Rebecca’s talk is called “Climate Cassandras and the Psychology of Believing”
Scientists and environmental activists are modern-day Cassandras, desperate to convince world leaders that drastic action must be taken immediately to avert disaster. In this polarized time, have we lost our sense of a shared myth of progress, crippling our ability to act collectively and avert the coming climate catastrophe? Can depth psychology set us back on track towards psychological and cultural effectiveness and resolve?
Looking at the Cassandra myth through an archetypal lens reveals a story of the rupture between unconscious instinct, represented by Cassandra, and conscious rationalism, in the guise of her spurned lover Apollo, who has cursed her to foresee the future but never be believed. While most of us are convinced that our beliefs are formed by conscious choice, the process of belief formation is rarely rational, whether these beliefs originate in childhood, are encoded into the social fabric of our communities, or are constructed by imposing unconscious contents onto the random stream of information encountered on the internet. Using the insights of depth psychology to correlate the Cassandra myth to Q-anon, Ken Keyes’s The Hundredth Monkey, and the film Don’t Look Up, this paper strategizes a more conscious attitude towards belief in inconvenient facts.
About Rebecca
Rebecca Migdal Kilicaslan, MA, MFA is an artist, performer, and author who works with dreams, myths, and folktales. In 2017 she co-founded Book & Puppet Co., a bookstore and puppet theater in Easton, Pennsylvania. She is a doctoral candidate in Jungian Psychology and Archetypes at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Rebecca studied with Steve Aizenstat, and is a certified Dreamtender™. She teaches in the Art + Design department at East Stroudsburg University.
To hear Rebecca’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!
The Mythologium is a conference and retreat for mythologists and friends of myth, held July 29 – 31 via Zoom in the Pacific time zone.
