of neural pathways which occur during early development. To quote a classic review of the field by Eisenberg (1995): “Major brain pathways are specified by the genome; detailed connections are fashioned by, and consequently reflect, socially mediated experience in the world.”
How evolution led to the remarkably flexible and capable mind of modern humans will now be considered in more detail. Much of this is well articulated by Donald, on whose work the following account is drawn (Donald, 1991, 2001). Adding understandings drawn from cognitive psychology to the traditional sources in archeological, anthropological, and biological studies, offers, in our view, a convincing and fascinating reconstruction of the main stages in the evolution of the modern mind.
Four million years ago, our ancestors the australopithecines already shared food and labor and formed nuclear family structures. One and a half million years ago, Homo erectus, blessed with a much larger brain, managed to build shelters, use fire, and develop better tools. Over the following period the size of the brain compared to that of other mammals continued to increase markedly, with a last period of rapid growth occurring 0.3 million years ago. These changes were accompanied by another significant anatomical development: the evolution of the human vocal tract, with its capacity for the rapid generation of differentiated sounds allowing speech.
Donald describes how contemporary chimpanzees are capable of flexible and non‐stereotypical ways of thinking and relating and how their social organization is dependent on their capacity to remember “large numbers of distinctly individual learned dyadic relationships.” The development of the human brain from an equivalent level went through a number of intermediate stages, each conveying greater cognitive and social advantages. During the first of these (the Mimetic culture), non‐linguistic skills in representing, differentiating, rehearsing, and communicating were elaborated. Knowledge could now be contained and communicated using metaphoric activities; both tool‐using and sign‐using were established. This allowed the greater cohesion of social groups, which developed complex structures sustained by group rituals. The semantic and social structures that developed over the million or more years of this phase were accompanied by developments in the brain which prepared the way for the addition of symbolic language, but it appears that this developed independently, existing alongside the mimetic modes which persisted and are still a powerful aspect of human communication. The evolution of the larynx and the acquisition of language in the Mythic age provided the individual with the basis for the conscious mobilization of mental capacities. It also enormously enhanced the cohesion and purposefulness of human society by linking, in stories and myths, the guiding values and meanings of the group. The power of oral transmission is illustrated by the account of Australian Aboriginal myth which incorporates accurate descriptions of a terrain, recently identified, which has been under the sea for the past 8,000 years (Tudge, 1996). Another example is provided by the Maori of New Zealand–Aotearoa whose ancestors arrived in a small number of boats. Traditional accounts trace their ancestry of different groups to one or other of these boats and genetic studies have provided confirmation of the groupings.
Speech is now the dominant mental function because, with it, both memories of events and descriptions of the skills and sequences which can be conveyed mimetically can be described and communicated in abstract, generalized forms (see Maturana, Mpodozis, & Letelier, 1995). Language opened the way for the theoretic culture we now inhabit, where we are capable of analytic, de‐contextualized forms of thinking which the earlier systems could not sustain. These functions were sustained in turn by the manufacture of pictorial or sculpted artifacts, perhaps initially serving mythic functions, and the development of external, physical mnemonic devices such as notched sticks, indicators of astronomical events, maps, and eventually, 8,000 years ago, writing. The development of written records greatly increased the accumulation and transmission of information. External symbolic storage, vaster than any single mind could conceivably hold, has now become a dominant factor in human thought. Just as the development of tools and machines enormously extended people's physical capacity to change material objects, so the brain developed the capacity to extend enormously the power of thought. Some philosophers have gone as far as to suggest that the human brain should now be considered simply as a functional part of its socio‐cultural context (Clark & Chalmers, 1998).
Evolutionarily Pre‐Programmed Psychological Tendencies
Many authors (reviewed in Gilbert, 1992; McGuire & Troisi, 1998; Stevens & Price, 1996) suggest that pre‐programmed patterns, analogous to those triggered by the “innate releasing mechanisms” described by ethologists, may underlie our tendency to think and act in certain ways in certain circumstances. The Jungian concept of archetypes can be seen similarly. While requiring careful attention as partial, possible determinants of human behavior, we consider that to exaggerate their importance can be as reductive and misleading as some of the attempts by earlier socio‐biologists to explain culture in terms of the enactment of “hard‐wired” biological tendencies. However, according to these writers, there are highly stereotyped, ritual behaviors seen throughout the animal kingdom associated with, for example, aggression, status‐seeking, mating, or care‐eliciting and care‐giving. The power and apparent “irrationality” of such responses is well exemplified by the experience of falling in love or the dedicated preoccupation of a nursing mother with her baby. Gilbert (1992) has described the predisposition to enact such phylogenetically evolved “biosocial goals” as “mentalities.” This concept combines affects, action tendencies, and cognitive and attentional structures. These are manifest in social life from early on and could be seen as analogous to or contributing to the formation of RRPs.
The behavioral patterns (for example care‐ or proximity‐seeking behavior) described by attachment theorists can also be seen to be subsumed within such repertoires. However, as pointed out by Gilbert (1992), they would be, phylogenetically, only one of many adaptive developmental behaviors. Attachment theorists (Bowlby, 1988) have also properly pointed to the life‐long importance of negotiation of issues relating to attachment and loss. In parallel, writers such as Stevens and Price (1996) have described the concept of “frustration of archetypal intent,” by analogy with the ethological phenomenon of the “search for the object never known.” This could manifest, for example, in the case of someone who never had the experience of a good mother or father, as a life‐long search for this never‐experienced, perhaps idealized, relationship. This phenomenon can be recognized clinically and described in terms of role enactments and can be important to identify and work with.
Primitive, stereotypic responses to highly stressful situations provide perhaps more definite examples of such pre‐programmed predispositions. These would include fight, flight, or freezing responses to threat, the sensitivity to shame which we share with other social animals (Gilbert & Andrews, 1998), and the resort to dichotomous, “black and white” thinking derived in evolution from the critical need to distinguish friend from foe (including especially in the context of large groups), or safe from dangerous situations. Some of these responses, particularly dichotomous thinking, may be a focus of psychotherapy, as may the stereotypic consequences of prolonged stress or trauma on the developing self (see Kalsched, 1998, 2013). Primitive responses such as these are most often elicited in those who have been subject to threat and abuse during their own upbringing and can manifest in social phenomena such as racism, aggressive nationalism, stigmatizing behavior, and overt violence (see Braten, 2013; Zulueta, 1993). Expression of these will also be determined by the history, power relations, and dominant ideology of different societies. By contrast, those who have been treated with love and respect tend to re‐enact those roles and are capable of more considered and compassionate responses to stressful situations. It should be noted, despite the history of our past century, that the dominant tendencies enacted by our species have also included, and potentially remain, those of cooperation, creativity, and mutual interdependence.
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