“In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where do we make contact with the archaic man in us?
In our dreams.”
In ‘Archaic Man’, Jung wrote: ‘Every civilized human being, however high his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche’. At this level, the mind is still at one with nature, because this mind is nature, and has never been disconnected from it.
Every colonial culture wants to feel at home in the new land but in order to feel connected it has important work to do: reconciliation with the indigenous people of the land.
This lecture will look at this as a global problem today, and Jung’s focus is on the United States of America. He did not visit Australia and it was not an object of his study. But what he said about America has ramifications for us in Australia. Jung believed that the awakening of the indigenous archetype in the psyche will have far-reaching effects on the psychology of all colonial societies.