Presentation Information
[SY-86-02]Disasters and Archetypes: An Analytical Psychological Perspective in Korean Culture
*Chan-Seung Chung1,2 (1.Korean Neuropsychiatric Association(Korea), 2.Maum Dream Clinic (Seoul, Korea)(Korea))
Keywords:
Disaster,Pandemic,COVID-19,Archetype,Analytical Psychology
This presentation explores the symbolic dimensions of disaster through the lens of analytical psychology, focusing on archetypal patterns revealed in Korean cultural narratives and clinical experiences during pandemics. Drawing from real-life cases and traditional motifs, I examine how collective crises such as COVID-19 evoke primordial images—the shadow, the mother, the trickster, and the anima—that shape both suffering and the potential for psychological transformation.The first case features a globally renowned singer who, while exiled by the pandemic from her homeland, undergoes emotional and somatic unraveling. Through dream analysis, she reclaims a suppressed maternal identity and begins a healing process that merges bodily excretion and purification as symbolic opposites—a movement reminiscent of alchemical transmutation and Jung’s notion of the filius philosophorum. Her personal growth illuminates the role of the archetypal mother and the redemptive power of creative expression.The second case interprets a young woman’s sand-smoke dinosaur dream as an encounter with the trickster—an archetypal shadow figure—at the height of the MERS outbreak. This dream serves as an unconscious critique of fear-driven media hysteria and reveals an emerging resilience against collective suggestion and phobia.Traditional Korean rituals such as Sonnimgut and Cheoyongmu are re-examined as symbolic systems for managing epidemic-induced resentment, rage, and psychic imbalance. These rites offer a profound wisdom: to contain shadows, integrate the unconscious, and transform fear into renewal.Ultimately, this presentation argues for a culturally attuned, psyche-centered approach to disaster mental health. Archetypes offer not only diagnostic insight but also pathways to healing. In times of collective crisis, honoring the symbolic dimension can restore balance between the individual and the group, the conscious and the unconscious, the human and the mythic.