The slides that accompanied a presentation I gave on the relationships between cities and soul.

1. On...!
Cities!
and!
Soul
David Walczyk!
C.G. Jung Institute of N.Y.!
david@davidwalczyk.com

2. Jung
cities
on

3. culture_producing
neurosis_detachment
mother_maternal
wholeness_quaternity

4. “The cultural process that is characteristic of an
epoch operates most intensely in cities, for it
needs large agglomerations of men to make
civilization possible , and from these
agglomerations culture gradually spreads to the
smaller, backward groups.”
-cw10, 238

5. “The present is a thin surface stratum that is laid
down in the great centers of civilization.”
-cw10, 239.

6. culture_producing
neurosis_detachment
mother_maternal
wholeness_quaternity

7. “The city-dweller seeks artificial sensations to
escape his boredom...”
-cw10, 648

8. “From all this we city-dwellers, we modern
machineminders, are far removed. Is not the
fairest and most natural of all satisfactions
beginning to fail us, when we can no longer
regard with unmixed joy the harvest of our
own sowing, the ‘blessing’ of children?...See
how men slink to work, only observe the faces
on the trains at 7:30 in the morning! One man
makes his little wheels go round, another
writes things that interest him not at all.”
-cw7, 428

9. “But now it is too tight even for the citydweller. Temptation surrounds him on all sides,
and like an invisible procurer there slinks
through society the knowledge of the
preventive method that make everything
unhappened.”
-cw7, 430

10. “Nevertheless, it should be clear to everyone
that such a state of degradation can come
about only under certain conditions, the most
important of these is the accumulation of
urban, industrialized masses of people torn
from the soil, engaged in onesided employment
and lacking every healthy instinct, even that of
self-preservation.”
-cw10, 413

11. “Because of this he is in danger of losing all
contact with the world of instinct, a danger that
is still further increased by his living an urban
existence in what seems to be a purely
manmade environment.”
-cw18, 493

12. “Rationalism and boredom are essentially
products of the over-indulged craving for
stimulation so characteristic of urban
populations.”
-cw10, 648

13. “Nietzsche himself became a god; and this
happened because he was no atheist. He was of
too positive a nature to tolerate the urban
neurosis of atheism.”
-cw11, 142

14. culture_producing
neurosis_detachment
mother_maternal
wholeness_quaternity

15. “The city is a maternal symbol, a women who
harbors the inhabitants in herself like children.”
-CW5, 303

16. “The symbol-creating process substitutes for
the mother the city, the well, the cave, the
Church, etc.”
-cw5, 313

17. “The meaning and purpose of this canalization are
particularly evident when the city appears in place
of the mother: the infantile attachment (whether
primary or secondary) is a crippling limitation for
the adult, whereas attachment to the city fosters
his civic virtues and at least enables him to lead a
useful existence. In primitives the tribe takes the
place of the city.”
-cw5, 313

18. The water and tree symbol, which we found as
further attributes of the symbol of the city,
likewise refer to the libido that is unconsciously
attached to the mother-imago.”
-cw5, 330

19. culture_producing
neurosis_detachment
mother_maternal
wholeness_quaternity

20. “From the circle and quaternity motif is derived
the symbol of geometrically formed crystal and
the wonder-working stone. From here analogy
leads on to the city, castle, church, house, and
vessel.”
-cw9(ii), 352

21. “The city as a synonym for the Self, for psychic
totality, is an old and well-known image.”
-cw18, 269

22. Hillman
cities
on

23. on_the_outside
on_the_inside

24. “The city then, is a story that tells us of itself
as we go through it.”
-city and soul

25. “Each and every thing in our constructed urban
life has psychological import.”
- anima Mundi: Return of the Soul to the World

26. “Their mother, Memory, needs cities for the
sake of her daughters, that they may flourish,
wildly, that they may be honored...”
-City

27. “A city that neglects the soul’s welfare makes
the soul search for its welfare in a degraded
and concrete way, in the shadow of those same
gleaming towers.”
-city and soul

28. on_the_outside
on_the_inside

29. “Yet what walks into the consulting room is
the street.”
-city and soul

30. “What would it be like to imagine the patient
as a citizen?”
-Patient as Citizen

31. We cannot inoculate the individual soul nor
isolate it against the illness in the soul of the
world.”
-Anima Mundi: Return of the Soul to the World

32. Being ‘with it’ also means being in it.”
-From Mirror to Window

33. Thanks!