Cross Species Continuity names the thesis — articulated with greatest rigor in affective neuroscience but resonating across depth psychology, ecopsychology, and evolutionary approaches to the psyche — that fundamental emotional, social, and biological structures are not uniquely human inventions but are shared inheritances traversing mammalian and broader phylogenetic lineages. Jaak Panksepp stands as the discipline’s most systematic advocate, arguing that subcortical emotional circuits exhibit substantial cross-species generality extending from rodents through primates to humans, and proposing the terms ‘homogenic’ and ‘logogenic’ to denote the genetic and perceptual dimensions of such shared neural architectures. Iain McGilchrist extends the argument toward ontology, observing that species boundaries are in reality blurred, that organisms share genes across lineages, and that evolution is better understood as continuous process than as discrete taxonomic replacement. Joseph Campbell and James Hillman approach the same territory from mythological and archetypal angles: Campbell through the concept of innate releasing mechanisms and animal archetypes that traverse species; Hillman through the insistence on a ‘mutuality of natures’ and ‘common fate’ binding human and animal existence. Simondon contributes a structural account of continuity-amid-discontinuity between species. A productive tension runs throughout: between those who ground continuity in measurable neurochemistry and those who locate it in archetypal, phenomenological, or ecological kinship. The term matters for depth psychology because it challenges the anthropocentric assumption that inner life — feeling, morality, social bonding — begins and ends with the human.
my aim will be to summarize underlying physiological principles that may have substantial cross-species generality, extending hopefully even to the human level.
Panksepp explicitly frames his project as the identification of neurochemical bonding and social-attachment principles that hold across species, positing cross-species generality as the methodological and theoretical cornerstone of affective neuroscience.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998thesis
a definitive analysis of the cross-species generalizability of basic emotions must include an analysis of brain systems, it is compelling that the recurring items from the preceding analyses are most clearly supported by data from brain research.
Panksepp argues that brain-systems analysis constitutes the ‘gold standard’ for establishing cross-species continuity of basic emotions, subordinating behavioral and facial evidence to subcortical neuroanatomy.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998thesis
Living organisms integrate their cellular communities by mingling their bodies and sharing their genes. In this way they can acquire learnt experiences from other organisms. The boundaries of species are, in reality, blurred.
McGilchrist contends that gene-sharing and experiential inheritance across organisms dissolves sharp species demarcations, grounding cross-species continuity in biological ontology rather than mere analogy.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Living organisms integrate their cellular communities by mingling their bodies and sharing their genes. In this way they can acquire learnt experiences from other organisms. The boundaries of species are, in reality, blurred.
Duplicate source confirming McGilchrist’s ontological argument for species boundary dissolution through genetic and experiential inter-mingling.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
the existence of a similar neurodynamic basis for fear in the brains of all mammalian species may be considered homogenic, while the tendency of underlying circuits in different species to respond spontaneously to the perception of snakes or the odors of predators might be called logogenic.
Panksepp proposes ‘homogenic’ and ‘logogenic’ as technical terms for the two dimensions of cross-species neural continuity — shared genetic architecture and shared perceptual sensitivities respectively.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998thesis
We are animals and these animals are tied to our bodies. That’s why I gave many of the paintings anatomical names: to emphasize this connection of brotherhood-sisterhood… their extinction is ours too.
Hillman voices an archetypal-ecological thesis of cross-species continuity: human and animal share bodily nature and common fate, such that animal extinction implicates human extinction.
, Animal Presences, 2008thesis
a cross-species comparison of cognitions may well be a more difficult endeavor than studying the subcort[ical systems]
Panksepp signals that while emotional continuity across species is tractable through subcortical research, cognitive cross-species comparison presents greater methodological difficulty, qualifying the scope of the continuity thesis.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
This distinction must be situated in a broader reality that can account for both the continuity and the discontinuities between species. This discontinuity seems comparable to the quantum characteristic that appears in physics.
Simondon frames the species problem as requiring a meta-level account that preserves both biological continuity and discontinuity, analogizing species transitions to quantum discontinuities within an underlying field of individuation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
in the central nervous systems of all animals there exist innate structures that are somehow counterparts of the proper
Campbell draws on ethological evidence of innate releasing mechanisms to support a cross-species continuity of biologically encoded psychic structures, furnishing mythological thought with a neurobiological underwriting.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting
Human morality organizes around questions of right, wrong and justice… it originates with concern for others and in understanding and respecting social rules. This is seen in a multitude of mammalian groups.
Levine, drawing on de Waal, argues that the roots of human morality — empathy, reconciliation, social regulation — are continuous with capacities observable across mammalian species.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting
Comparison of ethological findings with those of Jungian psychology make it clear that both disciplines are studying the same archetypal phenomena, but from opposite ends.
Papadopoulos presents Jungian archetype theory and ethology as convergent approaches to cross-species continuity, with Jungian psychology attending to introverted psychic manifestations and ethology to extroverted behavioral expressions of the same underlying structures.
, The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting
in certain respects the animal is superior to man. It has not yet blundered into consciousness nor pitted a self-willed ego against the power from which it lives; on the contrary, it fulfils the will that actuates it in a well-nigh perfect manner.
Jung reverses the human-animal hierarchy, suggesting cross-species continuity implies not mere similarity but a form of animal excellence in instinctual attunement that consciousness has partially forfeited.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
Those virtues — loyalty, bravery, command, and a certain sweet affection that radiates from your dog are as much potentials in the owner’s character as in the dog’s. A mutuality of natures.
Hillman articulates cross-species continuity as a ‘mutuality of natures’ between human and animal, in which psychological virtues are shared potentials rather than exclusively human endowments.
, Animal Presences, 2008supporting
Can we leave the animal out there in its otherness and yet retain its psychological import and our kinship with it? Can we remain psychological without interiorizing?
Hillman poses the central tension in cross-species continuity discourse: how to affirm kinship with animals without reducing their otherness to a mere symbol or projection of human interiority.
, Animal Presences, 2008supporting
each individual inherits a collective memory from past members of the species, and also contributes to the collective memory, affecting other members of the species in the future.
McGilchrist considers Sheldrake’s morphic resonance as a mechanism of intra- and potentially inter-species memory inheritance, a speculative but seriously entertained framework for cross-species continuity of acquired patterning.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Many tribes, like the Swampy Cree of Manitoba, hold that they were given spoken language by the animals.
Abram documents indigenous cosmologies in which language itself originates in cross-species continuity, positioning human speech as a gift received from and shared with the more-than-human community of animate beings.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
My tactile and proprioceptive senses are, it would seem, caught up over there where my eyes have been focused; the momentary shock and subsequent throbbing in my limbs make me wince.
Abram uses phenomenological description of bodily resonance — felt in response to another’s movement — as evidence for a pre-reflective inter-corporeal continuity that extends, in his framework, across species boundaries.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
the animal ways are still in our brains and are called upon whenever we encounter a barking dog, are challenged by an aggressive colleague or stranger, or face any kind of situation that has the potential to cause us physical or psychological harm.
LeDoux affirms cross-species continuity at the level of threat-response circuitry, arguing that evolutionarily conserved ‘animal ways’ remain functionally operative within the human brain under conditions of danger.
, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, 2015supporting
We really don’t want them too close. There remains a deep moat between them and us, despite the safari vacations, the snorkeling, and the nostalgia.
Hillman acknowledges the lived contradiction of cross-species continuity discourse: despite theoretical kinship, behavioral and psychological barriers maintain a ‘deep moat’ between human and animal existence.
, Animal Presences, 2008aside
we might say that the great bull represents the Platonic Idea of the species. He is a figure of one more dimension than the others of his herd: timeless and indestructible.
Campbell invokes the concept of an ‘animal master’ or species archetype — a timeless, transindividual form — as mythological expression of the continuity that transcends particular mortal specimens of a species.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959aside
no indigenous, oral language can be genuinely understood in separation from the more-than-human earth that sustains it, of which the language itself is a kind of internal articulation.
Abram’s ecolinguistic argument implies cross-species continuity at the semiotic level: oral language is structurally embedded in and partially constituted by the sonic worlds of non-human species.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996aside