Archetypal Nonviolence and the Selma March: A Lecture With Renee Cunningham

The lecture will focus on the March from Selma to Montgomery and the development of culture – what we could see as the development of the nation’s conscience -- through the implementation of the eightfold path of nonviolence, which includes Mahatma Gandhi’s concepts of Satyagraha and Ahimsa and Martin Luther King’s six tenets.

The concepts of individuation, the ego/Self axis, the cultural unconscious, and cultural and racial complexes will be shown and amplified as key components of development within the individual and culture.

Additionally, we will examine how these nonviolent tenets represent the analytic stance and how applying them may be used to transmute power struggles into nonviolent consciousness. We will discuss the spectrum of aggression and hatred as powerfully destructive and constructive forces, which when mediated by nonviolence, imbue the analytic experience with agape. We will also discuss sadomasochism as a form of participation mystique and, ultimately, a defense against relatedness, empathy, and self-love.

Renée Cunningham is a Jungian analyst and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist from Scottsdale, AZ.  She has more than 30 years of experience in the field and is a training analyst with Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts; she is also the current president of the Texas chapter. Renee is the author of Archetypal Nonviolence: Jung, King, and Culture Through the Eyes of Selma (Routledge, 2021) and has contributed chapters to the following books: Feminisms, Technology, and Depth Psychology: An Enquiry, edited by Leslie Gardner, Catriona Miller, and Roula Maria Dib  (Routledge, 2024); Jungian Analysis in a World on Fire,at the Nexus of Individual and Collective Trauma, edited by Laura Tuley and John White (Routledge, 2024); and Psychedelics and Individuation, Essays by Jungian Analysts, edited by Lionel Corbett and Murray Stein (Chiron Publications, 2023).