The cultural complex: a statement of the theory and its application

Abstract

This article explores the concept of ‘the cultural complex’. Grounded in the theory of analytical psychology, this concept originates with C. G. Jung's early work on complex theory and Joseph Henderson's later notion of the ‘cultural unconscious’. Using these two basic ideas, the theory of cultural complexes emerges as a way of understanding the collective psyche as it expresses itself in group behavior and individual psychological experience. Common characteristics of ‘cultural complexes’ include their unconsciousness, their resistance to consciousness, their autonomous functioning, their repetitive occurrence in a group's experience from generation to generation, and their tendency to accumulate historical experiences and memory that validate their point of view. The conflict between ‘the West’ and ‘Islam’ is explored as an example of a cultural complex.