This lecture will explore the tribal unconscious: that aspect of the collective unconscious that contains elements of family and community and has at its primal center the cult, the embryonic core of religion. Jung was wary of all modern collective movements because of their tendency to sweep away religiously unrooted modern people, as seen most especially in fascism and communism.
The human tendency to join mass movements and experience the participation mystique of a Grateful Dead concert, a high Mass, or an evening with one's guru can be a rich and rewarding event--but these sorts of experience can also contain the potential for psychological disaster. What follows from the theory of the collective unconscious is the idea that being human means fulfilling the archetypal intent of being in a community with what has been historically called a religious feeling at its center. But what are the dangers and benefits?
From a psychological perspective, this lecture will attempt to examine how we can identify the basic structures, personalities and dynamics that mark the cultus, the embyronic beginning of a movement, and how its development can work for and against the individuation of its members.
Kimbrough A. Besheer, M.Div., spent four years living in a religious community. He is now a Jungian analyst in private practice on Mercer Island. He is a Diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich, an Episcopal priest, a member of Jungian Analysts--North Pacific, and serves on the board of The North Pacific Institute for Analytical Psychology.