Rethinking the Cassandra Complex

ABSTRACT

The classical figure of Cassandra represents a person with an unusual capacity to recognize that which the collective has repressed or denied. The Cassandra complex is a Jungian concept that emphasizes the problematic aspects of such a person’s psychology. Seen from a broader perspective, this complex has another side. The collective who is unable to hear the “Cassandra” individual might be over identified with Apollonian values of order, harmony, and reason. In order to work on the Cassandra complex such that new growth can occur, both the Cassandra and the Apollonian sides of the complex need to develop and change.

KEY WORDS:

• Cassandra complex
• feminism
• Jungian societies
• sexual abuse
• transcendent function
• transformative justice
• trauma

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to editor Katherine Olivetti, who encouraged and supported my thinking on this paper and to my partner, Ames Simpson, whose support and thoughtful comments helped this paper blossom. Thank you to the many survivors of all genders who have trusted me with their stories and their complicated truths. Finally, thank you to the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center, where I learned to listen to the truths of survivors of sexual trauma even when what they had to say was unbearable. What I learned there changed the course of my life.

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).

Notes

^1. “Cassandra” was published by Ray Strachey as an appendix to The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1928). It was reprinted, with an introduction by Myra Stark, in 1979 (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1979).

^2. Toward Transformative Justice is the product of collective thinking, writing, and editing by Sara Kershnar, Staci Haines, Gillian Harkins, Alan Greig, Cindy Wiesner, Mich Levy, Palak Shah, Mimi Kim, and Jesse Carr.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Naomi Azriel

NAOMI AZRIEL is an Israeli-American Jungian analyst, poet, and activist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has a private practice in Oakland, California, in which she specializes in dream work, ancestral and cultural wounds, sexual trauma and queer identity. She is an analyst member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Correspondence: [email protected].