The legacy of Carl Gustav Jung
«In Jung, there dwells a sort of romantic aspiration to the totality of the human, within and beyond its thousand fractures. For me, it is this very aspiration that soars above all in his legacy.»
The Future of the Spirit in The Red Book and in our Time
Speaker Romano Màdera, chairperson: Riccardo Bernardini
April, 28th 2022
Speech by Romano Màdera to the international congress “Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul Under Postmodern Conditions” (April 27-May 1, 2022, Eranos and Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland) by Riccardo Bernardini, Joseph Cambray, and Murray Stein.
Can we find value, individually and collectively, in Jung’s Red Book for a time like ours, which is so deeply overcast by the Umbra Mundi (“World Shadow)?
Both the Coronavirus pandemic and the international political crisis and war threat that we are facing right now inevitably shadow all our thoughts as we prepare this Symposium on “Jung’s Red Book for Our Time”.
On an even larger scale, we recognize that we are facing a world historical transition in human culture without the guidance traditionally offered by grand narratives or collective myths.
A similar mood of deep anxiety about the future overshadowed the world when C. G. Jung began working on his Red Book in 1913. In response to his “Spirit of the Times,” Jung embarked on an inner journey with “the Spirit of the Depths” and created his Liber Novus, a work that reflects his discovery of a personal myth. His approach to the problems presented by the spirit of his times also has prescriptive significance for our times.
The Red Book has the potential to offer guidance for people living under the disruptive conditions of the first half of the 21st century.
This potential will be explored by the speakers and participants in this Symposium.
The Importance of a Breakthrough, talk by Romano Màdera
at the Conference Psychedelics and Individuation: Conversations with Jungian Analysts, organized by Pacifica Graduate Institute and the IAAP in Santa Barbara, California (USA).
Held from December 15 to 17, 2023, the conference explored the role of psychedelics in Jungian psychoanalysis.
This international event addressed the potential and the cautions surrounding psychedelics and reflects the global debate on their use in depth psychotherapy.
Romano Màdera contributed to Panel III, on the theme of “Set” in Jungian analysis, with a talk connected to his work on non-ordinary states, Jungian individuation, and self-care, highlighting the distinction between automated experience and practices of deautomatization, and emphasizing the contribution of altered states of consciousness, including those that can be induced through a balanced and targeted use of LSD.