Violence in America; 5 Forms Embedded in Our Psyche

Posted by Nikole Hollenitsch on Sep 19, 2014 9:00:00 AM

A guest post by Fujio Mandeville

There are many ways to think of and experience violence: we can consider it as war, brutal acts upon our person; as passive forms of violence that is expressed as oppression, impoverishment, or the marginalization of those in a particular class, gender or ethnicity; or as disturbances within our personal and collective psyche. Regardless how we view this phenomenon, we cannot ignore it nor can we resist it. Violence, whatever its form, is complex and mythic -- deeply embedded within our psyche.

Though the five essays linked below do not cover every aspect of the definition above, they do ask us to reconsider what violence can be in its different guises: the alienation of men and the resulting violence, sadomasochism as a potentially transformative force, “soul-making” through violence, post-partum depression as psychic abduction, and finally, a look at the violent irruption of the unconscious into our awareness.

I hope the readers will see this subject in ways that we may not have considered in the past and come to a fresher view of what is "Violence in America".

The following essays are from Volume 5 of the Mythological Studies Journal entitled “Violence in America”.

Good Man Down: The Myth of Masculine Violence in American Society by David S. McCabe

Violence and Veneration: Tapping a Sadomasochistic Vein in the American Psyche 

by Angelina Avedano

Soul-making and the Colorado Shooting: James Holmes as the Joker, Trickster, Savior 

by Michael Bogar

Demeter and Persephone as Temenos: A Perspective of Understanding Postpartum Depression 

by Stephanie Zajchowski

Shading in a Violent Shadow: A Hero's Confrontation with the American Shadow in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas by Leontine Armstrong

Fujio Mandeville, M.A. is Editor-in-Chief of the Mythological Studies Journal of Pacifica Graduate Institute. This exciting and growing publication is designed as a venue for the current students in the Mythological Studies program to publish their own original thoughts on a selected topic for a given volume. This is a peer-reviewed journal accepting submissions on an annual basis. For the upcoming issue, we are accepting submissions for our sixth volume entitled: “Technology: Myth and Psyche”.

Topics: The Psyche, Mythology