Event

Jung/Art/Nature/Symbol: Complexity Evolution and the Ecocritical Psyche

From her recent book, "The Ecocritical Psyche" (Routledge 2012), Susan Rowland will look at new possibilities for understanding the Jungian symbol as connecting art, psyche and non-human nature. Her new research on complexity evolution in relation to art practice via the Jungian psyche will be presented through looking at examples of Jung's writing, visual art and poetry.

It is Jung's under-explored development of the symbol that enables his work to be taken into both art and ecological domains. "The Ecocritical Psyche" belongs to a larger project in the ecological disciplines, which is to re-think what we call 'human' in relation to the contested term, 'nature'. Responding to environmental crisis and manmade climate change, one strategy looks at how we came to treat 'nature' as separate from ourselves. How can 'nature be a 'resource' and 'dumb' if we are so dependent upon its sustaining embrace? Therefore this presentation offers a fresh perspective on human creativity as embedded in the non-human and as taking living form in literature and art. This new research in Jungian ideas unites for the first time, psychology, mythology, literature, critical theory and evolutionary science in five stages. C.G. Jung provides the core framework with a psyche based upon a creative and in part unknowable unconscious.

The presentation will include some experiential looking at the Jungian symbol in ecological practice!