Participants are invited to bring one or two portraits (photographs, paintings, sketches, or newspaper clippings) that speak to them, as well as a notebook and pen for personal reflection. Experiencing the relationship between image and affect leads to thought, curiosity, and action. This insight will serve as starting point for an in-depth exploration of collective trauma and the paradigm of purposeful action for dealing with trauma. Developing a capacity for curiosity and mutuality (an I-Thou relationship) is not only central for the treatment of psychological trauma but also serves as an antidote to the ills and sclerosis of a fundamentalist mindset, which is the source of much human suffering.

Related Lecture: Psychological Trauma and Listening with the Heart

EBERHARD RIEDEL, PH.D., D.C.S.W. is an IRSJA-trained Jungian Analyst with a private practice in Seattle, Washington, and a photographer who founded the Cameras without Borders: Photography for Healing and Peace project. Recent publications include, My African Journey: Psychology, Photography, and Social Advocacy, in Psychological Perspectives 56(1), 5-33, 2013. Cameras without Borders is a Blue Earth project. Please visit www.cameraswithoutborders.org/.