The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society. Edited by Thomas Singer and Samuel Kimbles

The C.G. Jung Society of Montreal

Newsletter

Vol. 31, No. 2, October 2005

The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society. Edited by Thomas Singer and Samuel Kimbles. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004, 279 pages.)

This book is a comprehensive exploration of the current state of Jungian psychology in society and the world. The issue of culture in Jungian studies, so long neglected for the sake of individuation, has now returned to the spotlight. The many international Jungian analysts who have contributed to this book offer insights into the unconscious complexes that have befallen our leaders and driven people to misunderstanding and violence.

The editors of this ground-breaking book claim that C. G. Jung’s “complex theory” was his “first original contribution to the young science of psychoanalysis.” This theory never found a broader application to the life of groups because of Jung’s own inclination towards the individual and antipathy to the collective and his followers’ wariness about group psychology after Jung’s dangerous brush with Nazi ideology in the 1930’s.

Jung described the complex as a repetitive, autonomous pattern of behaviour that resisted consciousness. The editors have extended that notion to the collective sphere, arguing that such an intense collective emotion, the cultural complex, is equally present in group experience where “collecting experience that confirms a historical point of view” can lead to dangerous outcomes.

Incorporating John Weir Perry’s idea of the personal “bipolar complex” into the collective sphere, the authors assert that a group will often take a highly charged emotion and split its contents. The positive side is integrated into the ego/group identity while the negative traits are projected outwards onto an “other.” The resulting scapegoating often leads to the simplified and treacherous “good and evil” paradigm that drives the political and religious agendas of our day.

Thomas Singer opens the book with a dazzling essay. “The cultural complex and archetypal defense of the group spirit: Baby Zeus, Elian Gonzalez, Constantine’s Sword and other Holy Wars” is an extensive analysis of the cultural complex at work. Singer has borrowed a theory proposed by Donald Kalsched concerning personal archetypal defenses of the spirit. Kalsched claims that an individual, once a victim of oppression, violence or trauma, unconsciously creates “daimones” or defenders which serve to protect him. The long-term consequence, however, is that the defenses often stifle further development. In a perverse way they perpetuate the cycle of suffering. Singer notes that splitting and the projection of “good and evil,” as well as the defense of the group spirit, can be seen in the case of the young Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, in the history of Christianity since the time of Constantine, as well as in America’s war on terror.

Several essays follow which elucidate the effects of the cultural complex on the psyche of the group. Jacqueline Gerson and Luigi Zoja both address the traumatic effects of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Gerson describes “malinchismo,” a syndrome of betrayal and inferiority inherent in the Mexican psyche. Malinche was an Indian princess whose collaboration with Cortés may have averted the wholesale slaughter of her people. Her betrayal has been internalized by the Mexican people to such an extent that they continue to devalue their own culture by overestimating the “other.”

Zoja notes that the Aztec empire may have collapsed so quickly because its cyclical concept of time may have confused the expected return of their god Quezalcoatl with the conquering Spanish soldier Cortés. Thus they offered no resistance. The wound inflicted by this abrupt defeat still shapes the Mexican identity as a cultural complex. “The cyclical experience of time is actually the container in which we seek refuge after suffering unbearable trauma.”

In “A long weekend: Alice Springs, Central Australia,” Craig San Roque observes Aborigine squatters in his backyard while considering the great rupture that Europeans brought to their way of life. In a sad account of forsaken souls, the traditional Dream Time appears tragically ghost-like in modern Australia.

“When a religious archetype becomes a cultural complex: Puritanism in America” was written by Manisha Roy in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Roy points out how America has incorporated the perfectionist fantasy inherent in the Judeo-Christian myth. She sees an unconscious bipolar complex driving an agenda in which the culture projects shadow elements onto its enemy while cleaving to its own alleged goodness and perfection.

In “What does it mean to be in ‘The West’?: Psychotherapy as a cultural complex—‘foreign’ insights into ‘domestic’ healing practices,” Andrew Samuels suggests that race and ethnicity can offer important new insights to the rather homogenous field of psychotherapy. Samuels’s cross-cultural perspective, from the margins, is a pluralist post-modern vision.

Addressing cultural complexes in the psyche of the group and the individual, Eli and Esti Galili-Weisstub’s essay on “Collective trauma and cultural complexes” describes their experience as analysts practicing in Israel. There, individual trauma is inseparable from collective trauma. Both Israeli and Palestinian children see themselves as victims of violence even in their dreams. Defending the group spirit leaves no room for defeat, depression or the ability to mourn. The authors argue that cultural woundedness is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Only when and if the wounds can be “acknowledged, related to and attended to” will the violent repetitions cease and the wounds heal.

In “Light seven fires—Seize the seven desires,” Betty Meador describes ancient Sumerian hymns and poems to the goddess Inanna which highlight a matriarchal culture at its prime. Its rituals were created out of women’s menstrual cycles and worship of the feminine; these practices regulated social life. Meador claims that modern society can find in this ancient cultural model a place where women’s bodies and their experience know no shame.

Thomas B. Kirsch examines the cultural complexes behind Jungian and Freudian psychoanalysis. Jung and Freud both brought significant cultural and religious baggage to their encounter. Contrary to the long-held belief that Jung held anti-Semitic attitudes, Kirsch reports that his Jewish parents both did analysis with Jung in the 1930’s and never witnessed this animus in him. The author concludes that memory, history and meaning are distorted through the prism of cultural complexes.

There follows a section offering clinical examples of the cultural complex in the psyche of the individual. In “A cultural complex operating in the overlap of clinical and cultural space,” Samuel Kimbles describes an analytic encounter between a black analyst and his white patient. “In the intersubjective matrix created by personal and cultural complexes, larger cultural moral dilemmas and issues can get personified by differences and the kinship feelings created by similarities can render the group level of the psyche invisible.”

In “Exploring racism: A clinical example of a cultural complex,” Helen Morgan mirrors Kimbles’s American study in a British setting. Morgan is a white Jungian analyst whose work with a black client also exposes racial undercurrents. She notes an unadmitted “Eurocentric white supremacy” in the psychoanalytic field. Jung was not exempt from this prejudice. Morgan argues that outdated categories of black and white are no longer relevant in our multicultural societies.

In “A clinical encounter with a cultural complex,” John Beebe demonstrates how the stigma of being homosexual from his youth scarred a young man and subverted a hero complex. The countertransference provides Beebe with a way to activate the “fight” in the man as he prepares to face his death from AIDS with dignity.

The final section of the book describes the cultural complex and individuation of the group. Astrid Berg elucidates the South African concept of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is “a spirit of fellowship, humanity and compassion” which transcends family and ethnic identity. In African societies “community confers personhood.” Berg suggests that the dyadic principle that applies in therapy between self and other could do better by adopting the African principle of self and others.

Brian Feldman applies findings from infant studies to organizational behaviour in “A theory of organizational culture.” Self and other are best related with an “optimal tension” for growth and transformation. Defense of the self creates a “skin” that prevents open communication. In Japanese society, a formal, fairly rigid social structure is balanced by a Zen approach which provides a spontaneous counterweight.

In the final chapter Murray Stein addresses the two Americas and their mutual collective projections. He suggests that anxieties about invasion are reflections of fears from both sides: the southern Latino brother fears globalization while the northern Anglo brother dreads an unbridled Dionysian migration. Using Grimm’s fairytale “The spirit in the bottle,” Stein concludes that the spirit of Mercurius can help us recognize that multiculturalism brings not a curse but blessings of healing and prosperity.

If the world has seen one hundred years of psychotherapy and is getting worse, perhaps the next century could do better by applying the insights gained from private practice to the public sphere. This exceptional book goes a long way to understanding the unconscious forces that keep us in blindness and offers many insights to help raise our collective consciousness.

—Murray Shugar