Events

Six Jungian analysts and academics at the cutting edge of this exciting and crucial area of research and practice share their diverse modes of professional engagement.

This is the second set of talks in a new ‘Beyond Jung’ series hosted by the Pari Center, honouring the seminal work and inspiration of the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung. Our title, ‘Jung and Ecology’, refers to the contribution of Jung’s prescient insights, and of his Analytical Psychology in general, to the emerging discipline of ecopsychology. This can be summed up in his famous and alarming assertion that “The world hangs by a thin thread… and that thread is the psyche of man.” Despite his old-fashioned language, four of our six presenters are women!

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “A Descent into the Maelström” (1841), three fishermen are trapped in a gigantic ocean whirlpool threatening to destroy them. This strikes me as an image of the abyss humankind is facing today, threatened by a multi-dimensional ecological crisis in a world dominated by a one-sidedly materialistic collective consciousness that has lost its spiritual foundation, as Carl Gustav Jung characterized it. Symbolically, Poe’s story tells us that psychic transformation of the collective can be achieved by letting go of the old and embracing the new and unknown… Read more