Rhinoceros Effects: Complexes as Expressions of Political-Cultural Upheaval, A Course With Samuel Ki

The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us. Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you?

                                                                            -- C.G. Jung, The Red Book, p231

During these times of social and political upheaval, the cultural unconscious is bursting through its expressions with enactments of chronic, historic racial injustices, political polarizations, the global pandemic, global warming, social media, and a multitude of other national and international political and cultural problems, which I feel are expressed as Cultural Complexes and Phantom Narratives. I call these The Rhinoceros Effects. 

In this course, I will introduce the concept of Cultural Complexes, expressed and represented as Phantom Narratives of our collective legacies, ghosts, histories and their intergenerational traumas, and our social pain. How and what we glean from these processes may help us both see and deal with the extreme collective emotional states that confront us in plain sight.  How are we implicated in what we feel and see?  What are their clinical implications?

I will introduce examples expressed in clinical processes and cultural events.

Sam Kimbles, Ph.D.,is a clinical psychologist, Jungian analyst, member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, and a former clinical professor (VCF) in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. He has served as president of the C.G. Jung Institute, San Francisco, and has lectured and presented papers on topics related to the theory and practical applications of analytical psychology nationally and internationally. He is a clinical consultant and has taught at the San Francisco Jung Institute, colleges, and universities, as well as trained mental health and analytic professionals. His published work on the cultural complex is a significant contribution to the application of analytical psychology to the study of groups and society.  Published works: The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society (Thomas Singer and Samuel Kimbles, editors) Phantom Narratives: The Unseen Contributions of Culture to Psyche Intergenerational Complexes in Analytical Psychology: The Suffering of Ghosts When Phantomatic Forces Come (forthcoming)