Dr. Tom Singer will be one of the presenters for the conference being presented by the Asheville Jung Center titled, Symbols and Individuation in Global Politics: The Case of Barack Obama
I recently posted a blog on the subject of the transcendent function and the notion that figures like Obama carry that function and various cultural complexes for the wider culture. I am persuaded by the most recent cover of Newsweek, an American news magazine, that Dr. Singer is more right than wrong. Below is the text of what appears on the cover:
THE MAKING OF A
TERRORIST-CODDLING
WARMONGERING
WALLSTREET-LOVING
SOCIALISTIC
GODLESS
MUSLIM
PRESIDENT*
*who isn’t actually any of these things
The dichotomized and clearly opposing characterizations of Obama underscores Tom Singer’s deep insights and dispels any remaining doubt I have about the validity of his construct. The timing of that Newsweek cover, the week before our conference, reminds me of the synchronicity of things. The fact that this president can be so deeply misunderstood and so confusedly characterized alarms me.
Why alarm? I remain convinced that individuation is one of the most important tasks to which a person can apply herself or himself. The more individuated person will be capable of dynamically holding tensions such as those depicted on the cover of Newsweek. The process of individuation improves the likelihood that there will be persons who recognize that from the depths of their unconscious there arise life affirming, inspiring, seemingly charmed currents but there also arise sinister, destructive, rejected forces. These darker, unconscious forces often make themselves known through their projection upon others.
So it should alarm us that the current president is such a figure who exposes the individual and collective capacity for projection. Newsweek has drawn fire for this cover (FOX News).
Of all things, FOX News, a news syndicate that has spared no opportunity to exploit the inflammatory rhetoric to oppose Obama, criticizes Newsweek for relying on such extreme and sensational epithets to sell magazines. If FOX News had chosen to confront its own sensationalism, I would be more encouraged, but instead, it assailed Newsweek and the author for employing the same tactics it uses. (Does anyone detect a bit of PROJECTION?)
There is less danger for the public to be overtaken, deceived, or led astray by projections when persons get on with the business of their own individuation. To that end, Analytical Psychology has something to offer. The focus of Analytical Psychology is likely to be the individual and yet, the subject of Analytical Psychology will also remain the collective, that infinitely larger field with which the individual’s unconscious resonates and sometimes discords. The harmonics between individual and collective are the roots of the notes that every single person is given to sing.
Mr. Obama appears to have a near endless capacity to inflame such opposing polarities (see the actual cover at http://www.politico.com/static/PPM170_100827_domestic.html) InPsychology and Alchemy (1955) and Mysterium Conjunctionis (1956) Jung recognized that the substratum of the alchemist’s efforts was the archetypal union of opposites by means of integrating opposing polarities.
I am more eager than before for the September 10, 2010 conference where these themes will be explored. Registration is still open at
Len Cruz, MD
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