Politics in a Traumatized World: Dystopia and the Creative Imagination

This week on Tuesday night over 67 million people tuned in live, to watch Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump face each other in a high stakes presidential debate.

Trump has a visceral reaction to any woman who challenges him, particularly women of colour. He calls them “nasty” women. By the end of the evening Kamala Harris had indeed spent 90 minutes being very nasty to the former President. She skewered and taunted him with the practiced skill of a criminal prosecutor. He seethed, he frothed, he raved and as he unraveled spectacularly, Harris used the split screen to show that he was so ridiculous that she almost pitied him.

In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump published in 2017, 27 psychiatrists (including Tom Singer) made the case that Donald Trump was a mentally unwell individual, and could not be trusted to lead the nation. His performance on the campaign trail this year and on the debate stage this week supports this diagnosis, he is evidently a man at the mercy of his own roiling unconscious.

However, Trump is only the avatar for powerful, archetypal currents in contemporary politics (not only in the USA). Over three days in October the CGJISF conference, which can be attended online will bring together leading Jungians to engage with the psychological energies driving today’s dystopian political landscape, particularly within the context of the U.S. presidential election.

Speakers will include Carolyn Bates, Betty Sue Flowers, Thomas Singer, Donald Kalsched, Monica Luci, Robert Tyminski, Andrew Samuels, Alan G. Vaughan and others. Click here to see the full programme.

To attend either in-person at the Institute or online, register here. Registration closes 17 October

For further reading I recommend visiting the Substack page of Tom Singer the driving force behind the very valuable series of books applying the concept of cultural complex to the study of psychosocial issues.