Pandemic: A Collective Nightmare or a Wake-Up Call?

Presented by Robert Moradi, M.D.

Psychologically nightmares are viewed as the eruption of a fierce conflict between instinct and will within the psyche of an individual.  They are understood as an attempt by the psyche to protect its own container (the body and soul) when the psyche experiences itself in danger of fragmentation or irreparable damage.  Similarly a pandemic can be viewed as a warning about life on earth when the planet itself is in danger of irreversible damage.  In both situations, the individual and the collective, the conscious participation of the ego is required in order to re-establish harmony and health. For the first time in modern history, we are facing a pandemic that threatens the entire planet, and which has awoken us to the fact that we are one race, the human race. Our survival depends not only on our ability to work together, but also to begin to address the myriad of ways in which we have abandoned our planet in order to further our own sensibilities. Like all nightmares, the pandemic carries the same message, that something needs to change fundamentally and urgently.  Please join us in a discussion of the symbolic and psychological aspects of the pandemic and the ways in which it is affecting us on a conscious as well as unconscious level, as the ego struggles to integrate the unbearable and unimaginable sense of chaos that it engenders, as well as a renewed sense of hope and faith of the human spirit as we confront this unwelcome visitor and agent of transformation.

Learning Objectives: 

• Describe some of the primary psychological effects of the pandemic in terms of a sense of fragmentation, loss of structure, uncertainty, and destabilization;
• Describe the emotional effects of quarantining and its effect on psychological health;
• Describe the symbolic aspect of the pandemic from the standpoint of an internal initiatory process in which the stages of separation, ordeal, and return can be experienced from a personal as well as collective perspective

Robert Moradi, M.D., is a Jungian analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Monica. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine. Currently, he teaches and writes on Jungian approaches to clinical practice.