Tupinambá Cosmology and the Making of Consciousness: A Jungian Perspective

Presented by Inacio Cunha, PhD

Sunday, May 19, 2024, 11 am - 1 pm PDT (UTC - 7)

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This program will not be recorded.

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By the Age of Discovery, around 1500, the Portuguese encountered the Tupinambá, the largest group of Amerindians who occupied nearly the entire coastal area of Brazil. They were people known for their unwavering warlike disposition and their "fascinating and barbaric" custom of eating human flesh. 

This lecture will explore the reports of the Tupinambá cosmology, including its main mythological characters and their development.  The interaction in the cosmology between the divine (both anthropomorphic and theriomorphic) and human beings allows us to visualize and understand a part of the archetypal struggle involved in the “making” of consciousness.

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Inacio Cunha, PhD, a Jungian analyst, graduated from the Research and Training Centre for Depth Psychology According to C. G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz in Zurich. He currently coordinates a discussion forum for analysts who graduated from this Centre. He is in private practice in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where he also teaches and organizes meetings on Jungian psychology.

He has translated three books by Marie-Louise von Franz into Portuguese and has published the following books in English: The Lower Limbs in Jungian Psychology: The Girl with Her Big Toe in Her Mouth and The Feminine Entrapped Within a Fruit: A Jungian Interpretation. He published in Portuguese: Os custos da consciência: A Relação Pai e Filho num conto africano sob o escrutínio da Psicologia Analítica Junguiana (The Costs of Consciousness: The Father and Son Relationship in an African Tale), and more recently, Mito Cosmogônico Tupinambá – À Luz da Psicologia Analítica Junguiana (Tupinambá Cosmogonic Myth – In the Light of Jungian Psychology). The book O Canibalismo Tupinambá e a Construção do Corpo Eterno (The Tupinambá Cannibalism and the Building of the Eternal Body) is currently in publication.

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Learning objectives:  

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• Explain how the study of cosmology and cosmogony can help us understand the development of consciousness.

• Identify the archetypal quality that permeates the struggle between humans and divine beings in the making of consciousness, using the Tupinambá as an example.

• Explain how archetypal images may bring light to the psychological functioning of contemporary man.