Description
“The products of technological life were not available to most people, even if they had money. They didn’t have the knowledge to deal with them. .. .now, we all think we know exactly how to deal with them and so we go to war and kill everybody that does not have our particular kind of gun.” – Joseph Henderson, M.D.
Dr. Joseph Henderson, a noted Jungian Analyst and one of the founders of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco comments on how it feels to have reached his 100th Birthday. He recalls his first contact with Dr. Peter Baynes who was Jung’s assistant. Henderson was a young man at the time, searching for a vocational path after graduating from Princeton. Later Henderson analyzed with Jung in Zurich. While he was studying medicine in London, he was introduced to his wife, Helena Cornford, by Peter and Carey Baynes.
Henderson considers the many technological changes that have occurred over his lifetime. He notes the importance of symbolic imagery in art, in dreams and in cultural patterns and describes how his concept of the Cultural Unconscious emerged. This is a unique contribution to the advance of theory in Analytical Psychology. The long hidden history in Western culture of values and symbols relating to the nature of feminine consciousness and spirituality are noted in relation to recent developments in popular literature. He emphasizes that the images expressed in dreams, art and cultural expression are essential to an accurate interpretation of what is going on in the depths of the psyche, in the developments of consciousness in the culture, and in the individuation of the person.
This conversation with Dr. Thomas Kirsch M.D., an analyst practicing in Palo Alto, California, was filmed in the home office of Dr. Henderson in Ross, California in September 2003.
Producer: George Wagner – Director: Suzanne Wagner, Ph.D. – Editor/Line Producer: Tee Bosustow – Music: John Adams.
