From Cliché to Archetype:
C.G. Jung, Technology, and the Social Dilemma

A daylong Zoom Seminar led byRoyce Froehlich PhD, MDiv, LCSW

Contact hours: 4 CE contact hours for Licensed NYS Social Workers, Psychoanalysts and Creative Arts Therapists for this program.

Jung spoke of living in two psychic realms that he identified as The spirit of the times and The spirit of the depths.  In order to navigate between them, Jung found it imperative to quiet his own nerve network through an unspecified “yoga technique” and take the opportunity to unplug from daily life by night and reconnect to his soul, enabling him to find inner silence, listen to the spirit of the depths, and reset his disposition toward himself and the Self.  It was at such times that the spirit of the depths spoke to him clearly.  He took dictation and left us instructions.  This seminar will touch on some of the fundamental problems presented in the docu-drama The Social Dilemma; i.e., the interface of the media matrix and its disindividuating effects on the psyche through a Jungian’s lens.

One of those who listened to Jung was the media theorist Marshall McLuhan (the global village, and the medium is the message), who already in the 1950s theorized on the psychological effects of media and their impact that we are seeing today on human and natural affairs. “The 'content' of any medium,” McLuhan observed, “blinds us to the character of the medium,” and that “electro-technical forms do not foster civilization but tribal culture.”  He was not alone in having such concerns about the effects of technological “progress” and its tendency to present an atmosphere of disindividuation.

Jung and McLuhan were highly sensitive to the impact of technology on humankind’s nature.  And both were deeply religious: McLuhan, a devout Catholic; Jung a prophet of the Way to Come (Red Book).  One embraced the absurdist response to the apocalyptic tone generated by the World Wars, the other decried Dada.  The Beatles will serve as a bridge between the two, while philosopher Martin Heidegger’s paradigm for asking questions concerning technology—the Gestell (the set-up, the inherent framework) that creates what McLuhan calls a proscenium arch around the planet, with human actors following technology’s script)—guides this presentation.

 

Learning Objectives

1. Explain the basics of a Jungian theory of the archetype.
2. Describe how electronic media technologies have entered the individual’s intra-psychic space and influenced the collective, inter-relational field.
3. Assess Jung’s contribution to the understanding of the human psyche and its value for clinical treatment today.
4. Discuss some key concepts in Jung’s Analytical Psychology within a context of philosophers and critics of technology.
5. Critique the proposed diagnostic term “Generalized Media Disorder.”
6. Recognize connecting links between Jung’s analytic paradigm and the treatment of Generalized Media Disorder.

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Royce Froehlich, PhD, MDiv, LCSW-R, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in NYC and an instructor, supervisor and training analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York. He holds degrees from the European Graduate School, Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, and The New School for Social Research. Along with his psychotherapeutic practice, he sits on the executive boards of the C.G. Institute of NY, and the Philemon Foundation, which is dedicated to the editing and translating process that enables the publication of works of Carl Jung not yet in print. He is a longtime member of the Jung Foundation’s faculty.

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Contact hours: Four CE contact hours for Licensed NYS Social Workers, Psychoanalysts and Creative Arts Therapists for this program.

The C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, Inc. is recognized by New York State Education Department’s State Board of Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0350.

The C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts. #P-0015.

C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists, #CAT-0068.

Saturday, March 13, 2021: 10:00am–3:00pm