Drawing on The Red Book, the talk explores the paradoxical significance of Jung’s notion of the ‘uniting symbol’ in relation to the healing of the body politic, and the conditions necessary for it to emerge.
Jung warned us “not to be indifferent to the poets, as they “create from the very depths of the collective unconscious, voicing aloud what others only dream” (CW VI, §323). The talk asks what analytical psychology can learn from the struggles of poets from different traditions in the North of Ireland to reach this symbolic depth.
The talk invites parallels between the historical conflict of “hostile brothers” in Northern Ireland and today’s society where competing truth claims undermine social trust, limit our capacity to think and fuel cycles of violence.
