Australia: Shadow and Cultural Complex in the Antipodes

ABSTRACT

“Australia: Shadow and Cultural Complex in the Antipodes” examines Australia’s penal colony history in which eighteenth-century convicts and settlers survived the trauma of migration and imprisonment by stoic repression. As such, a society developed that fears the unconscious and its shadow content, thus preventing the individuation process from being part of the cultural norm. These qualities—of repression and stoicism—are now respected cultural traits and evidence of an authentic Australian identity. The metaphysical culture of the Aboriginal has been disrespected by the dominant non-indigenous population. The psychic split between the two cultures mirrors the psychospiritual split within the individuals of the non-indigenous culture, in which self-awareness, self-reflection, and exploration of the unconscious are seen as weakness, or defects of character. Healing the split in the culture between the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples would require answers: education in the alchemical and genetic natures of both cultures and awareness of the history of human migration out of Africa. The DNA of the Cosmic Serpent supplies a psychic foundation to the education of the non-indigenous and indigenous peoples. This is vital to understanding that both cultures were nurtured by and sprang from a common taproot, the alchemical rhizome.

KEY WORDS:

• Aboriginal
• alchemical rhizome
• alchemy
• alchemy of the Aborigine
• Australia
• cosmic serpent
• cultural complex
• eighteenth-century alchemy
• eighteenth-century settlers
• penal colony
• psychic split
• shadow
• stoicism
• trauma

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I want to acknowledge with gratitude Stephan Ackermann’s talented work on the images in the essay.

NOTE

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthea Mawby

ANTHEA MAWBY is a lay Jungian analytic psychotherapist who maintained a private practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for twenty-five years. She received her analytic training through her own analysis and ten years in the Intensive Study Program at the C. G. Jung Institute of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Born in Sydney, Australia, she graduated from the National Art School in Sydney. She has an avid interest in and writes about the dynamic relationship between the personal psyche and history of place and how these interactions shape both the personal and cultural psyche, one of the outcomes being the nature of the cultural complex.