ABSTRACT
Jung and Freud referred to ‘the child’, not in terms of lived experience, but as an abstract concept or symbol. Jung enthusiastically elevated the child to a psychologically powerful image of futurity and unity, while James Hillman’s work on the ‘orphan’ as a psychological pattern or archetype, drew attention to the importance of this motif as a source of self-knowledge. This chapter establishes the idea of the ‘lost child’ as an Australian cultural complex that took hold after colonisation. Samuel Kimbles and Thomas Singer retheorised Jung’s concept of the complex to include a collective element, allowing it to function on both a personal and group level. Because complexes are not consciously generated, convict transportation and ensuing European settlement are argued to have energised an already existing lost child echo of our past. Cultivated images, narratives and histories stitched into the cultural memory, from colonisation to the present day, can be seen as projections of this psychological fixation. Not only can these stories haunt us, they can also engage us in the vitality of the archetype.
