motivated to defend the existing cultural canon against what is 
perceived as disruptive forces. This may be interpreted to include 
all kinds of slightly dissident or deviant people. 
	The exclusive identification with the persona implies that 
the identity is inseparately intertwined with the collective. 
Therefore, exclusion from the group, or 'loss of face', is charged 
with intense anxiety. Identification with the persona gives a 
considerable sense of security, since the self-image is supported 
by institutionalized role conceptions, borne by the society as a 
collective. This security may be so attractive that the individual is 
prone to resist all attempts to individuate out of the collective. 
	The motivation of the conformist is permeated by concerns 
for gaining social acceptance and avoiding disapproval and 
dishonour (Kohlberg, 1967, table 6.6). The failure to achieve these 
goals leads to shame (reduced self-esteem due to failure to 
conform to role expectations) and guilt (condemnation by superego). 
A peculiar feature of the mythic-rational structure is the very 
widespread preoccupation with celebrity (Pirsig, 19XX). In a 
consciousness structure highly oriented towards the group, it is 
natural that gaining status in the group is a highly valued goal. 


The individual and the group

At this stage, the individual is less oriented towards an 
understanding of the social order as a part of an absolute cosmic 
order, in favour of a conception of the society as a collective, man-
made order. As the extent of individuation is too small to allow an 
individual standpoint, the social order is still perceived as given, 
and the individual is highly identified with the cultural canon. 
Neumann provided a very concise formulation of a basic principle of 
social systems: 
The aim of the collective is always to achieve a way of life and of 
living together which is disturbed to the smallest possible extent 
by the forces operating in the individual, irrespective of whether 
these forces are of high or inferior value in themselves. Whatever 
is opposed to the equilibrium of the collective is tabooed, and its 
development in the individual is forbidden. (Neumann, 
1949/1990:36)

At the conformist level, the individual uncritically adopts and 
defends this system-conservative standpoint. Moreover, the 
identification with the social order tends to produce an orientation 
to the leader-follower polarity. The individual needs an authority 
who represents truth, stability and identity. There is a high 
propensity to delegate responsibility and moral judgment to 
whoever is perceived as a legitimate authority (cf. Milgram's 
experiments in obedience). 
	The morality of the conformist structure is aptly captured by 
Loevinger (1976:18):
The Conformist obeys the rules just because they are the group-
accepted rules, not primarily because he fears punishment. 
Disapproval is a potent sanction for him. His moral code defines 
actions as right or wrong according to compliance with rules 
rather than according to consequences, which are crucial at higher 
stages. Conformists do not distinguish obligatory rules from norms 
of conduct, as we see when they condemn unusual dress or hair 
styles as immoral or as signs of immorality. 
 
The mythic-rational structure closely corresponds to Kohlberg's 
'conventional' level. Whereas the individual at the preconventional 
level was concerned with promoting his or her advantage, within 
the framework of given rules, the conservation of social norms 
take precedence over the concrete consequences of actions at the 
conventional level. The idea of reciprocity is seen as a central 
principle in the social order. The satisfaction of one's own needs 
depends on a system of mutual relationships, regulated by certain 
rules. Kohlberg (1971) defines two stages at this level: 'good 
boy/nice girl' and 'law and order'. At the 'good boy/nice girl' 
stage, the nascent social consciousness extends to the primary 
group, the family and other close persons. It becomes important to 
'be good', which is interpreted as living up to role expectations 
(as son/daughter, sibling, friend). In contrast to earlier levels, the 
motives of people, not only their concrete actions, are appreciated. 
Krebs and Van Hesteren developed a model similar to Kohlberg's, 
but focussing on altruistic behaviour. The stage corresponding to 
Kohlberg's 'good boy/nice girl', 'mutual altruism', is 
characterized by: 
A consciousness of 'we' overrides the sense of 'me': self-interest 
is assimilated in shared interests and relationships. Mutual 
altruism tends to be idealistic and is guided by values such as 
trust, care, friendship, altruism, cooperation, loyalty, solidarity, 
intimacy, and a sense of belonging. It is oriented toward fulfilling 
the ongoing subjective needs of those to whom one is attached, 
within the bonds of propriety. (Krebs & Van Hesteren, 1994, table 
2)

In Kohlberg's 'law and order' stage a wider conception of a social 
order develops. Concepts such as authority, duty, respect and law 
become important. A typical phrase is 'if everyone did it'. At this 
stage a personal conscience develops. However, the conscience is 
still oriented to conventional norms, since the ability to derive 
moral principles through reflection still fails. The conscience can 
therefore be regarded as a representative of the collective in the 
individual. In contrast to the preceding stage, justice is conceived 
in terms of a general social order, instead of dyadic relationships. 
In contrast to later stages, the individual is not able to take a 
critical position to the existing social order by comparing it to an 
ideal conception of the 'good society'. Krebs and Van Hesteren 
makes a useful distinction in pointing out that the stage they call 
conscientious altruism is characterized by an orientation to fulfill 
internalized obligations that serve to maintain the institutions of 
one's society even when these obligations run counter to the 
expectations of one's own reference groups (Krebs & Van Hesteren, 
1994, table 2). This sense of responsibility to a quite abstract 
notion of a social system marks the full development of the 
membership structures. 
	A society based on the 'low conformist' structure of 
consciousness is characterized by a primacy of primary group 
relations over relations based on a generalized citizen conception. 
It is more important to maintain one's position in relation to 
relatives and 'tribe-members', than to follow moral rules based on 
the sovereignty of the person. A person cannot expect equal 
treatment by invoking civil rights, but must take personal relations 
and kinship obligations into account. Such cultural codes have been 
described by many authors, e.g. Volkan, 1979 (Cyprus); Lipowatz, 
1994 (Greece); Hyd�n, XXXX (Tanzania). Most industrialized 
countries have tried to institutionalize a social order based on 
mental-ego principles. In these countries the conformist structure 
does not define the formal rules of the social system, but forms a 
central part in informal exchanges and public opinion. 


Ingroup/outgroup relations

The mythic-rational structure creates cosmological worldviews 
with explicit universalistic aspirations. The religions or 
philosophies held to be true are seen as the one and only truth. 
Collective identity is now possible not only by means of common 
rulership, or membership in a state, but also through belonging to 
the same community of believers, that is, in principle, independent 
of territorial states (Habermas, 1976:27). From the perspective of 
universalistic religions, it is something of a moral obligation to 
spread the gospel to the heathens. The logic of the empires of the 
mythic-rational era is also grounded in the basically universalistic 
worldview of the mythic-rational structure of consciousness. 
Citizenship ought to be extended to every human being. 
	Members of outgroups are still not recognized as full human 
beings with an intrinsic value and with basic human rights. These 
features only extend to the members of the true faith, or of the 
righteous empire. The belief in being possessors of the only true 
worldview also stands in the way of recognizing outgroups as 
equivalent entities (Habermas, 1976:27).  A mutual recognition of 
collectives with different beliefs and values requires some 
measure of self-reflection, transcending the belief in absolute 
truths in the realm of religious or normative discourse. 


Remnants of the Conformist structure at the mental-ego level

The Conformist structure, at least in its later phase, is 
paradigmatic for the majority in the industrialized countries. It is 
therefore somewhat inappropriate to discuss this structure as a 
subconscious layer in the mental-ego structure. In spite of this, it 
might be useful to point out some tendencies which are not parts of 
a fully developed rational structure, but may influence thinking, 
feeling, motivation and behaviour in subtle ways. 
	Paramount among these is the tendency to adopt majority 
norms and to react negatively towards persons who fail to adapt. A 
remnant of this tendency is the guilt feelings one can have when 
one chooses to follow one's own conscience rather than decrees or 
norms from authorities (Mentzos, 1993:104f). 


THE MENTAL-EGOIC STRUCTURE 

Cognition, self-sense and perception of causality

A key characteristic of the mental-egoic structure is the ability to 
reflect on one's own mental operations (Piaget's formal-
operational thinking): the mind itself and its processes becomes an 
object of awareness (Habermas, 1976:15f; Wilber, 1983:181). An 
important result of this development is an enormous increase in 
the ability to conjecture hypothetical alternatives. Wilber believes 
that the driving force for the development of the mental-egoic 
structure was that the society became too complex to be 
effectively dealt with by the membership structure (1983:197). A 
structure which relies on tradition and uncritical acceptance of 
rules may work well as long as the environment is reasonably 
stable. However, a rapidly changing environment requires a high 
degree of flexibility and openness to innovation. 
	The mental-ego draws on personal memories to process 
perceptions and arrive at conclusions, whereas the membership 
self primarily draws on the collective, generalized memory, in 
forms of myths, rules and norms. 
	In relation to the external world, the mental-ego mind is 
prone to make independent test of propositions against evidence. 
Assertions are not uncritically accepted, but are checked for 
consistency by comparison with one's own accumulated experience. 
An ability to operate with large mental conceptions of interrelated 
systems of objects develop, permitting a broad vision of cause-
and-effect thinking. In the higher levels of the rational structure, 
the ability to reflect on the basic principles of thinking itself 
develops. This entails an awareness of the limitation of all 
theories and explanations, since they are all grounded in particular 
discourses, formed in particular cultures in particular epochs. 
	In relation to time and space, the mental-ego structure can 
grasp vast and extended notions. Time ceases to be only the passing 
instant, as in the magical structure, or cyclical, as in the mythical 
structure, but develops into a conception of history. The 
exploration of the past, and the imagination of the future carries 
the potential of putting the present in perspective. The notion of 
space as coherent and extended space gave birth to the idea of 
exploring unknown areas. The capacity to make a mental gestalt of 
large systems in space and time was a precondition to the 
centrality of the state as a political unit. 
	The perception of other people becomes increasingly 
differentiated. Loevinger characterizes this stage in the following 
way: 
A rich and differentiated inner life characterizes the Conscientious 
person. He experiences in himself and observes in others a variety 
of cognitively shaded emotions. Behavior is seen not just in terms 
of actions but in terms of patterns, hence of traits and motives. [...] 
Increased ability to tolerate paradox and contradiction leads to 
greater conceptual complexity, shown by awareness of the 
discrepancies between inner reality and outward appearances, 
between psychological and physiological responses, between 
process and outcome. Psychological causality and psychological 
development, which are notions that do not occur spontaneously 
below the Conscientious Stage, are natural modes of thought to 
persons in the Individualistic Level. (Loevinger, 1976:21ff)

	The mental-ego structure marks the culmination of the 
increase in the separate-self sense. Disengaging from fusion with 
the collective, the individual experiences him- or herself as a 
separate individual, often accompanied by a considerable sense of 
loneliness. For Wilber, the history of human consciousness is 
permeated by the twin drives to accumulate life (permanence, 
cosmocentricity, grandiosity) and avoid death (impermanence, 
mortality). In Wilber's perspective, the full development of the 
mental-ego structure opens a new way to pursue the substitutes of 
Atman: 
[...] as the individual began to identify with the recording and 
thinking and memory aspects of the organism, he began to form a 
conception of himself as a static, permanent, persistent self; and 
that thought-self tended to feel separate not only from the 
impulsive world around it, but also from the spontaneous aspects 
of its own body. [...] the ego was the new substitute self, and like 
all substitute selves, it had to pretend to fulfill the desire for 
some form of cosmocentricity, immortality, and everlastingness. 
And the ego did just that with its own thought processes. [...]  the 
creation of permanent, static, fixed entities�especially the static 
self concept�is based on the fear of change, of flux, of dynamic and 
process reality. [...] For thought, being initially static, seemed to 
offer something that neither nature nor flesh would: permanence. 
(Wilber, 1983:198-199)

I am not sure that the one-sided development of the thinking 
function, and the repressing attitude to the body which has 
dominated the (masculine) public sphere of Western civilization 
during the last century is an integral part of the mental-ego 
structure. However, an identification with the verbal mind might be 
followed by a tendency to repress the spontaneous impulsiveness 
of the body in order to defend a still fragile ego structure. 
Likewise, all remnants of magical and mythical cognition are 
ridiculed (when detected). The attention of the mind orients itself 
towards the external world, perceptible by the five senses. 
Whitmont comments on the one-sided development of the mental-
ego structure: 'What is not observable in physical space now 
becomes increasingly unimaginable' (Whitmont, 1982:70). 
	The differentiation of the internal world from the external, 
physical world is sharply emphasized. The earlier magical 
conceptions which often influenced cognitive processes are now 
banned from the conscious cognitive processes (but remain 
powerful in the unconscious). Whitmont again: 
Thoughts are held to be products of the human mind or brain, 
separate from the things to which they refer. Thought is a play of 
mind. It is presumed to have no effect without direct physical 
action. (Whitmont, 1982:72)

Intentionality is no longer seen as something existing 
independently of the human mind (as fate, gods, etc.), but an 
exclusive characteristic of living beings. This has profound 
implications both for the understanding of causality and for how 
the role of the human being is perceived: 
Whereas the laws of causality define connections between things 
or events that appear inevitable to the rational mind, the image of 
destiny or fate concerns, as Spengler recognizes, an 'ineluctable 
necessity of life' that is intuited by the psyche. With the 
emergence of the egoic consciousness, destiny ceased to be felt as 
inevitable. Instead there was a growing sense that human beings 
were born free or at least able to shake off the burden of the 
past�be it the burden of ancestral sin and guilt or of one's personal 
slate. (Feuerstein, 1987:98f)

For the mental-ego then, the world is subject to objective laws of 
cause and effect, which means that man is free to manipulate his 
world according to his own will. If a belief in God survives into the 
mental-ego stage, the conception of God tends to become less 
anthropomorphic and concretistic (e.g. in terms of God's 
intervention in the physical world), and more like a basic principle 
or force in cosmos or in the self. 

	
Motivation

The increasing disidentification with the persona frees the 
individual from the conformist urge to seek social approval and 
avoid loss of face. Instead, an individualized self-image evolves, 
where the individual conceives of him- or herself as an unique 
individual. A self-evaluated set of values and goals develop. 
Motivation therefore becomes more of a relation between the 
actual and the ideal self-image, than a wish to live up to role 
expectations.  
	The changed conception on causality and self discussed above 
opened new spheres for intentional activities, for good or for evil. 
The attitude to power changed: 
Power was no longer the experienced numinous or mana that it had 
once been for magical humanity. Nor was it psychic energy [...] as it 
had been for the mythical consciousness. Rather power was now an 
abstract force that could be utilized in different contexts and 
situations. It was, above all, self-assertion. (Feuerstein, 1987: 
101)

Peculiar motivational structures evolved as a consequence of the 
split between the ego and the unconscious. To the extent that the 
body is denied a respectable place in the conscious mind, its needs, 
drives and impulses return as unconscious motivation with a 
compulsive note. Compulsive sexuality, gluttony and greed are 
signs of a repressed body-self. 
	Unfortunately, the increased cognitive abilities of the 
mental-ego does not necessarily lead to a more humane attitude to 
one's fellow humans. The destructiveness may even become worse, 
for several reasons. One is formulated by Wilber (drawing on Rank 
and Becker):
The new ego, being even more self-conscious than its mythic-
membership predecessor, was more vulnerable, more guilty, more 
death-terrorized, and therefore more joyously willing to deal in 
massive substitute sacrifices. [...] As Rank put it, at stake is the 
community's immortality account, and the more you can rob others 
of immortality by killing them, the greater grows your own 
immortality account. (Wilber, 1983:283)

The increased urge to accumulate mana through robbing others of it 
can be pursued in a much larger scale and with much more diabolic 
means than in earlier structures, simply because the increased 
capability to imagine new weapons and strategies and sustaining 
even more grandiose plans in space and time. 


The individual and the group

As hinted at above, it is at the mental-ego level the true individual 
starts to emerge. Loevinger summarized the social dimension of 
the mental-ego structure in the following way: 
The internalization of rules is completed at the Conscientious 
Stage. Where the Self-Protective person  obeys rules in order to 
avoid getting into trouble and the Conformist obeys rules because 
the group sanctions them, the Conscientious person evaluates and 
chooses the rules for himself. [...] Thus rules are no longer 
absolutes, the same for everybody all the time; rather, exceptions 
and contingencies are recognized. A person at this stage is less 
likely than the Conformist to feel guilty for having broken a rule, 
but more likely to feel guilty if what he does hurts another person, 
even though it may conform to the rules. [...] With the deepened 
understanding of other people's viewpoints, mutuality in 
interpersonal relations becomes possible. The ability to see 
matters from other people's view is a connecting link between his 
deeper interpersonal relations and his more mature conscience. 
(Loevinger, 1976:20-22)

The introspective faculty and the increasingly differentiated 
perception of others opens the possibility of authentic and deep 
interpersonal relations based on mutual esteem and respect 
(Wilber, 1983:277). Not until this level is the individual capable of 
creating complex and differentiated internal gestalts of other 
people, having a reality value approaching one's self-experience. At 
the mental-ego level it becomes possible to take the role of people 
who are quite different from oneself. 
	The developing capacity for sustaining abstract concepts 
enables the individuals to develop universal principles, e.g. ethical 
standards applying to all human beings independently of virtue or 
group affiliation. 
	The mental-egoic level corresponds to Kohlberg's 
'postconventional' level (Kohlberg, 1969; 1971). At this stage the 
individual has clearly separated the existing social order from 
ideal values about right and wrong. The individual recognizes that 
there are valid ethical principles that are independent of the 
institutionalized authorities as well as of the particular group 
memberships. Kohlberg defines two stages: 'social contract' and 
'universal ethical principles'. At the 'social contract' stage, the 
individual is aware of the relativity of most values and rules. 
Compliance to rules is motivated not primarily by their inherent 
absolute rightness, but by a sense of common agreement to abide by 
certain rules in the interest of a social order. There is no longer a 
holy order, but a mutually agreed norm system. 
	At the 'universal ethical principles' stage, there is a further 
distanciation from the collective norm system. It is recognized 
that human beings have an intrinsic value, and that each individual 
has a right to have his or her claims considered independently of 
social rules. Kohlberg's early version of the highest level of moral 
development emphasized role-taking as the key factor: 
A just solution to a moral dilemma is a solution acceptable to all 
parties, considering each as free and equal, and assuming none of 
them knew which role they would occupy in the situation.' 
(Kohlberg, 1971, p. 213)

Krebs & Van Hesteren (1994) point out that the self-other 
dichotomy is transcended at the higher ego levels, when the self is 
identified with humanity as a whole (1994: table 2). Here the 
distinction between one's own interest and the interests of others 
starts to dissolve. The universal principles characteristic of the 
mental-ego structure may become tempered by a sense of one's 
own proper place in the cosmos. One is not more than a human 
being, after all. This is a more advanced level, in some sense, than 
the principled level, because it takes the context and one's own 
limits into account. 


Ingroup/outgroup relations

In a world of fully developed rational structures, intergroup 
relations are based on mutual respect for the basic rights of each 
group. Each group has a right to put forward its views, and have its 
claims considered. Legitimacy is a central notion. 
	However, the basic contradiction in the rational structure 
between an increasing ability to take the perspective of the other, 
and the acute sense of individual vulnerability, makes the balance 
of civilized intergroup interactions very fragile.