We are shocked by and fear the current movements occurring within the personal and collective Psyche, from the oppression of women’s reproductive rights to the infringement and killing of so many individuals throughout the world. Once again, we are banning books and attempting to re-frame slavery as an enriching experience while witnessing a world-wide escalation in dictatorship. And the workings of powerful unconscious dynamics have led far too many of us to accept the blatant lies, distortions, and ongoing abuses by our leaders.  

We are experiencing an activation of the dark unconscious, erupting into the world without conscious understanding or restraint, bringing with it the stench of ongoing crimes against humanity. Each of these is a disturbing archetypal issue enacted on the world stage, urgently needing to be understood and addressed. These eruptions speak to the consequences of our estrangement from Psyche and Soul, creating, yet again, a horrific disregard for the sanctity of life.

As Elie Wiesel once warned, in emphasizing the importance of an individual response to injustice, silence in the face of oppression empowers the oppressors, never the victims. The absence of Psyche's wisdom in political decision making is increasingly evident. We are brought to our knees by the events playing out on the world stage and are forced to ask where are those songbirds and their melodious sounds that fill our hearts and souls with peace and joy? Where there was song and a dancing of their lyrical trill, now there is only a deafening silence in the woods. 

However much we may care for Psyche, these appalling world events are silencing the calls of the birds and the songs in our souls. Far too many of our world leaders see the world only through the eyes of their own unresolved complexes. Their lack of eros drives their ongoing compulsion to conquer and destroy; they do not care enough that many of our sons and daughters will never return home. Politicians, ministers, and teachers caught in the throes of an archetypal inflation claim to know the ways of some elusive God, yet they promote a “morality” of abuse. And we stand in attention to these lifeless, seemingly soulless figures. 

With this ongoing escalation of abuses to humanity, we need to return to the wisdom of Jung and von Franz regarding the ways of the Psyche and the consequences of a life estranged from the Self. Jung’s work on the symbolic life and the objective psyche needs to be heard anew and rescued from the banalities of a world driven by this desperate need for power. 

Jung taught us that “where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking” (On the Psychology of the Unconscious). It is time to find a way to make the importance of this work accessible to the greater international community with the hopes that there may be some antidote to the abuses against humanity and the blatant disregard for Psyche and Soul.