ARTHUR D. COLMAN, M.D.

Arthur D. Colman, M.D. is a psychiatrist trained at Harvard College and Medical School and U.C. Medical Center, San Francisco where he is Clinical Professor at the Department of Psychiatry. He is a depth analyst trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco where he is a member, founder and first editor of Connected Works, and former chair of its review committee.

The author of 9 books on the human life cycle, healing, and scapegoating, he has contributed to many books, professional journals and popular publications on these and other subjects including ecstatic relationships, group consultation, leadership, the psychology of war, and the psychological aspects of music compositions and musical composers. He is also a coeditor of the influential Group Relations Reader I and II and a past president of the A.K. Rice Institute which publishes and distributes them. He currently divides his time between clinical practice, analysis and consultation to leaders and organizations here and abroad.

TRUTH & ACTION

Consciousness demands a commitment of self in the world, to one’s truth acted in the world, the kind of truth and action that Gandhi and Mother Theresa have modeled best in this century

We need to extend our domain to include greater concern for the necessity of acts which encompass individual and collective so that both are served.

INDIVIDUATION

Individuation Most important to me is a renewed commitment to the psychological development of the collective, its individuation, for surely that is where our individual futures, as members of the human collective and the planet’s collective, must lie.

Consciousness demands a commitment of self in the world, to one’s truth acted in the world, the kind of truth and action that Gandhi and Mother Theresa have modeled best as this century’s Saints.

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS AND GROUP THEORY

…our quest is directed to look at a psychology of human connectedness in exploring collectivity, interconnection and reflected consciousness, in ways that include and transcend our individual natures and so seeks to understand our human psyche in its ecological context.

ARTICLES ON MUSIC

Britten’s central concern in his Requiem was … war. He wanted the largest possible context for this pacifist work, and he wanted a hand in destroying, or at least subverting, the institutions that preserved war.

The personal drama he was facing was not only the death of a friend but the death of friendship, marriage, and hope for the future, combined with the start of an uncertain new relationship. The Mass musically manifests the drama of these transitions in Verdi’s life.

SHAMANISM AND ALTERED STATES

Shamanism and pain are intimately related. Shamanism, alone of the healing traditions, overtly depends on both the healer and healed achieving an altered state of consiouness for the healing process to occur. Pain is the key that unlocks the door to these states of consciousness and the “other world.”

For healing to occur, a sacrifice is required.

TRUTH & ACTION

Consciousness demands a commitment of self in the world, to one’s truth acted in the world, the kind of truth and action that Gandhi and Mother Theresa have modeled best in this century

We need to extend our domain to include greater concern for the necessity of acts which encompass individual and collective so that both are served.