Global Interdependence vs. Social and Political Fragmentation:
The Need for Psychological Thinking

Presented by Seth Wigdor Robbins, MD, MPH

If our small planet is going to remain a sustainable home to the growing billions of people who live here, we need to acknowledge our vulnerability and profoundly change the ways we handle our interdependence. Too many of us have lost our senses of awe, gratitude, connectedness, and sacrifice, leading to powerful individual and social forces that work against adopting cooperative behaviors. In this presentation, we will consider individual and cultural complexes and defenses that impede the needed transformation of collective consciousness. This psychological transformation represents a critical step in human evolution, and our failures in this regard are already the basis for profound destruction and suffering, leading to international conflict. Changes that many of us resist could paradoxically lead to greater sustainability and a more meaningful way of living. The potential contributions of psychology and analytic theory in movement toward an actualizing model of human cooperation will be considered. 

Course Objectives:

• Describe cultural complexes that impede the needed transformation of collective consciousness.
• Discuss the contributions analytical psychology can play in how we handle our interdependence, personally and collectively.

Seth Wigdor Robbins, MD, MPH, is a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst in private practice in San Francisco and Berkeley, and a member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He sees adult patients in his practice, and is interested in how current cultural factors influence attitude and outcomes in analysis and psychotherapy. He is also trained in Public Health, and has a longstanding interest in environmental issues and in trying to understand psychological factors underlying people’s resistance to more effectively address climate change, and in the implementation of more sustainable and cooperative ways of living.