Cultural Complexes in the Cultural Unconscious

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the basic concept of the cultural complex. I will present the theory and give an example of how the theory can be applied. At the core of this notion is the belief that the Jungian tradition has an important contribution to make about the collective psyche and its role in shaping social, cultural, and political life—and that this collective psyche is both connected to and separate from the individual psyche to which we pay such close attention in our individual psychotherapies and analyses. Such an approach to the collective psyche raises the possibility that we might be able to find a psychological attitude with which to think and feel our way through the disturbing collective events that challenge us every day

Collective unconscious · Culture theory · Politics · Psyche · Unconscious mind · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Globalization and Cultural Identity · Language and cultural evolution