ABSTRACT
Building on disillusionment with an over-reliance on archetypes to explain social and political phenomena in the psyche of individuals and groups, an innovative renovation of traditional Jungian theory emerged. It began with Joseph Henderson postulating a middle zone of the unconscious – the cultural unconscious – which sits between the personal and collective unconscious. It further posits that cultural complexes are the foundational building blocks for the contents of the cultural unconscious. Examples of the activity of cultural complexes are given. The first explores the case of an individual with a potent cultural complex that deeply influenced his inner and outer life for his first 40 years. The second explores a cultural complex occurring at the level of the group or collective psyche in the United States during the era of Donald Trump.
