’LEGACIES OF THE OCCULT’: FROM THE ORIGINS OF DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY TO TODAY’S POPULAR ‘OCCULTURE’

Many are surprised to learn that the origins of depth psychology can be located in the wake of — and were heavily influenced by — the exploding trans-Atlantic phenomenon of spiritualism. This presentation examines the occult and spiritualist influences on the founding figures of modern psychology (Frederic W. H. Myers, William James, Sigmund Freud, and C. G. Jung) and examines two main models of the unconscious that emerged via their research in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We will then trace the re-emergence of these occult and depth psychological influences in popular ‘occulture’ today through the visual medium of comic books and superhero mythologies. In doing so, we will find that such ‘legacies of the occult’ — far from a late 19th-century by-product of a long-forgotten age, are very much alive and with us today.