Violence and the Religious Instinct

We would perhaps like to forget that there is an archetypal basis for the disturbing violence that is prominent in today’s world.  This lecture describes how to understand violence from an archetypal perspective and why this task is necessary if we are to bridge the dissociation between conscious and transconscious reality. For most of us, “psychic reality” is still in the realm of ideas, and psychologically, we live in a pre-Copernican world.  In his most seminal works, Jung wrote that violence and destructiveness are inextricable aspects of psychic reality and that violence is always encountered as part of the individuation process.  The hostile and violent impact of the unconscious upon the ego often calls upon us to experience and contain intense emotions of rage and violence. This need not be “bad news” if we remain aware of the larger picture.