Cultural Development and Transformation can begin at the level of the individual when emergent aspects in the archetypal field forge a connection with the Ego of a sensitive individual and generate a flow of artistic imagination. An artist feels this connection as a generative tension that calls for a creative response. A change in culture can also begin in the psyche of an individual through what Jung referred to as big dreams, which contain imagery intended not only for the dreamer but for the collective as well. The individual’s psyche is acted upon by this transpersonal nature of the imagery in the dream. Both processes can spark a collaborative creative process of the Self and the Ego leading to something new: an artistic depiction or symbolic conception that has both an archetypal or heavenly parent and a human parent and can be understood as a divine child. After the child develops sufficient viability, it is delivered to collective consciousness where the implications of its compensating influence on culture can be gradually worked out in the collective psyche. The artist delivers his work to the collective. The dreamer feels a need to share the dream imagery with others. Collective consciousness then serves as a metaphorical church whose function is to carry and work out the meaning of this new conception in the ongoing life of the collective.
In a period of cultural upheaval and impending transformation, it is important for enlightened members of the collective to exercise this responsibility mindfully and to give great care to the psychic space that holds transformative imagination. This program will address how this might be approached as a general matter. We will also examine how it relates specifically to the way we as a collective might carry the artistic imagination of Walt Whitman and Hermann Melville, whose vision and writing took soundings into the archetypal level and deeper implications of democracy, diversity, and the bonds of interconnection between people that are now largely unconscious. These are the archetypes that are emerging to rebalance the now rigid and one-sided orientation of the contemporary cultural canon.
