In this “global age” of limited resources, we struggle for self-survival and species-survival while witnessing the demise of integral cultures and local economies. We observe unprecedented waves of human migration and an alarming escalation of communal warfare. At the same time, we collectively awaken to the interconnections in nature and between people of disparate cultural origins. We witness a rising esprit of global consciousness.

Encounters with the strange and the estranged activate powerful unconscious processes. In individuals and in groups, an unraveling of established structures inevitably unleashes reactionary archetypal forces. We will view the constructive and destructive responses to our changing world as polarities stemming from the outsider archetype, the archetype organizing the dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, and psychic transformation.

Related Workshop: Encounters at the Border of Our Belonging

MELANIE STARR COSTELLO, PH.D. is a licensed psychologist, historian, and Zurich-trained Jungian analyst in private practice in Washington, D.C. She earned her doctorate in the History and Literature of Religions from Northwestern University. A former Assistant Professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Dr. Costello has taught and published on the topics of psychology and religion, medieval spirituality, and clinical practice. Her study of the link between illness and insight, entitled Imagination, Illness and Injury: Jungian Psychology and the Somatic Dimensions of Perception, is published by Routledge press.