painting by Hagit Shahal
In my lecture Recollection and Recollectivization: the transient personality in search of memory, I will look at ‘the never guilty mass man’ (Jung), of the post-modern condition, related to Erich Neumann’s concept of recollectivization.
On the dark, shadowy side of the postmodern condition, we stumble upon transiency and fragmentation, alienation and rootlessness.
Particularly, we may observe the relationship between the individual and the fragmented group, which constellates as a transient crowd formation. In the condition of recollectivization, ego and consciousness are lost in the group, however, in a way strikingly different from the early state of oneness with the group.
Recollection serves as an antidote to recollectivization, and may show us “how we should act when the libido gets blocked” (CW 5). A smell and a fragrance, a subtle taste “of a cake dipped in tea,” as Proust says, re-calling a childhood memory, a lost time, a forgotten era, and the recollection of ancient wisdom and the ancestors, may provide the individual, as well as the group, with an anchor across the boundaries of time, by means of linking back to past heritage, and serving as a bridge to future developments. Thus, recollection is a central aspect of the conscious, explored life.
The following is an excerpt from the lecture:
