This talk ‘The Unconscious in Literature: Patrick White’ looks at the novels of Patrick White through the lens of Jungian psychology. My talk focuses on his career, my relationship with him in the 1970s and 80s, and my assessment of what he was doing in his novels. I spent four years working on a doctoral thesis on his work, only to discover near the end of the fourth year that I had made a mistake in my interpretation of his work. As the time for completing the degree came to an end, a bush fire engulfed my house and forced me to reconsider the topic and rewrite the thesis.

White’s 1966 novel The Solid Mandala acknowledges its debt to Jung, and even the title of the book, about the mandala, indicates that White was influenced by Jung’s work. The novel quotes sections of Jung’s work, Psychology and Alchemy. But in my view, White misread Jung and didn’t understand his theories. Patrick White won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973 for his book The Eye of the Storm, which has recently been made into a movie.

David Tacey PhD is a writer and public intellectual who works across the fields of spirituality, religious studies, analytical psychology, literature and philosophy.  He is a specialist in Jungian studies.  His books are published internationally and have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian and French.  

His most recent book “The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change” was published by Routledge in 2020. David is often invited to teach online courses at the CG Jung Institute, Zurich.