Comics and Psychology Come Together at Time Warp

Comic books and the psychology of Carl Jung already share a common link: a constructive reliance on archetypes. "One of the more influential aspects of Jungian psychology is understanding archetypes and the impact of mythology," says Steve Replogle. "Comics, too, are all about archetypes, and they present us with a modern mythology that can be quite thrilling. And sometimes revealing."

Such is the thought behind Superheroes and Psychoanalysis, an event Replogle has put together at Time Warp Comics in Boulder (3105 28th Street) starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 25. The event is free and will be livestreamed on the Time Warp Facebook page, but it's worth going: The on-site audience will receive free mini-comics and other giveaways.

The event itself is the brainchild of several members of Denver's C.G. Jung Institute of Colorado, a research center founded in 1976 that now independently provides high-level psychological education and Jungian information opportunities for the regional public. Replogle is an associate at the Institute, and his wife, Lara Newton, is the current president.

But Replogle's career was spent as a public-school teacher; he taught fourth grade at Bromwell Elementary for twenty years before his retirement, and in that time was known for using comics as an educational tool. "I always had a big bunch of comic books for them to read," Replogle recalls, "and I'd have multiple copies for reading groups. I'd have four copies of a popular kid-oriented comic that we'd read and treat like literature: What's the theme, what are the characters, tell me about the setting — that sort of thing. We also made a lot of comics in the classroom. Kids love to do that."

Comics today are widely recognized as a serious tool for solid learning — a lesson America could have learned from PBS embracing Spider-Man for its groundbreaking Electric Company show back in the 1970s (featuring a very young Morgan Freeman as a character named Easy Reader, among other entertainment notables). Replogle admits to some pride in being ahead of the curve in the educational promise in comics. "But it doesn't much matter now that everyone has caught up," he jokes. 

Replogle had suggested the idea for a comics and Jung discussion to his wife, but the plan really came together when he realized that two of the contributors to the book A New Gnosis: Comic Books, Comparative Mythology, and Depth Psychology were members of the Institute—and also fans of Time Warp Comics. "It was an easy step to think about an event to bring us together," Replogle says.
Evergreen psychoanalyst John Todd will be talking about Batman; his contribution to A New Gnosis was "The Shadow of the Bat: Batman as Archetypical Shaman." Todd will examine why, when ancient cultures so revered the bat and held it sacred, has modern Western culture demonized it? And why is one of the most prominent heroes of our time — Batman himself — still a figure of shadow and fear?

Fellow analyst Jeffrey Kiehl (formerly of Boulder, now living in Santa Cruz, California) wrote his chapter for the book on the "Archetypal Dimensions of Comic Books," and discusses the shift in perspective between Marvel's seminal Fantastic Four and more recent works, including Promethea, from Alan Moore. Kiehl writes in his abstract for The New Gnosis that his analysis "considers how each of these series illustrates a religious function within the psyche and explores how changes in the social arena...have affected thematic elements."

The third participant in the Time Warp discussion will be Christopher St. John, currently an analyst-candidate almost through training to be declared a Diplomate Jungian Psychoanalyst. He's also a Navy vet and a big Superman fan. "Comics are our modern-day myths in Western culture," says St. John. "I'll be exploring this idea from the Jungian perspective. Jungian psychology, archetypal images, consciousness, the personal unconscious, the psyche, empiricism, existentialism, symbolism and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche."

St. John says he's been a comic fan since he was a kid, so this opportunity to combine his love for the medium and his chosen career path was too good to pass up. "I've loved comics my entire life," he says. "They affected me psychically in ways I didn't understand until I got older. They were instrumental in my serving in the U.S. Navy and becoming a first responder. I always wanted to be of service to something greater than my ego. Comics were responsible for this on an unconscious level."

"In a nutshell," says Replogle, "comics express dimensions of the human spirit. Jungian psychology is particularly suited to examining and discussing this process. We hope this will be a celebration of both."

Superheroes and Psychoanalysis will take place at Time Warp Comics, 3105 28th Street in Boulder, starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 25. The event is free and open to the public, and will also be livestreamed on the Time Warp Facebook page.