LITERATURE + LECTURES

The Jung Center of Houston presents Achieving Psychic and Social Harmony: A Lecture on Platonic Psychology.  Acclaimed teacher Daniel Silvermintz explores Plato's analogy between the soul and the city in this lecture.

How in the world could politics help us with our psychic health? After all, the overriding message of the last election was that Americans are tired of both parties' political wrangling, and yet it was this same contentiousness that Plato appealed to more than two thousand years ago when attempting to explain the turmoil of psychic life. This lecture will explore Plato's analogy between the soul and the city and his diagnosis of what is required to overcome both civic and psychic unrest. Using this powerful analogy, mental health can be understood as the workings of a well-ordered city while mental instability and addiction as the tyranny of a despotic regime.

Daniel Silvermintz, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, where his innovative teaching practices have twice been recognized with university awards. A former Visiting Scholar in the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California-Irvine, his current research focuses on psychology and ethics in Greek philosophy.