Psychosocial Wednesdays: Self-transcendence and self-certainty

More than a century ago, Freud gathered colleagues for Wednesday meetings that opened the world of psychoanalysis to a wide range of powerful ideas. Psychosocial Wednesdays are modeled on those Wednesdays and on Jung´s meetings at the Psychological Club, and feature speakers from various psychoanalytic traditions, schools, and associated fields.

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE AND SELF-CERTAINTY: WHAT CAN WE CONTRIBUTE FROM JUNGIAN PSYCHOTHERAPY TO THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT OF THE COVID CRISIS?

In a study of more than 12000 volunteers, ETH Zurich scientists led by J.A.P. Escobar found that people with more inner harmony found the crisis less stressful; they were better able to cope with depression and anxiety. Escobar's reproach to psychology: it has failed to integrate negative emotions into everyday life, and above all to teach people to see the positive in the difficult and thus to achieve "inner harmony." This expression in this context goes back to a concept of P.T.P.Wong, a Canadian psychologist, a representative of Existential Positive Psychology (PP.2.0) His idea: suffering links us to what we absolutely need and he mentions as an example C.G. Jung: "Modern Man in Search of a Soul".

This information from a newspaper article of December 10, 2021 in the Tagesanzeiger (Zurich), challenges me. What do we have to say about it from the Jungian point of view?

Inner harmony, inner balance requires not only that we hold the tension between the difficult and the desirable, but also that we focus more on the positive emotions in their effect. In this context- and this is the main part of my remarks I will talk about two positive emotional fields: awe and kama muta . The experience of these emotions link self-transcendence in the broadest sense with great self-assurance in addition with increasing social connectedness. This would not only make it easier to deal with difficult emotions, it would also make one more balanced and, in addition, solidarity among people would be strengthened, something that is also very important for coping with the pandemic.