Jung at Heart (2024-2025): The Psyche in the World Part 1

Saturdays, May 3 & 17, 2025; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
THE PSYCHE IN THE WORLD: HOW CULTURAL COMPLEXES CAN TAKE POSSESSION OF OUR SOULS
Differentiating the personal, group, and archetypal levels of cultural complexes is not easy but can be quite rewarding in terms of helping ourselves and the groups to which we belong see more clearly how our lives are deeply influenced by these complexes which operate at many levels of the psyche. Drawing from his research in Australia, Latin America, Europe, and East Asia, Dr. Singer will examine the basic concept of cultural complexes and ways in which they operate—in individuals and in groups—that can be based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and national identity in the emerging global community. Utilizing case material, we will look at a potent cultural complex manifested in the life of an individual. We will study some of the ways in which cultural complexes can live and function both within a group and between groups. In the second session, we will follow how an archetypal energy takes form through history in personal and cultural complexes. Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to identify and share their own experiences of cultural complexes—whether it be in personal experience, clinical examples, or in the emerging national and world upheaval.

Thomas Singer, M.D. is a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco, and current president of ARAS, an archive of symbolic imagery. Author of The Vision Thing:  Myth, Politics, and Psyche in the World and The Mind of State he has also edited a series of books exploring cultural complexes that includes  Cultural Complexes in Australia: Placing Psyche (Australia), Cultural Complexes in Latin America, Europe’s Many Souls, The Cultural Complex, Cultural Complexes and the Soul of America, Cultural Complexes in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan: Spokes in the Wheel.  The newest in this series is Cultural Complexes and Europe’s Many Souls:  Jungian Perspectives on Brexit and the War in Ukraine.