Carl Jung is known for introducing concepts, such as the collective unconscious and archetypes, but his legacy is one that also includes an openness to observing and understanding phenomena, such as collective visions and the uncanny. This interest can be traced back to his 1902 doctoral dissertation, “On the Psychology and Pathology of the So-called Occult Phenomena.” This openness allows us to explore and examine phenomena, such as Marian apparitions.

In my analysis of the Marian apparitions of Zeitoun that took place from 1968 to 1970, I offer an interdisciplinary, methodological approach, stemming widely from Jung’s works and from theories of the psyche proposed by him and by post-Jungians, to investigate visions of the Virgin Mary. Specifically, I draw on Jung’s theoretical model in Flying Saucers, which offers a structure to analyze numinous objects as constellated material that emerges out of the collective unconscious. Studies of Marian phenomenology show that the appearances are usually accompanied by a concatenation of events, such as social upheaval, economic crisis, and war. In this discussion, I present the findings of the application of this depth-psychological approach to the Zeitoun case, including the existential crisis leading up to the appearances (i.e. 1967 Arab-Israeli War), the significance of the apparitions, and the integration of the numinous symbol by Egyptian society. 

Valeria Céspedes Musso, Ph.D. is an independent researcher and is in private practice in Washington, DC. She received her doctorate in Psychoanalytic Studies in 2017 from the University of Essex, UK. Valeria is currently a Diploma candidate at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zürich, Switzerland, and a student member of the English Research Commission there. She has a Master’s degree in Political Science from Northeastern University and worked as a labor union organizer in Los Angeles, helping workers form unions from the ground up. Valeria has published in the International Journal of Jungian Studies and is the author of Marian Apparitions in Cultural Contexts, Routledge, 2018, and The Mexican-American Cultural Complex: Accessing the Depth-Psychological Problems Due to Challenges of Assimilation in American Society, Jungian Perspectives on Indeterminate States: Betwixt and Between Borders, Routledge, 2020. Her most recent publication is Day of the Dead in Los Angeles as Numinosum: How Honouring the Dead Reconnects Mexican-Americans to their Aztec-Mexica Ancestral Roots, Jungian Dimensions of the Mourning Process, Burial Rituals and Access to the Land of the Dead, Routledge, 2023.