Special Issue: War: Archetypal Energies, Cultural Discontent, Internal Discord

[T]he depths are full of murder

This special issue, War: Archetypal Energies, Cultural Discontent, Internal Discord1, considers the influence of war on the history of analytical psychology and the immediacy of war—cultural, political, territorial, and genocidal—in the collective. It looks into the archetype of war and the reality of internal warring conflicts that patients and psychotherapists bring to the clinical process. It considers, too, the work of peace, understood neither as the opposite nor the absence of war, but rather as its own singular phenomenon. The authors whom we invited to write papers for this special issue have brought their years of experience and their depth of insight to the Journal, and we believe you will find each of their papers compelling for the different perspectives they bring forward.

The concept of a special issue on war was born soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. To curate this special issue, the editors invited the authors to participate in an online roundtable discussion, to share their early thoughts. From this rich initial dialogue, particular ideas surfaced:

destructivenes