The Anima as an Archetype of Human Resilience in the Face of Calamity1

This paper will provide a theoretical basis for looking at a dream in the analysis of a client during a calamity. Finding the archetype of the anima is a way of responding to a crisis, in this case to the COVID-19 pandemic period. With all the basic instincts disrupted by a catastrophe, the emergence of the anima, as archetype of life, is there to remind us how to survive and recover. The anima archetype, often representing psychological resilience in ancient myths, shows up in dreams to guide human transformation from the struggle to survive trauma to the art of living a full life.     

George Floyd’s death and COVID-19: inflection points in the Anthropocene Era?

George Floyd’s death, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change are on a continuum from the immediate shock of viewing a video-recorded murder, to millions dying worldwide from disease, to deaths related to climate change accumulating over a millennium. They participate in the powerful archetypes of death and inequality. ‘Increase’, Hexagram 42 in the I Ching, archetypically addresses inequalities at all levels – racial, economic, political and the profound imbalance between humans and the environment. Floyd’s death highlights the consequences of systemic racism and income inequalities. The pandemic as ‘nature’s revenge’ hits minority populations harder due to underlying health conditions resulting from poverty and greater exposure to the virus in the workplace. President Trump as Trickster showed Americans their shadow and his response to the pandemic amplified its severity. The pandemic has shocked our social, political and economic systems and paused our species rush into environmental disasters at many levels. The disruptions present opportunities for reflection, experimentation and developing new systems as old forms are challenged. The ecological dimensions of Jung’s concepts emphasize interconnectedness at all levels and the paradigm shift he called a ‘new age’ provides a framework for altering the course of the Anthropocene Era.     

Archetypes and the ‘Impoverished Genome’ argument: updates from evolutionary genetics

Throughout his career, Jung felt the psyche had ‘ancestral layers’ that contained elements of an individual’s species history, and clinical experience has shown that this idea can be an aid to psychological healing and emotional well-being. Thus, some later thinkers have attempted to link such theoretical constructs to the genome, as Jung had little knowledge of genetics in his day. But in the early 2000s, genome studies suggested that the genome might contain too little content to be capable of encoding symbolic information. This opinion gave rise to an oft-repeated ‘impoverished genome’ argument, i.e. that the genome could not provide a significant contribution to the collective unconscious, prompting theorists to propose other sources for it, or to argue that it doesn’t exist. Today, however, developments in evolutionary neurogenetics calls the impoverished genome argument into question for a number of independent reasons. These developments re-open the idea that the genome may be worth reconsidering as the biological substrate for the collective unconscious.     

A personal commentary on J.W. Perry,M.D., and introduction to ‘Reconstitutive process in the psychopathology of the Self’

John Weir Perry’s influence on the understanding of the psychotic process through his research in San Francisco between 1950 and 1981 was groundbreaking, because it both verified and expanded upon C.G. Jung’s research at the Burghölzli Hospital in Switzerland in the early 1900’s. The author explores both the brilliance of Perry’s contribution as a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst and also shows the flawed human, who, with his rare sensitivity to the psychotic process, devoted his life work to the schizophrenic population and their often ill-fated search for meaning. She tells how his creative engagement with the analytic processes of Self discovery eventually led to analytic boundary violations, which ultimately resulted in his indefinite suspension from membership in his local Jungian community. Further, this paper describes her reflections on the innovative work that influenced both the treatment of this population, as well as educating candidates in analytical training to be receptive to and cognizant of psychotic affects and imagery. The archetypal field of the psychotic process, its influence on the development of analytical psychology relative to the psychotic process, and one man’s impact on the analytic community are considered.     

The construct of the ‘mana personality’ in Jung’s works: a historic-hermeneutic perspective. Part II

This is the second part of an article that tries to provide a framework of understanding of, and a seminal reflection on, a highly interesting yet little explored psychological construct of Jung’s analytical psychology, namely the ‘mana personality’. Here I take into consideration some issues around the ‘saviour complex’, discussed in Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, concerning both the psychological analysis of the individual and the socio-political level related to the collective horizon of the 1930s. Moreover, I consider the continuity of Jung’s analysis of such issues in other works such as ‘Psychology and national problems’ (1936), Symbols of Transformation (1952), and Aion (1950). I finally make some suggestions concerning Jung’s apparent hermeneutic tendency to apply the construct of the mana personality to collective historical phenomena.     

The construct of the ‘mana personality’ in Jung’s works: a historic-hermeneutic perspective. Part I

According to Jung, the ‘mana personality’ represents an archetypal phase of the individuation process of remarkable interest in psychological, hermeneutic and theoretical terms. This figure is characterized by a high initiatic potential that fosters the approximation of the consciousness of the Self. At the same time, it entails a risk of psychic inflation or of ‘similarity to God’. In this article, divided in two parts, I deal with those aspects through a reconstruction of the development of this notion within Jung’s published works, adopting a primarily chronological and, secondarily, thematic approach moving from a textual analysis of relevant passages. In this first part, I consider some passages which deal mainly with the risks of the assimilation of the unconscious in ‘La structure de l’inconscient’ (1916) that preceded the successive proper treatment of the mana personality’s notion presented, and here examined, in ‘The relations between the ego and the unconscious’ (1928). Successively, I take into consideration some further issues related to it discussed by Jung in ‘The structure of the psyche’ (1928/1931), ‘Archaic man’ (1931), and ‘Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’.