Friday Lecture
It was inevitable that someday a man in a highly visible leadership position would give flesh and blood to the cultural archetype of toxic masculinity lurking in the collective psyche as Donald Trump did. We have him to thank for the personification, mirroring back to us a distorted masculinity that thrives on aggression, domination of other humans, and dominion over the natural world. Cultural ideals and archetypes change and evolve, and we have the opportunity to embrace the shift. An important archetype of which men can become more conscious is the wounded healer. Men are wounded by the demands to be masculine in ways that are widely destructive, and the archetype into which they/we can evolve is a wounded healer who embraces vulnerability and relatedness with other men, women, and children, while contributing to healing the wounds inflicted on nature and the planet by toxic masculinity.
The Saturday Workshop will begin with a film version of Homer’s Odyssey, and the focus of discussion will be one man’s process of change from battlefield warrior through different phases of love, wisdom and final integration or coniunctio. The discussion will expand into the full range of issues on the feminine and masculine as we experience them in contemporary culture.
