"The Content of Their Complexes:

The Wounded Leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama"

In 1959, C. G. Jung noted, “A political, social, philosophical, and religious conflict of unprecedented proportions has split the consciousness of our age.” During times like this, the tension of opposites seeks relief and reconciliation through “a uniting symbol.” He continued, “Should something extraordinary or impressive then occur in the outside world, be it a human personality, a thing, or an idea, the unconscious content can project itself upon it, thereby investing the projection carrier with numinous and mythical powers. . . . The projection carrier has a highly suggestive effect and grows into a saviour myth whose basic features have been repeated countless times.”   

Though Jung suggested flying saucers were the uniting symbol of the late 1950’s, I believe that in the “United” States of America, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. who appeared as the major symbol of

Jennifer Leigh Selig

unity, carrying numinous powers and projections as he embodied the saviour myth for the country. Fifty years later, we see Barack Obama carrying that same kind of power, and calling to himself the same kind of projections.

But King and Obama are very different men, despite any similar mythological envelop we may stuff them into. While the content of their characters may be similar, it is the dissimilar content of their complexes that is the topic of this talk. Here, I take my lead from Robert Romanyshyn in The Wounded Researcher, where he writes, “A complex is a kind of wounding, and for the wounded researcher it is both the obstacle and the pathway into the unfinished business in the soul of his or her work.”  I assert this is true for the wounded leader as well, that the complexes are both an obstacle and a pathway into the unfinished business in the soul of his or her individual work which are reflected and enacted upon the collective.

King was clear that the unfinished business in the soul of the country was its racial guilt. He demonstrated black innocence through redemptive suffering, and demanded white atonement through legislation. The language he used to heal the collective—guilt, innocence, redemption, and atonement—are the very terms of his major complex, the martyr complex. Instilled within King’s own psyche since childhood was a profound sense of guilt and a subsequent need for atonement through redemptive suffering. Unfortunately, as Jung noted, the complexes can fall upon us like fate ; it was King’s fate to not only reflect but to literally enact the martyr complex while carrying the saviour myth for the country.

Using this exploration of King’s wounded leadership as a template, we will peek into the psyche of Barack Obama. How does he language the unfinished business in the soul of the country? What might be his major psychological wound and concomitant complex? And how might that complex be reflected and/or enacted as he carries the saviour myth for the country?

REFERENCES

Jung, C. G. (1978). Flying saucers: A modern myth of things seen in the skies (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 108-109. Original work published in 1959.

Romanysyhn, R. D. (2007). The wounded researcher: Research with soul in mind.  New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books, p. 97.

Jung, C. G. (1935). Archetypes and the collective unconscious. In H. Read (Ed.). The collected works of C.G. Jung (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 9i, p. 62). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.