Description

Glen Slater

(Online Lecture)

American Gun Violence:

A Jungian Depth Psychological View

Friday, April 17, 2026

7:00 – 9:00 pm

The intractable nature of the gun violence problem in the United States resists meaningful analysis. Even more so, the problem resists effective solutions. Perhaps this resistance itself is meaningful, pointing to suppression and denial of deeper problems in the national psyche. Pushing beyond familiar

treatments of gun culture, this presentation will examine the depth psychology of homicide by firearm by considering the collective myths and cultural complexes that make this particular form of violence so prevalent. Compared to similar societies around the globe, these myths and complexes both heighten the propensity to target and shoot others and lower the capacity for the soul-searching necessary to mitigate this propensity. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of where responsibility for gun violence lives, and where transformative possibilities may also be located.

Glen Slater, Ph.D. has been a long time core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently Associate Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Program. He is the author of Jung vs Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age (2024), editor of the third volume of James Hillman’s Uniform Edition, Senex and Puer (2005), co-editor of the essay collection, Varieties of Mythic Experience (2007), and has written a number of articles and book chapters for Jungian publications. His research and writing interests concern Jung and film, the psychology of religion, and depth psychology and technology.