The Individual and Society: A Jungian Response to the Conditions and Crises of Our Time

 March 2025 Jungian and Archetypal Studies M.A./Ph.D. Admissions Webinar

Join us for an exclusive admissions webinar featuring Keiron Le Grice, PhD, Co-Chair of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s M.A./Ph.D. Jungian and Archetypal Studies program.

The psychology of the unconscious may be situated in the lineage of nineteenth-century romantic philosophy, which served as a compensatory undercurrent to the dominant enlightenment rationality and the developing might of science. Even as it draws on scientific empiricism in its approach, depth psychology concerns itself—now as then—with the irrational elements of human experience that are also the concern of romanticism: dreams, visions, fantasies, compulsions, myths, pathology, suffering, evil, sexuality, spirituality, and more. So too, the advent of Freudian psychoanalysis at the turn of the twentieth century radically challenged the prevailing enlightenment view of human nature at the time. “Man” could no longer be seen as a rationally autonomous “master of his own house,” Freud proclaimed, for we have to reckon with the power of the unconscious that can usurp reason and morality, and subject us to instinctual drives and fantasies over which we have little control. From the first, then, depth psychology, in its discovery of and illumination of the unconscious, was something of an outsider perspective, placing itself at odds with the dominant narratives and worldview. This was markedly true of Jungian analytical psychology, which championed modes of being that were denigrated and discarded in the post-Christian scientific West (such as mythology, mysticism, alchemy, and astrology), yet that were potentially of great value for the individual’s quest to live a life of spiritual meaning, to attain self-knowledge of the depths of the psyche, and to become reconciled to suffering and evil.

But what specifically, we may wonder, is the significance of Jungian psychology in our own time? What benefits might a deep absorption in Jungian ideas and practices afford us today? What, accordingly, might be the value—personal as well as academic—of studying in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies program at Pacifica?

In this webinar, Keiron Le Grice will outline perspectives and responses, drawing on Jungian ideas, to some of the major conditions and crises of our time. Addressing areas such as scientific materialism, the rise of secular society, the ecological crisis, superficial celebrity culture, extreme political polarization, identity politics, mass movements and collectivism, and the accelerating power of technology, we will consider, in brief, how Jungian depth psychology continues to offer an outsider vantage point, at once challenging and compensating for the prevailing “truths” and norms of contemporary society. A Jungian-informed approach to life, as we will discuss, might help to sustain us in the face of multiple external challenges, and help open a pathway to spiritual meaning and purpose.

Live Q&A and Discussion

Following the presentation, you’ll have the opportunity to engage in a live Q &A and discussion with Dr. Le Grice.