Presented by Luigi Zoja, Ph.D.

The historical and archetypal aspects of paranoia in our culture are deeply rooted in collective shadow projections in history, and are manifested in prejudices, wars, and genocides. In his new book Paranoia: The Madness that Makes History, Zoja confronts the contagious nature of paranoia. Far from being individual, its dynamics are self-replicating, devouring entire societies, which once infected, acquire an autonomous life of their own. From the solitude of Sophocles’ Ajax, to the sickness of Shakespeare’s Othello, and from Cain to George Bush Jr., we will examine some of archetypal and psychological implications of paranoia in contemporary culture.

Course Objectives:

• Describe some of the archetypal aspects of paranoia as manifested in contemporary culture.
• Give an example of how the archetypal nature of paranoia functions in historical or contemporary culture.

Luigi Zoja, Ph.D., a native of Italy, received his diploma in Analytical Psychology from the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich, where he has also been a training analyst. He is the past president of CIPA (Centro Italiano di Psicologia Analitica) and the IAAP (International Association of Analystical Psychology), and has taught at the State University of Palermo and the University of Insubria in Italy, and at the University of Macao in China. He is the award-winning author of numerous papers and books that have been published in fifteen languages, including Growth and Guilt, The Father, The Global Nightmare: Jungian Perspectives on September 11, (ed.), Violence in History, Culture and the Psyche and the forthcoming book, Paranoia: The Madness that Makes History.