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Patterns We Live By

Learning to recognize the unseen patterns that shape our lives and influence our destinies with Dr. Michael Conforti, founder and Director of the Assisi Institute and creator of Archetypal Pattern Analysis.
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 Psyche Under Siege Part I

2/8/2013

7 Comments

 
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After giving a lecture where I discussed the Holocaust, an elderly man approached me.  I could see a genuine kindness and compassion in his face, and also sensed that his soul
had seen far too much in his lifetime. He wanted me to re-consider my comment that we could never understand what created the Holocaust and ongoing acts of genocide. Gently, yet firmly he explained that when we stop trying to understand, we open the door open for future occurrences.  I immediately realized that I had made a terrible mistake, and apologized to him and to the memory of all the past, present and future victims of these crimes against humanity whose tragic fate may have been sealed by our collective lack of involvement. 

Now, yet again we stand aghast looking at the ongoing proliferation of violence in the world. From the slaughter and rape of the young woman in India, to the shooting of Malala, the 14 year old girl who was targeted because she spoke up for girls right to an education, to the current rash of violence in our own country. We have only to look at the news to be reminded of the slaughter of the innocents in Newtown, CT, of the Tucson shootings a few years ago, and this most recent horror where after shooting a school bus driver, a man held a five (5) year old boy hostage in a bunker for days.

 While there are fundamental differences between the Holocaust, acts of genocide and these killings, they may, nevertheless have similar origins within the psyche. Our collective response to these atrocities and tragedies is one of rage, horror, retaliation, and cries for more governmental control. While these are to some extent appropriate and meaningful responses, they neglect to
address the core issues. 

Now in yet another effort to manage this issue of collective
violence, we hear the collective refrain, singing of gun control and the ban on assault weapons. Governmental agencies and individuals are lined up on both sides of this issue, positioned either for or against a ban on assault weapons. As we have learned, these assault weapons are semi-automatic guns able to shoot a large round of bullets within seconds. After the recent Newtown shootings, where the shooter, Adam Lanza, used a 233-caliber Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to fire more than 100 bullets during this massacre, we are now all painfully aware of the capability of assault weapons. 
 
The chilling reality is that many of these children and their
teachers died after being shot multiple times with this rapid fire rifle, and never had a chance to escape from the barrage of bullets ripping through their bodies. While virtually every hunter would tell you that a single shot rifle is more than enough of a weapon to kill their prey, and see absolutely no need for such guns in the civilian world, our government continues to allow the sale and purchase of these weapons. 

As we approach this issue from an archetypal perspective, we have to ask what God or demon is sated by the presence of these weapons. So too, we now ask what is the government’s conscious and unconscious need to support
the ownership of these guns within the collective? Has this served to support the proliferation of violence and on a deeper level, to once again provide the necessary tools for this violent and demonic presence dwelling within the human heart and psyche, free reign? 

Elie Wiesel, as one of the last living survivors of the
Holocaust, will never forget that with each day the world failed to intervene in stopping the madness occurring daily in the camps, hundreds of thousands of innocent people died. He reminds us that the world leaders in the United States and Great Britain who had surveillance photos of the camps’and pictures of the daily atrocities and killings, knew full well of the extent of these atrocities, yet waited day after day before engaging the troops. To have brought the soldiers in just one day earlier would have saved the lives of thousands of men, women and children held in these camps. Wiesel stands against the silence, and associates the fear of speaking as akin to being an accomplice to these acts. Culpability for all these past, present and future murders rests on many shoulders. 

Now we all live in fear of the next assault, and with the
scepter of individual and collective fear and collective paranoia staining the air, we take up arms against this enemy. Gun sales have suddenly escalated to unprecedented numbers. With rifle, and pistol in hand, we arm ourselves against these external threats, and buy yet more ammunition, board up our homes, call for increased security in schools and churches and continue on in this march to fortify our world; believing we are now impervious against these threats. While this fear is clearly justified by the contemporary and past events, we need more than a pragmatic, instinctive response to these situations, if we hope to ever gain any footing against these horrors. As each and every one of these events represents an eruption of psychic contents into  the world, it is now imperative to understand the psychic and archetypal forces driving these events. We have to ask what it is that we truly fear and perhaps the most difficult question may be to ask if this dreaded enemy lives within our own home.

 As we force these dreadful and murderous aspects of the psyche further into the recesses of our mind, they gather strength and emerge in a distorted and even more dreaded guise. The ever present awareness of such violence and terror in world history provides more than enough evidence that human denial, religion, repression, and governmental policies are no foil for these unimaginably powerful agencies within the psyche. We are once again a nation under siege. Perhaps the most important consideration is not merely how to stop the purchase of weapons, but rather – who is the enemy holding us collectively hostage in a prison of unconscious terror and what can do to win our freedom and reclaim our collective safety?


7 Comments
Joseph Camosy link
2/9/2013 01:15:11 pm

Michael,

Excellent blog-talk.

On what to do about the violence, the first thing that comes to mind is the need to reduce the emotional and psychological violence by fostering dialogue with all sides of the issue. Just as James Hillman said that it was critical to grant autonomy to the psyche, we must also grant this autonomy to those who have a different perspective than us. We must take them and their concerns seriously, meaning we must not initially try to convince others to our point of view, but really attempt to understand them first.

The CNN Piers Morgan televised town-halls on violence may have had good intentions, but Mr. Morgan is not a facilitator. The confrontive journalistic style is not helpful in this situation as our media (mediated experience of culture) fosters psychological violence.

Who has the skill to facilitate a true dialogue? Examples of real dialogue are what we should be seeing on television.

As to the factors behind this violence and paranoia, one of the factors I believe is that there is actually a kind of assault going on on other levels (spiritual, mental, emotional, economic) but it's not being recognized as such. So certain groups and individuals feel this assault, but the larger mass consumer mediated culture isn't giving them a place to register this pain. So the pain (which is real) gets repressed into the shadows and thus morphs into an autonomous collective complex with a projection onto some external enemy. Thus, those who are most vulnerable to this collective complex, meme, or psychosis, act out their paranoid delusions and another tragedy takes place.

If there is an opponent or adversary give them a voice. Engage with them in non-violent dialogue. Then perhaps we will better understand each other, reduce the fear and together depotentize the collective complexes which have a grip on us all.

Reply
Beth Bowen
2/10/2013 01:00:17 pm

Reply
Josh LaBell
2/10/2013 09:26:41 pm

We have nothing to fear but Fear itself. There is no greater statement than this to address this issue you raised. We need to find ways both individually and collectively to be brave and find the courage to do the right thing inspire of the fear. I have been reading the Tools, by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. The very first issue they address is fear and pain and how they tend to keep us locked in inaction because we fear loss or pain that might come by leaving this safety. If we can teach people the skill of courage and I firmly believe it is a skill then we can begin to change things both on the personal level and the social. Fear has been used as a control mechanism for long enough it is time we start helping people free themselves of this tyranny. The time to act to prevent genocide is not when the killing starts it is when the government starts taking away the rights of people. in Germany it started with the disabled had more people stood up the deeds of the Nazis might have been avoided or at least they would have been exposed as the thus and killers that they were soon. Instead people gave up the rights of these people willingly even the families of the affected. Look around see what has been lost already and decide if this is the world you want or if you are just too fearful to change it.

Reply
Lewis Lafontaine link
2/10/2013 11:16:51 pm

The events in Germany in the 20th Century have their roots within historical traditions and events preceding them by centuries. The Church established the first "Ghetto" near the Vatican in as early as the 9th Century.

More specifically regarding Germany and the events prior to the outbreak of WWII one need only look at the Nuremberg Laws that were initially past in 1935 and published for the entire world to see. With the exception of a few insightful and courageous souls the Western Democracies did virtually nothing to prevent the implementation of these Laws.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws

Regarding contemporary violence within the United States one must take note that since the end of WWII the United States has for the most part involved in almost continual warfare in one form or another.

For Americans it can be quite challenging to view ourselves objectively without clouding the causal questions regarding violence with our own political, religious and other social values.

It would be valuable I think if persons from other nations and cultures could responds with their own views of the causes of American violence at home and abroad as they may see us more clearly with warts and all.

Reply
kenneth milling link
2/11/2013 07:01:40 am

"...prison of unconscious terror..." cuts to the core of annihilatory intention, albeit unconscious.
In my view, there is a 'complex' mix of unmitigated rage and paranoia, a potentially volatile and destructive combination.

Reply
Dr. B. Marie Brady-Whitcanack link
4/10/2014 02:24:54 am

Michael: Your identification of the "dreadful and murderous aspects of the psyche" that gather strength and reemerge "in a more distorted and even more dreaded guise" certainly addresses the recent celebratory riot at Iowa State University April 9, 2014. I have discussed with you the field of "Puer Eternus" and these foolish and senseless acts of violence on college campuses in my book "Aesthetic Conflict and the Evolution of a Riot." The most recent riot emerged where past riots left off...more violent, more destructive and more forceful.

Reply
Gay Club Nevada link
2/4/2021 11:29:24 am

Good readingg your post

Reply



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    Michael Conforti, Ph.D. is a Jungian Analyst, and is the founder and director of the Assisi Institute. Dr. Conforti's work has resulted not only in a training institute based on his discoveries, but also the development of a new 
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  • Home
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    • Conferencia Sueño de Invierno 2023
  • About Us
    • Assisi Board of Directors
  • Assisi Institute Journal Call for Submissions
    • The Assisi Institute Journal Author Guidelines
  • Csanyi and Campis Article
    • Science & Psyche Series
  • Adolph Portmann Metamorphosis Article
  • C. G. Jung Psychological Factors in the Development of Human Behavior
  • Archetypal Pattern Analysts Professional Directory