The lecture will focus on the March from Selma to Montgomery and the development of culture – what we could see as the development of the nation’s conscience — through the implementation of the eightfold path of nonviolence, which includes Mahatma Gandhi’s concepts of Satyagraha and Ahimsa and Martin Luther King’s six tenets.
The concepts of individuation, the ego/Self axis, the cultural unconscious, and cultural and racial complexes will be shown and amplified as key components of development within the individual and culture.
Additionally, we will examine how these nonviolent tenets represent the analytic stance and how applying them may be used to transmute power struggles into nonviolent consciousness. We will discuss the spectrum of aggression and hatred as powerfully destructive and constructive forces, which when mediated by nonviolence, imbue the analytic experience with agape. We will also discuss sadomasochism as a form of participation mystique and, ultimately, a defense against relatedness, empathy, and self-love.