Cultural Complexes in Australia: Placing Psyche is the first in a series of books that will explore the notion of cultural complexes in a variety of settings around the world. The continent of Australia is the focus of this inaugural volume in which the contributors elucidate how the unique geography and peoples of Australia interact and interpenetrate to create the particular "mindscapes" of the Australian psyche. While the cultural complexes of Australia are explored with a keen eye to the specificity of place, history, context, and content, at the same time it becomes obvious that these cultural complexes emerge out of an archetypal background that is not just Australian but global. This volume shows how cultural complex theory itself mediates between the particularity of place and the universality of archetypal patterns.
Cultural Complexes of Latin America: South and the Soul explores the theory and embodied reality that cultural complexes are powerful determinants in the attitudes, behaviour, and emotional life of individuals and groups. The contributing authors, all from several Latin American countries, present compelling historical, anthropological, sociological, mythological, psychological, and personal perspectives on a part of the world that is full of promise and despair. Latin America is a region marked with psychic "fault lines" that cause disturbances in its populations on issues of social class, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and even geography. Many of these "fault lines" appear to have their origins in the "basic fault" that occured with the conquest and colonization of the region, primarily by the Spanish and Portuguese. This "basic fault" and its subsequent "fault lines" reside not only in various groups that compete for status, power, wealth, and meaning but in the psyche of every Latin American individual who carries the emotional memories and scars of conflicts that have coursed through their mixed blood for generations.
Based on Jung's theory of complexes, this book offers a new perspective on conflicts between groups and cultures, demonstrating how the effects of cultural complexes can be felt in the behaviour of disenfranchised groups across the world.
Cultural Complexes and the Soul of America explores many of the cultural complexes that comprise the collective psychic-filtering system of emotions, ideas, and beliefs that possess the United States today. With chapters by an international selection of leading authors, the book covers ideas both broad and specific, and presents unique insight into the current state of the nation. The voices included in this volume amplify contemporary concerns, linking them to themes which have existed in the American psyche for decades while also looking to the future. Part One examines meta themes, including history, purity, dominion, and democracy in the age of Trump. Part Two looks at key complexes including race, gender, the environment, immigration, national character, and medicine. The overall message is that it is in wrestling with these complexes that the soul of America is forged or undone. This highly relevant book will be essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian ideas, politics, sociology, and American studies. It will also be of great interest to Jungian analysts in practice and in training, and anyone interested in the current state of the US.
How do cultural complexes affect the collective psyche? Based on Jung's theory of complexes, this book offers a new perspective on the psychological nature of conflicts between groups and cultures by introducing the concept of the cultural complex. This modern version of Jung's idea offers an original view of the forces that prevent human attempts to bring a peaceful, collaborative spirit to conflict between groups. Leading analysts and academics from a range of cultural backgrounds present their own perspective on the concept, demonstrating how the effects of cultural complexes can be felt in the behaviour of disenfranchised, oppressed and traumatised groups across the world. Ultimately, a clearer understanding of the source and nature of group conflict is reached through discussion of central subjects including: * Collective trauma and cultural complexes * Exploring racism: a clinical example of a cultural complex * Cultural complexes in the history of Jung, Freud and their followers. The Cultural Complex represents a valuable contribution to analytical psychology and will undoubtedly also stimulate dialogue in the fields of sociology, political science and cultural studies.
This timely and important new volume examines the impacts of Brexit and the war in Ukraine from the lens of the cultural complex model, in an exploration of the underlying dynamic relationships within and between countries. There have been seismic changes in Europe in recent years, with the onset of Brexit and the Russian–Ukraine war, pre-existing cultural complexes have erupted in fragmenting divisions and war, creating an atmosphere closest to that of the ominous animosities of the Cold War after World War 2 and impacting the psyche on both an archetypal and cultural level. In this volume, contributors provide early attempts to make sense of the current situation, and to think about it in terms of activated cultural complexes, specifically in Britain and Eastern Europe, and perhaps across the globe. This will be an important read for Jungian analysts interested in the underlying dynamic fuelling Brexit and the Ukraine–Russia war as well as those interested in Jungian studies, analysis and political activism, and international affairs from a Jungian perspective.
"Placing Psyche is the first in a series of books that will explore the notion of cultural complexes in a variety of settings around the world. The continent of Australia is the focus of this inaugural volume in which the contributors elucidate how the unique geography and peoples of Australia interact and interpenetrate to create the particular "mindscapes" of the Australian psyche. While the cultural complexes of Australia are explored with a keen eye to the specificity of place, history, context, and content, at the same time it becomes obvious that these cultural complexes emerge out of an archetypal background that is not just Australian but global. This volume shows how cultural complex theory itself mediates between the particularity of place and the universality of archetypal patterns"--
Placing Psyche is the first in a series of books that will explore the notion of cultural complexes in a variety of settings around the world. The continent of Australia is the focus of this inaugural volume in which the contributors elucidate how the unique geography and peoples of Australia interact and interpenetrate to create the particular "mindscapes" of the Australian psyche. While the cultural complexes of Australia are explored with a keen eye to the specificity of place, history, context, and content, at the same time it becomes obvious that these cultural complexes emerge out of an archetypal background that is not just Australian but global. This volume shows how cultural complex theory itself mediates between the particularity of place and the universality of archetypal patterns.
The mythologising of lost and abandoned children significantly influences Australian storytelling. In The Lost Child Complex in Australian Film, Terrie Waddell looks at the concept of the ‘lost child’ from a psychological and cultural perspective. Taking an interdisciplinary Jungian approach, she re-evaluates this cyclic storytelling motif in history, literature, and the creative arts, as the nucleus of a cultural complex – a group obsession that as Jung argued of all complexes, has us. Waddell explores ‘the lost child’ in its many manifestations, as an element of the individual and collective psyche, historically related to the trauma of colonisation and war, and as key theme in Australian cinema from the industry’s formative years to the present day. The films discussed in textual depth transcend literal lost in the bush mythologies, or actual cases of displaced children, to focus on vulnerable children rendered lost through government and institutional practices, and adult/parental characters developmentally arrested by comforting or traumatic childhood memories. The victory/winning fixation governing the USA – diametrically opposed to the lost child motif – is also discussed as a comparative example of the mesmerising nature of the cultural complex. Examining iconic characters and events, such as the Gallipoli Campaign and Trump’s presidency, and films such as The Babadook, Lion, and Predestination, this book scrutinises the way in which a culture talks to itself, about itself. This analysis looks beyond the melancholy traditionally ascribed to the lost child, by arguing that the repetitive and prolific imagery that this theme stimulates, can be positive and inspiring. The Lost Child Complex in Australian Film is a unique and compelling work which will be highly relevant for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian ideas, cultural studies, screen and media studies. It will also appeal to Jungian psychotherapists and analytical psychologists as well as readers with a broader interest in Australian history and politics.
