Depth and Archetypal Psychology Course
Session One / Part Two (1/2)
Our Mind and the Evolutionary History of Consciousness
Aydin Areta

Part Two of the first session of Depth and Archetypal Psychology, held in Sydney on 14/9/2019, focuses on two subjects: the mind and the evolutionary history of consciousness, and the fundamental differences between the World of Things and the Realm of Actions. The first gives rise to science; the second gives rise to psychology, major parts of philosophy, and theology.

The truth is that the entire history of the emergence of the neocortex, or the modern human brain—which constitutes a large part of the frontal lobe—is only around two hundred thousand years old. Compared with the emergence of the biological brain and the archicortex in reptiles, which has a history of around 550 million years, it is approximately 2,700 times younger. This itself shows that self-consciousness, or the human conscious mind, has a very limited and fragile yet increasing capacity when set against the ancient unconscious and the biological history of animal species in evolutionary time.