Lecture: The Evolution of Satan: Adversary and Adversity
The name Satan derives from a Hebrew verb meaning to obstruct, oppose, block. In the Old Testament, satans are agents of God sent to carry out this and other satanic functions like disruption, agitation, slander, and affliction. Christian dualism makes Satan an almost independent personage, a god of evil, yet he may still be a meaningful and necessary part of the whole. Psychologically, Satan can be seen as the enemy of ego, of conscious goals and values, a personification of advers-ity both outer and inner. What, then, is our proper attitude toward such opposition? How do we relate to our failures and defeats, our affliction and suffering? What are the “uses of adversity”?
Workshop: Warts and All: The Shadow and Wholeness
Getting rid of the negative is our habitual Western approach to improving ourselves and the world. This often turns out to mean cultivating an idealized self-image by repressing unwelcome parts of our nature into the unconscious shadow. The shadow is then projected onto others and there seen as evil calling for condemnation and destruction.
Erich Newmann wrote in Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, “The Time has now come for the principle of perfection to be sacrificed on the altar of wholeness.” The seminar will focus on shadow formation and projection; bipolar adversarial conflict; scapegoating; victimology; the anthropology of “evil”; and shadow reclamation in the service of wholeness.
James Yandell, M.D., Ph. D. is a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. A former president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, he has been active for many years in public Jungian education. He is working on a book, The Adversary Game, about the subjects of this lecture and seminar.