So how did Christmas go for you? “Something feels wrong in American public life,” was the sentiment of multiple side conversations. The heat of every debate is greater than the issue really deserves. I’ve witnessed verbal spats over punctuation marks. The evening news shows leaders acting in hostile ways. Mistrust spreads faster than the facts do. Many call this era chaotic; others say it’s dangerous.

In our local town councils and school committees, the level of vitriol is both maddening and heartbreaking. It might be oversimplifying to say this, but honestly, we have some outraged people around. They may be a minority, but they are a loud minority.

Many theories abound regarding the reasons for these times. They include political and social analysis, ideas about economic dislocation, and the rise of social media platforms as outlets for expressed discontent. I’ve read many of those pieces; some are helpful. Here, I’m trying to offer another angle.

But depth psychology offers a different diagnosis: the political crisis of today is also a psychological and spiritual crisis. We are not just disagreeing about policies, but also grappling with fear, disorientation, and powerful forces that influence collective behavior beyond our awareness.

This framework highlights something that horse-race coverage and polling data cannot. Namely, the emotional and symbolic undercurrents that make certain ideas contagious, certain leaders magnetic, and certain fears impossible to reason away.

When the Unconscious Goes Public

Carl Jung believed that social upheaval reveals older layers of the human psyche. These are layers filled with mythic patterns, including gods and demons. In the 1930s, observing fascism rise in Germany, he argued that the nation had become “possessed” by an ancient archetype he called Wotan. This energy pattern included an eruption of rage, violence, and the desire to merge into something greater than oneself. People at that time and in that country were overcome by a force so powerful that it swept them in a wave of anger. There are times in history when a collective energy pattern assumes a kind of spiritual authority that leads people to do things they once considered offensive.

While Jung has been criticized for excessive analysis and insufficient moral outrage, his central idea remains valid. When a society loses its tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, it becomes vulnerable to authoritarian impulses. People seek strong leaders, simple answers, and an escape from the burden of freedom.

Thomas Singer, a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst who has spent twenty years developing the idea of “cultural complexes,” describes America today as living in a kind of collective underworld—an emotionally charged moment when old traumas, historical wounds, and mythic figures are being stirred to the surface. This is not just a metaphor. It is a real emotional reality, visible in town halls and social media feeds.

Cultural Complexes: The Emotional Scripts We Don’t Know We’re Following

Jung’s original insight was that individuals carry “complexes”—clusters of emotions and memories that act like independent personalities within the mind. You don’t choose to feel defensive about your abilities or furious over perceived slights; the complex takes control. Remember the time you just ‘lost it’ in a meeting or with a family member. Well, that’s a complex taking over you. Singer and his colleague Samuel Kimbles expanded this idea to groups: nations, regions, and identity groups have their own complexes, which, under stress, trigger intense feelings of fear, pride, resentment, or righteousness.

A cultural complex can make a person feel entirely sure while shutting them off from genuine thought. It can turn political opponents into existential threats. It can make national myths such as “we are exceptional,” “we are innocent,” or “outsiders are to blame” into unquestionable, even sacrosanct creeds.

These complexes influence modern Americans. An innocence complex avoids facing the country’s history of slavery and inequality, not out of ignorance, but because admitting it comes with a psychological cost. A grievance complex turns suffering into blame, fueling movements across the spectrum that seek restoration by punishing enemies. A progress complex advocates for continuous acceleration and promises economic salvation through efficiency, technology, or force.

These patterns flourish when people feel overwhelmed. They offer quick explanations when reality appears too complex to handle.

The Call of “Communitas”

Jean Shinoda Bolen, a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst, has spent decades exploring how archetypal patterns influence both individual psychology and society. She describes her approach as “binocular vision”—viewing things through both psychological and social perspectives simultaneously. In her view, cultural change needs what she calls “communitas”: gatherings where people confront difficult truths together rather than alone. This is precisely what authoritarian movements cannot tolerate: humility, reflection, dialogue, and complexity.

In an upcoming book, social scientist Ryan Burge argues that the decline of what he calls moderate congregations is a problem for democracy. Why? Because in those communities, people with different ideological views live together. They learn that even if they disagree on issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, or gun violence, they are still brothers and sisters. As society becomes more isolated, one solution might be creating more inclusive communities. These could be synagogues, churches, mosques, but also garden clubs, swim teams, or yoga studios. We need places where people can talk even when they don’t see eye to eye. This is the “communitas” Jean Shinoda Bolen talks about.

Democracy as Psychological Achievement

From this perspective, democracy isn’t just a political system. It’s a spiritual achievement, one that demands emotional maturity from its citizens.

Democracy assumes that adults can accept conflicting viewpoints, tolerate uncertainty, and stay engaged in dialogue long enough for new ideas to surface. Jung observed that “emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion.” In a democracy, citizens must hold onto uncomfortable emotions—frustration, disappointment, fear, and loss—long enough for genuine solutions to develop. This work is demanding. It often feels like suffering.

Authoritarian systems take a shortcut. They avoid suffering by replacing it with certainty, purity, grievance, and violence. As Simone Weil wrote in Gravity and Grace: “The false God changes suffering into violence. The true God changes violence into suffering.” Democracy tends to favor the latter; authoritarianism relies on the former.

This helps explain our current polarization. Many people feel overwhelmed by the size of modern crises. When life feels unmanageable, some look for someone to blame or someone to rescue them. Others withdraw or numbly disconnect. Emotional resilience decreases. Extremes become more frequent. But living in a democracy depends on our ability to confront uncomfortable feelings.

The Scapegoat and the Shadow

The ancient civilization of Ebla, located in Syria, had a ritual practice later adopted by near Eastern cultures. The ritual of the scapegoat, whereby the people would gather and place their sins, their regrets, their shortcomings onto a goat sent out into the wilderness. That ritual got picked up by ancient Hebrew people and it’s now a foundational story for the Day of Atonement.

²¹Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. ²²The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.” Leviticus 16:21-22

Jung’s concept of the “shadow,” those parts of ourselves we refuse to acknowledge, has clear political implications. What we can’t accept in ourselves, we often project onto others. Jung noted that “political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals.”

Sylvia Brinton Perera, in her study The Scapegoat Complex, explored how shadow projection works on a collective scale. Communities under stress tend to find a scapegoat to take on their disowned guilt, fear, and aggression. The scapegoat mechanism provides temporary relief—the group feels purified and united against a shared enemy—but it does not resolve the original problems. The underlying anxiety remains, demanding new targets.

Recognizing this pattern doesn’t imply all political grievances are projections or that all accused groups are innocent. It indicates that the strength of certain political emotions, such as the feeling of existential threat or the belief that opponents are not merely wrong but evil, often reflects unconscious material that influences behavior. As I said above, a “cultural complex” has been activated.

It’s not enough to send a goat out into the wilderness. What’s needed is for us to follow the scapegoat into that land.

The Mature Path

There are no easy answers here. Instead, I’m offering a way of seeing and reminding us that freedom is hard. We need to think, feel, accept ambiguity, and avoid emotional shortcuts. Authoritarianism is always simpler. It promises relief from conflict, clarity rather than confusion, and purity rather than complexity. It demands obedience, not responsibility. It really is the immature path.

The mature path, where we experience our suffering rather than turning it into violence, is the only way back upward. Democracy endures when enough people are willing to face reality together and still choose dialogue, humility, curiosity, and shared humanity.

I’m trying to do that work internally as well as with those around me, even those with whom I disagree.

—

Previously Published on The Notebooks of James Hazelwood

iStock image