In Search for Soul: The Contribution of Analytical Psychology to Heal Human Rights Violations

Abstract

Humanity continues to experience serious violations of human rights, and the recent critical events, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, seem to have directly or indirectly intensified the occurrence of violations of human rights like torture, enforced disappearances, human trafficking, gender-based violence and war crimes. Can analytical psychology make a significant contribution to the prevention, treatment, remedying such violations, from the individual level to the most macro level of socio-political systems? I will support the thesis that the Jungian concept of soul has a special role in such an endeavour. My proposal is that when a social terrifying threat, like in the case of widespread social violence, is perceived at the social level, the functioning of the individual Self and society may change dramatically. In particular, both lose their containing function and are subjected to an unconscious massive collective pressure to align themselves to a specific kind of functioning that I call monolithic functioning. It is the splintering of what I call the reflective triangle, which is illustrated here, and has an effect on societal, groupal, interpersonal and intrapsychic levels. Some vignettes from a clinical case of a patient who suffered torture and gender-based violence are presented to illustrate how these human rights violations affect the three levels mentioned.