Animus, Psyche and Culture: A Jungian Revision

Sulagna Sengupta
Start Date: 08/10/2023
End Date:29/10/2023
Scheduled course
Online

Overview

November 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th, 2023 | 5:00 – 6:30 PM PST

Animus, Psyche and Culture is a Post Jungian reading of the animus and its lived experience in culture. This course presents the contra-sexual animus as not just an inner archetypal figure, but also one that is in dynamic relation with the environment. In close ties with culture, the animus occupies a liminal realm – a subjective world inner world as well as an outer, social. Inner and outer are conceived as not two separate realms, but fluid, interactive spaces in which the phenomenology of the animus is discerned.

The four modules of the course explain the concept of the animus and its lived experience in culture through narratives of history, myth, religion, gender and politics. The archetypal animus is constellated in the unconscious psyche in interaction with a social world, where innate values about gender prevail. The broad spectrum of culture in which the phenomena of the animus is explored in this course, shows remarkable variations of meaning from Jung’s original formulations. We use depth psychological ideas of archetypes and collective unconscious, individuation and stages of life, Self, feminine and masculine psyche and synchronicity, to trace unconscious contra-sexuality in psyche and social. We explore the deep and far-reaching implications of Jung’s ideas in current contexts of gender dysphoria, war and violence, racial intolerance, xenophobia and a looming environmental crisis.

  • Those aiming to use narratives, myths, dreams, history, films, political and cultural phenomena in studying psyche and the collective.
  • Cultural studies & myth scholars, and those with interest in philosophy and religion
  • Students specializing in gender and psychosocial studies, human rights activism and decolonization of psychology
  • Jungian analysts and psychotherapists
  • Jungian Studies scholars pursuing Masters, Doctoral and Post-Doctoral programs
  • View the animus not only as an archetypal phenomenon, but also as one that is culturally and politically shaped
  • Understand the significance of psyche’s interface with culture in evoking contra-sexual dynamics.
  • Apply the notion of animus in understanding feminine emancipatory histories and transformation in collective consciousness.
  • Broaden the understanding of animus from a problematic masculine other to a complex, contra-sexual principle that fuels individual and collective transformation, and reveals many nuances of gender-relatedness and gender-fluidity.
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