Jung on the thought of Levi-Strauss and on the subsequent course of French Structuralism in general. I n treating those influences which helped shape the thought of Levi-St,rauss, Harris (1968) is typical of most anthropological historians in assigning primary importance to hlauss and to the linguistic influence of the Prague school. With regard to Mauss' influence Harris states (p. 489) :
For Levi-Strauss, the grand achievement of the Essai Sur le Don was that it pointed the way toward the understanding of social life in terms of cycles of reciprocity involving the exchange of valuables. . . . According to Levi-Strauss, Mauss' role was rather that of a prophet: He stopped a t the border of vast possibilities like Moses conducting his people to the very edge of a promised land upon whose splendor he would never gaze.
With respect to the influence of linguistic theory on the thought of Levi-Strauss, Harris states (p. 493):
By his own admission, the greatest influence upon his method has been the development of linguistics and the convergence of linguistics and cybernetics toward a general science of communication. I t is in the work of the Prague linguistic circle, founded by N. Trubetzkoy and passed on to Levi-Strauss by R. Jakobson, while they were both teaching a t the New School, that the main inspiration for Levi-Strauss' notions of binary contrast analysis has its roots.
These two influences, i e . , early French Structuralism and the linguistic developnients of the Prague school, are held to be the major influences upon Levi-Strauss primarily because the latter openly acknowledges that they are.
After reading most of the works of both C. G. Jung and Levi-Strauss, one cannot help but be struck with the basic similarity in approach of both authors, despite Levi-Strauss' attacks on early Jungian positions. The question which immediately comes to mind is whether this is just another example of Kroeber's concept of parallel development, similar to Newton's and Leibnitz's development of the calculus, or whether Jung in fact influenced Levi-Strauss directly. When one compares the dates of publication of their core parallel ideas, one finds, as we shall see, that Jung precedes Levi-Strauss by ten to twenty years. Furthermore, Jungian thought, although now considered somewhat mystical, was fairly current in intellectual circles in Europe in the 1940's. Finally, when one considers Levi-Strauss' own admission of acquaintance with psychoanalytic theory in Elementary Structures of Kinship (1948) and in several essays written originally in the early 1950's and republished in Structural Anthropology (1958), one's suspicions tend to