Presented by Eberhard Riedel, PhD, DCSW, Jungian Analyst

We live in traumatizing and dehumanizing social environments. What is required of us as professionals to help our clients to function in such environments? What is demanded of us as citizens to deal with the dangerous radicalization and societal fragmentation that the worldwide epidemic of collective violence and trauma engenders?  

Analytical psychology teaches that changing existing reality requires engaging in Thirdness. As a social worker, therapist, and Jungian analyst, I was confronted with horrific suffering of collectively traumatized individuals and communities both at home in my consulting room and abroad in fieldwork in Africa. I recognized that at each level of complexity new phenomena appear.

In this seminar I share experiences, both agonizing and beautiful, from my journey. I recount how I came to view communities as complex human ecosystems and individuals as embedded in these environments. I offer tools for thinking about and dealing with complex psychosocial issues. We will identify and address the dissociation that afflicts innocent people who inhabit fractionizing social environments. We will explore the structure and dynamic of collectively traumatized communities and address the corrosive nature of fundamentalisms, hatred, and collective shame. Finally, we will sketch an expansion of analytical psychology that envisions the demands of the twenty-first century. Developing We-Consciousness is a process of discriminating between personal and social emotions and functioning as informed citizens of both worlds.

Eberhard Riedel, PhD, DCSW, is an analytical psychologist and photographer living in Seattle, WA. He grew up in Germany during World War II. Before becoming a Jungian Analyst, he investigated collective phenomena in physics. He now explores psychosocial problems as synergistic network phenomena. Profound change can get constellated when the agony of a people and the suffering of an individual come into resonance