Europe's Many Souls: Exploring Cultural Complexes and Identities

What is going on in Europe? In this book a number of outstanding Jungian Analysts explore the Cultural Complexes and Identities of their European homelands and nations. This is a new approach to old questions: What makes a people feel at home? How do their traditions and narratives form a cultural Self and identity? How do they differ from one another? Exploring cultural complexes as a part of answering these important questions requires knowledge of history, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography, psychology, religious studies, literature and poetry. But as every complex is built around an emotional core, the study of how cultural complexes live in the psyche is not limited to these disciplines. Each author and reader engages in a confrontation with their emotions, prejudices, and projections. The shape that the ideas and feelings of a cultural complex take in the psyche can be inchoate, rapidly shifting and yet paradoxically long standing, and often quite immune and impermeable to the reason that traditional disciplines of thought would impose on them. These cultural complexes do not necessarily provide a coherent or linear sequencing of facts and events because that is not how they actually exist and function in the psyche of individuals and groups. At the same time, cultural complexes shape what it means to be a citizen of a particular city, region, or country of Europe. They contribute to Europe's Many Souls.

Thomas Singer, M.D. is a Jungian analyst and psychiatrist. After studying religion and European literature at Princeton University, he graduated from Yale Medical School and later trained at Dartmouth Medical Center and the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Dr. Singer is editor of The Analytical Psychology and Contemporary Cultural Series for Spring Journal Books, where he has developed a series of volumes exploring cultural complexes around the world. He is current President of National ARAS, an archive of symbolic imagery (ARAS.org). His writings include articles on Jungian theory, politics, and psychology, and he has written and/or edited the following books: Who's the Patient Here? (Oxford University Press, 1978, with Stuart Copans), A Fan's Guide to Baseball Fever (Elijim Publications, 1991, with Stuart Copans), The Vision Thing (Routledge, 2000), The Cultural Complex (Routledge, 2004, with Samuel Kimbles), Initiation: The Living Reality of An Archetype (Routledge, 2007, with Thomas Kirsch and Virginia Beane Rutter), Psyche and the City (Spring, 2010), Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche: Archetypes in the Making (Spring, 2011, with Virginia Beane Rutter), Placing Psyche: Exploring Cultural Complexes in Australia (Spring, 2011), Listening to Latin America (Spring, 2012), and Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche: Archetypes Evolving (Routledge, 2015, with Virginia Beane Rutter).

Dr. Joerg Rasche, Jungian analyst, trained in Berlin and Zurich where he studied sandplay therapy with Dora Kalff. Dr. Rasche is a child psychiatrist, working in private practice in Berlin. He served for many years as president of the German Jungian Association (DGAP) and was vice-president of IAAP. Currently he is president of the German Association for Sandplay Therapy (DGST). Also a trained musician, he has published many papers and some books on mythology, music, sandplay therapy, and analytical psychology, as well as serving on the board of various Jungian journals. Dr. Rasche has taught in Central European countries for many years and is a training analyst for IAAP. Dr. Rasche was honored for his work on reconciliation between the Polish and German people by the Polish President who presented him with the Golden Cross of Merit. He gives concerts and lectures around the world. He is married and has three adult children.