Could your sensitivities, wounds and preoccupations – your complexes – hold the missing key to the treasure of your vocation?

A complex is an impulse, pattern of behaviour, recurring mode of imagination, obsessive thought or particular fantasy which keeps you in its grip. According to Jung, the via regia to the unconscious was not, as Freud thought, the dream, but “the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms” although the complex is “more like a rough and uncommonly devious footpath” than a royal road (CW8, para. 210). We all have complexes, but when a complex remains autonomous and untransformed, it can easily chain a person to unfulfilling work or inhibit the pursuit of an authentic calling.

Drawing on fascinating stories from interviews with individuals, in this lecture Suzanne explores how a more conscious understanding of one’s complexes can be revelatory for the discovery, choice and conduct of one’s vocation. Complexes may stem from personal wounds (often originating in childhood); the collective wounds of the individual’s culture; or the traumas and patterns of previous generations. A Jungian approach suggests that the complex be treated not merely as a historical wound but that it has a teleological function, whereby the psyche leads the individual towards new horizons and an unfolding vocational direction infused with passion and commitment.