Verena Kast - Self-Transcendence & Self-Certainty: The COVID Crisis

Psychosocial Wednesdays with Verena Kast
19 DECEMBER 2022
Self-transcendence and self-certainty:
What can we contribute from Jungian psychotherapy to the psychological management of the Covid crisis?
In a study of more than 12000 volunteers, ETH Zurich scientists led by J.A.P. Escobar found that people with more inner harmony found the crisis less stressful; they were better able to cope with depression and anxiety. Escobar's reproach to psychology: it has failed to integrate negative emotions into everyday life, and above all to teach people to see the positive in the difficult and thus to achieve "inner harmony." This expression in this context goes back to a concept of P.T.P.Wong, a Canadian psychologist, a representative of Existential Positive Psychology (PP.2.0) His idea: suffering links us to what we absolutely need - and he mentions as an example C.G. Jung: "Modern Man in Search of a Soul".
This information from a newspaper article of December 10, 2021 in the Tagesanzeiger (Zurich), challenges me. What do we have to say about it from the Jungian point of view?
Inner harmony, inner balance requires not only that we hold the tension between the difficult and the desirable, but also that we focus more on the positive emotions in their effect. In this context - and this is the main part of my remarks - I will talk about two positive emotional fields: awe and kama muta. The experience of these emotions link self-transcendence in the broadest sense with great self-assurance in addition with increasing social connectedness. This would not only make it easier to deal with difficult emotions, it would also make one more balanced and, in addition, solidarity among people would be strengthened, something that is also very important for coping with the pandemic.
Prof. Dr. phil. Verena Kast, psychologist and psychotherapist, was professor of anthropological psychology at the University of Zurich. She is a teaching analyst and supervisor at the C.G. Jung-Institut Zurich and was President of the Curatorium of the Institute. She was co-director of the Lindauer Psychotherapie-wochen, the largest German-speaking continuing education event in psycho-therapy.
Numerous publications in the field of fairy tales, symbolism in general, relationship, mourning processes, emotions also in connection with complex theory and imagination.
The right of Verena Kast, Paul Attinello, Stefano Carpani and Bernhard von Guretzky to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright.

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This is revised edit of Dr Kast's January presentation - we realized that, during the PowerPoint presentation section of the video, part of the screen was cut off. Otherwise this is the same video - thank you for your patience.