Collective Trauma,Implicit Memories,the Body,and Active Imagination in Jungian Analysis1

This presentation attempts to show the healing potential underlying the inclusion of the patient's body in the analytic process, while honouring and revisiting the understanding of the psyche-body connection described by Jung in his early work. In addition, the author offers reflections on the impact of collective trauma whose aftermath, among others, has been the disappearance of thousands of people, consequently breaking the family genealogy, leaving hundreds of children stripped of their roots and true identity. Referencing clinical material, the author describes how the process of translation and integration—from the sensory-perceptual to the conceptual-symbolic—can be halted on account of collective trauma occurring at an early stage in development. Moreover, it is shown how the potential of the archetype or image schema, linked to the somatic-affective early experiences encoded as implicit memories, can be recovered, when Embodied Active Imagination is included in the analytic work. The patient's bodily gestures and somatic experience may bridge the gap between the preverbal-implicit knowledge and the emergence of emotions and images that allow for the creation of a new symbolic narrative.     

Intersections of personal vs. collective trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic: the hijacking of the human imagination

This paper explores how the deadly shadow of COVID-19 passing over the Earth constitutes a collective trauma that frequently opens up or ‘triggers’ un-remembered personal trauma, and it provides clinical examples of these intersections. The paper further explores how the human imagination, which we normally utilize to make meaning out of traumatic experience, can be hijacked by fear – leading to avoidance of suffering and to illusory formulations and alternative realities such as conspiracy theories. Alternatively, the imagination can be employed in more realistic and creative ways – leading through conscious suffering to healing and wholeness. Which path the imagination takes is shown to depend on the capacity of individuals to feel the full reality of the human condition in general and the exquisite vulnerability of our existence as fragile human beings at this moment in history. Ernest Becker’s analysis of our ‘denial of death’ and his urgency to embrace our common human vulnerability is explored in relation to Jung’s early tendency to deny the body. The author proposes that the more creative uses of the imagination, connected to a more humble and realistic apprehension of our common destiny, may be seen in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that swept the world in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.     

‘Thank God I’m not a Jungian’

This article focuses less on the content of Jung's ideas than on ways in which they act as both invitation and challenge to engage with psyche. It explores the mythic framework of Jung's approach and how this can enable individuals to live in psychological and mundane worlds in which there can be no final certainties. It elaborates three particular aspects of Jung's thinking that I have found personally valuable: his generosity of vision, his insistence that individuals engage for and with themselves rather than relying on someone else's ideas, and his ponderings on the relationship between the individual and the collective. All three aspects seem to be important elements of the work of individuation.     

Le travail collectif à l’épreuve des restructurations organisationnelles

The ergonomic analysis of work (Daniellou, 1996; Wisner, 1996) and especially the psychological analysis of real working activity (Leplat, 2000) allow investigating the main factors of work situations. The objective is to show the influence on the nursing representations of psychiatric services that are restructured, of the initial working situations, the projects, the restructuring models. The analyses assess the nursing representations of psychiatric services that are restructured, the projects, the restructuring models, the real working activity. The data show impacts of collective work and restructuring models, especially the damaging consequences of fusions. The results enable the authors to discuss from the points of views of theory, methodology and interventions.     

Enlightenment and individuation: syncretism,synchronicity and beyond

This paper opens with a personal introduction to the topic of syncretism within the context of a comparison of enlightenment associated with Eastern religious traditions and individuation as experienced through Jungian analysis. A brief exploration of the recent scholarly revival of interest in syncretism follows. Some close parallels with Jungian theory are highlighted, especially in the work of Timothy Light. Applications to the syncretic trends in Tang culture along the Silk Road(s) suggest deeper patterns of interconnectedness lie at the heart of these trends. A complex systems view highlights similarities between syncretic connections and non‐local aspects of synchronistic field events. The final section attempts to extend this approach to innovation in general terms through the recently articulated concept of the ‘adjacent possible’ from the writing of Stuart Kauffman. From this, the notion of a collective pre‐conscious dimension to the psyche is extrapolated. The unifying thread of acausal emergent forms provides a potential synthetic network for these phenomena.     

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.     

‘Who is my Jung?’ The progressive,though sometimes ambivalent,expansion of Jung's idea of the collective unconscious: from an ‘unconscious humanity’ to – in all but name – the soul of the world

This paper discusses Jung's idea of myth as a projection of the collective unconscious, suggesting that the term ‘projection’ separates human beings from nature, withdrawing nature's life into humanity. Jung's discovery of a realm independent of consciousness – in conversations with his soul in The Red Book, and in synchronicity, began a dialogue which finally brought him, through the Alchemical Mercurius, closer to the idea of a world‐soul.     

Dreams and COVID-19

This work originates from reflections on the observation of recurring themes in dreams of patients in psychoanalytic treatment during the most restrictive lockdown period in Italy (March - May 2020). The authors focus on the peculiar dialogic state between consciousness and the unconscious that arose following a collective event such as that of the pandemic, which determined the activation of complex personal nuclei, compensatory effects of the unconscious psyche and new perspective functions. These latter aspects are interpreted with reference to the contributions of Erich Neumann, bringing a new psychological vision of the relationship between Man and Nature in relation to catastrophic events.     

Editorial

This paper is a response to William Meredith-Owen’s paper presented at the inaugural joint conference on ‘Alchemy, a bridge to Jung’s objective psyche’, for The Society of Analytical Psychology and the West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy in autumn 2020. The paper presents a way of understanding the collective unconscious through the functioning of the core self, and thus offers a bridge which addresses the indivisibility of the personal and collective psyche/unconscious, referencing Mary Williams’ (1963) classic paper. Specifically, this is applied to Winnicott’s dream of destruction that he had after reviewing Memories, Dreams, Reflections, as well as to parts of the psyche that were dissociated due to significant early deprivation – the primary narcissistic wounds. Alchemical metaphors are shown to relate to the analytic process, which allows the primitive core self (with its identificatory, participatory, connecting nature), when integrated through relationship, to sink back into the unconscious and function as the Self.     

Jung and Mr. Punch as mythologems

This paper explores how we can make our own mythological version of ‘Jung’ say whatever we want. Excessive veneration gets in the way of his theories being allowed to stand on their own. Understanding ‘Jung’ as a mythologem provides a way out of this intoxication with identification by letting us recollect and re‐connect to the Collective Unconscious.