Violences

Analyzing the 9/11 attack on the United States, the author adopts a Jungian methodological approach. He aims to explore the network of interconnections between the collective and the intra-psychic and to define a context for reflection free of an exclusively psychological epistemology. Terrorism is defined as an extreme form of polarization and vagueness, animated from the archetypal viewpoint by Pan’s breath. The author relates the phenomenology of terror to Pan, panic, and a broadened understanding of Jungian concepts of bi-polarity and possession. His analysis emphasizes the unipolarity of possession by the archetype. Under its sway, human groups are driven to commit acts of blind destruction.