March 2023: "The Metaphors of the Body" presented by Daniel Benveniste, PhD

For many years, psychoanalysts have struggled to understand the origin of the universal symbolism of the body and the core complexes (Totem and Taboo). Freud proposed a "collective mind" containing the precipitates of acts performed by our ancestors that were then inherited as memories of our species through a process of psycho-Lamarckian transmission. Jung proposed a more mystical "collective unconscious" containing instinctual, religious, and philosophical symbolism that has been deposited into the psyche and inherited by generation after generation. Daniel Benveniste will present a view suggesting that the metaphors of the body, which become symbolized in culture, are universal because they are inevitable. The metaphors of the body are the inevitable result of bodily experience being transformed in the human symbolic function. That bodily experience includes anatomical structure, the functions of the body in relation to others throughout the lifecycle, and our primate social instincts. The metaphors and symbolism of the body are inevitable when there is a convergence of bodily experience, the human symbolic function, language, and culture. Our human symbolic function has been developing rapidly over the last 6 million years but crossed a threshold 50,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period, when we see an explosion of archeological evidence of rapidly developing technologies, art, and the emergence of a spiritual life. Learning Objectives: 1. Participants will learn about Freud's and Jung's phylogenetic understandings of universal symbolism. 2. Participants will learn about the important contributions of Ernest Jones and Géza Röheim to the understanding of the ontogenetic origins of symbolism. 3. Participants will learn about a new approach to understanding the origins of universal symbolism and the complexes based in anatomy, primate social instincts, the functions of the body throughout the lifecycle, culture and, most importantly, the development of the human symbolic function.