Tacey is one of Australia's public intellectuals, well known in the
arts, religious and
psychotherapy communities. He is known internationally, especially in the fields of
spirituality studies,
analytical psychology and
psychoanalysis. He is a frequent commentator on radio and has appeared numerous times on television. He is invited to speak on issues of spirituality,
religious belief and
indigenous cultures. His views are sought on
mental health, suicide,
depression,
anxiety,
initiation and
rites of passage. Tacey has appeared on programs
broadcast by the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the
Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in Australia, and the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Radio Four. He has also appeared in programs broadcast by the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States, and the
New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC). In 1984 he taught in the School of English and
Linguistics at
Macquarie University, Sydney. He then moved to Melbourne, where from 1985 to 2014 he taught various subjects in
English literature and
Interdisciplinary Studies at
La Trobe University. He retired from academic life in 2014 to commence a new phase as an
independent scholar. Tacey is the author of fourteen books and over a hundred and fifty
articles and essays. Some of his writings have been translated into
Mandarin,
Korean, Spanish, Portuguese and French. His public intellectual life began in 1995, when he published
Edge of the Sacred, a work which became a best-seller and attracted the interest of the
Paul Keating administration. It was recommended by cultural advisers as a work which shaped the direction of Australian society in its vision of
Aboriginal reconciliation. The Australian poet
Les Murray described the book as a work which offered a frame of reference for a future
Australian republic. During the 1990s, Tacey organised conferences on
Analytical psychology and made La Trobe a national focus for this field of research. In the late 1990s, his research moved into the area of
men's studies, with the publication of
Remaking Men in 1997.
Remaking Men was voted one of the best ten books of the year by
The Age newspaper in Melbourne and
The Sydney Morning Herald. Tacey became interested in the role of religion and
spirituality in
secular societies and published several books on this subject, including
Re-Enchantment and
The Spirituality Revolution. He is often invited to address religious schools and education conferences on the subject of youth spirituality. He is often consulted by church leaders to foster
ecclesial and
lay understanding of the function of spirituality and
mysticism in today's
postmodern world. In 2000 he was invited to represent Australia at a congress on religion and
world peace at the United Nations, New York. His book
Religion as Metaphor: Beyond Literal Belief brings together his interests in
symbolism,
scripture,
depth psychology and literature. Tacey has specialised in the
analytical psychology of
C. G. Jung and for twenty years at La Trobe he co-taught, with philosopher
Robert Farrell, on "Jung's cultural psychology". In this field he published
Jung and the New Age; The Idea of the Numinous: Contemporary Jungian and Psychoanalytic Perspectives (with Ann Casement);
Gods and Diseases: Making Sense of our Physical and Mental Wellbeing;
How to Read Jung and
The Darkening Spirit: Jung, Spirituality, Religion. In 2012 he edited the scholarly volume
The Jung Reader for
Routledge. During his last six years at La Trobe, he co-taught, with sociologist
John Carroll,
The Crisis of Meaning in the 21st Century. Tacey is on the
editorial boards of several international
journals and in 2001 he was invited to lecture at the
C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich. He gave regular summer courses in Zürich until 2010. In 2002 he became a founding member of the
International Association for Jungian Studies. In 2006 he was William J. Shannon Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at
Nazareth College,
Rochester, New York, United States; and
Lloyd Geering Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at
Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand. He has been invited to speak at
conferences in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, South Africa,
Denmark,
New Zealand and
Korea. ==Bibliography==