In November, the Sydney Jung Society is presenting a challenging panel discussion titled Colonization and its Discontents. The panel features eminent Jungians who will approach the topic of colonization in Australia and its effects from multiple perspectives, through the intimate lens of their personal and deeply heartfelt experiences and their extensive knowledge of relevant Jungian and post-Jungian concepts.
The broad outline for the panel, (which may be revised, updated or improvised) is as follows…
David Russell
Firstly, David Russell will introduce the panel and presentation and explain how its title gives a nod to Sigmund Freud’s 1930 book: Civilization and its Discontents. Freud’s thesis was that we are forever carrying around a load of sedimentation that we are largely not aware of but that shapes our ongoing experience, both personal and cultural.
Carl Jung elaborated on this theme and called it a feeling-toned complex. Anne Noonan, has offered a further elaboration that replaces civilization with colonization thus seeing colonization as a cultural and emotional complex.
Jung conceived a complex as largely driven by unconscious forces: like Jonah, in the Old Testament, having been swallowed by the whale, we find ourselves in it belly. I don’t have the colonization complex it has me.
David’s amplification of the complex of colonization is that it is characterized by the experience of loss. It is the dynamic of loss and acquisition that underlies his thoughts about Australia and our colonization complex. The stories that we tell ourselves and each other, over time, become our national myth.
An aspect of our self -comforting stories is the silence around the troubling consequences of settlement: the dispossession of the indigenous peoples and their loss of language and culture.
Brendon Stewart
Our second panelist will be Brendon Stewart’s whose ancestors arrived at Port Jackson onboard ships with the first, second and third fleets. Some were convicts, some free settlers and by 1794 all had settled along the Hawkesbury; the Dyarubbin as it was known to the Darug, Darkinyung and Gundungurra people. Some of his ancestors were deeply involved in violent engagements with Indigenous warriors, another established an orphanage and others started small businesses. He will explore how to make sense of, or, at least, how to critically re-imagine this colonizing invasion.
Craig San Roque
Out third panelist Craig San Roque’s presentation will be titled Sweet Country, after the Warwick Thornton Film of the same name. A long time ago Craig wrote the line…
"Once I decide that I can no longer be an agent of the colonial system, what changes in how I approach my work and life?"
Moving to Central Australia in 1992 was a part of that change. Leaving his Woolloomooloo practice for Alice Springs was a wrench. It had to be done. There Craig fell into the net of indigenous realities. The fall was about finding his Australian feet - coming to terms with our sweet and bitter country. Experience began.
Joining the University of Western Sydney Social Ecology/Jungian Cultural Psychology programme was part of that change.
There Craig found companions and frameworks to help see more clearly our civilizations repetitive, ingrained, unconscious, assumptions and behaviour and he is glad to be back in such company for this event.
Craig’s Review for the Journal Of Analytical Psychology (attached) may be of interest to Jung Soc members
Robert Dommett
Our fourth panelist will be Robert Dommett whose research company has just completed an extensive survey of Australian Values and Sustainability. Robert will use the findings of this study to explore the programming from the underlying cultural unconscious on the contemporary Australian psyche. This is a kind of vertical colonization, from the unconscious that also has its discontents.
Robert will illustrate the location, movements and impact of all this by using maps and illustrations from his study.
Anne Noonan
Our fifth panelist will be Anne Noonan who will use the panel discussion and her own vast experience in Jungian psychology, indigenous and humanitarian issues to piece together what she knows has experienced and recognized (particularly through anecdotes from her mother) relating to colonization and its discontents, noting that the present wave of neo-colonialism in Australia has also increased her outrage.
Panel Discussion and Forum
The panel will conclude with a discussion among the panelists and an open discussion among all participants.
Panelist Biographies…
David Russell has a psychotherapy/psychology practice in Darlinghurst (Sydney CBD). In his therapeutic work his intention is to attend to the experiential nature of desire and compulsion as experienced in everyday life. David is a past president of the Sydney Jung Society and past Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at Western Sydney University.
Brendon Stewart is a practicing Zen Buddhist, a Jungian Scholar and eclectic thinker who says of himself “It is a long time since I considered myself an academic. The analytical psychology world has moved on, or at least I hope so. Friends of mine from those Western Sydney days have passed on and some students have become senior academics at different institutions. I think I have mentioned before I spend a good deal of my time painting and gardening and gradually the palette for both has become more diverse and complex.
Craig San Roque has practiced Jungian Analytic Psychology for 40 years (London, Sydney, Canberra and central Australia). A former president and co-director of training for ANZSJA. He has taught Anthropology/ Performance studies, Social Ecology and Jungian Cultural Psychology at University of Western Sydney. He is credited with many publications - including in – the recent and timely Cultural Complexes and the Soul of America and in Placing Psyche with Amanda Dowd and David Tacey. Also, the Sydney Jung Society book on climate change, The Green Book and graphic novels; A Long Weekend in Alice Springs and Sydney/ Purgatorio with Joshua Santospirito.
Robert Dommett is a Sydney-based developer of social profiling and cloud-based planning applications for the corporate sector and has an MBA. He is President of the CG Jung Society of Sydney and is an avid reader in the areas of depth psychology, ancient religions, consciousness & artificial intelligence and has a particular interest in the work of Wolfgang Giegerich and Henry Corbin. He has presented at ISPDI conferences in Berlin (2012), Dublin (2018), at the ISPDI Summer Gathering in 2020 and ISPDI Online Conference in 2021 and on various occasions to Jung Societies in Australia.
Anne Noonan trained in medicine and psychiatry in Sydney before moving to Italy in 1969 where she worked in adult and child psychiatry at the University of Rome and trained in analytical psychology. She became a member of the IAAP and founding member of ANZSJA in 1977. She also trained in group work in Rome based on a "Bionic" approach and is a member of the Australian Association of Group Psychotherapists. She is interested in film and in 1992 obtained a Masters in Italian Studies with a thesis on the interrelationship between Italian Cinema and Italian Politics from 1943-1978. She taught in the M.A course at the UWS, works in private practice in Sydney and since 2000 has worked periodically in Alice Springs, in the psychiatry unit, remote communities and Alice Springs prison.
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Date: 12th November 2021 at 7.00
Venue: Zoom
Cost: Members $10 Non-Members $20 Non-Member
Concession $15
*Psychotherapists and other practitioners can obtain credit for Professional Development hours recognised by PACFA and ACA for this presentation.