C.G. Jung Society, Seattle C.G. Jung Society, Seattle
Lecture: Friday, October 11, 2002, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Good Shepherd Center, Room 202, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., Seattle
$10 members, $15 nonmembers
Workshop: Saturday, October 12, 2002, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Good Shepherd Center, Room 202, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., Seattle
$30 members, $40 nonmembers, $25 student/senior members, $35 student/senior nonmembers
To learn about preregistering for the workshop, see Preregistration Policy and Form.
The major conflicts in the world today are essentially conflicts around ethnic, racial, class, religious, and gender differences. These conflicts are manifested in a variety of economical, social, and political situations. The traditional Jungian attitude toward these phenomena has been to look for what is going below the surface of everyday social and political life. The goal was to see what the unconscious manifestations show us about where our conscious attitudes and behavior need adjustments. Thus the Jungian tradition emphasizes the development of the individual's capacity to develop a sense of separateness out of his or her collective experience. With the introduction of the concept of cultural complexes we have another conceptual tool with which to understand and relate to collective experiences that preserves the complexity of the group life without reducing it to individual dynamics. Cultural complexes are at the heart of conflicts between groups and are basic components of group life whether economically, politically, geographically, or religiously understood.
The Saturday workshop will explore this new concept. Jung's theory of complexes has always been at the heart of analytical psychology, but it was never applied to the cultural unconscious or the cultural level of the psyche. In this intermediate realm that sits between the personal and the archetypal, issues of race, gender, ethnicity, religion and politics involve us in a variety of conflicts in our local and global communities. We will look at some of the implications of using the concepts of the cultural complexes for working with collective and clinical issues. There will be an experiential component to identify and work with cultural complexes.
Samuel Kimbles, Ph.D., is an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is on the Clinical Faculty at the Department of Family and Community Medicine of the University of California, San Francisco Medical School. He maintains a private practice in Santa Rosa and San Francisco and is an organizational consultant. Dr. Kimbles first began to recognize and formulate the concept of Cultural Complexes while a candidate in analytical training. The encounter between the Jungian opus and his Afro-American background found a workable resolution through his work with and ultimate formulation of the concept of cultural complexes. From his work with cultural complexes in his training experience he was able to draw out much wider implications for the concept.
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