Jungian Seminars  - 2008

"Flying Too High"

Saturday, January 12, 2008

The war between science and religious piety did not begin with the emergence of Intelligent Design theory.  In fact, it long pre-dates our nuclear age, with its many concerns about unchecked technological development.  The sixteenth century legend of Johannes Faust expressed profound mistrust of an emerging class of scholars whose intellectual development took them far beyond the experience and knowledge of the common man.  Then, as now, it would be easy to dismiss this mistrust as the product of ignorance and superstition.  Yet, time and again, we can observe Western culture’s devotion to modern science and technology giving rise to wild inflations.

The Greek myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, dramatizes what catastrophic consequences inflation can bring.  But it is to Goethe’s Faust play that we will turn—as did Jung—for an understanding of how the fate of Icarus may be avoided. In these two stories we will look for a sense of how collective inflation may be working within us, and what it means to give our earth-bound nature its due. Participants are encouraged to revisit any flying dreams they may have had and, as time allows, these too will be brought into the discussion.

"Across a Crowded Room: The Mystery of Attraction"

Saturday, February 16, 2008

“Some enchanted evening

You may see a stranger,

You may see a stranger

Across a crowded room,

And somehow you know,

You know even then.

 That somewhere you'll see her

Again and again.”

                                                                    - Rodgers & Hammerstein (South Pacific”, 1949)

Attraction is one of the fundamentally “irrational” phenomena of life – whether it be attraction to a person, a piece of music, a myth, a landscape, an image or idea .... When attraction escalates into passion, it is often dismissed as besotted self-indulgence, not to be dignified with meaning.  Yet attraction can play a key role in individuation – whether as a function of projection (which can be withdrawn in a process of self-discovery), or simply as an instrument of one’s personal destiny.  Let us take a fresh look together at our enchanted evenings and those things in our lives which have drawn us along a path neither pre-planned nor rationally chosen.    

“Sticks & Stones: The Power of Words"

Saturday, April 12, 2008

  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Wrong!  A single word has been known to inflict a life-long wound on an impressionable child, or irreversibly to damage a precious relationship.  But, by the same token, the right word can bring one’s entire life situation into focus. A few words can lift an entire image complex out of the storehouse of memory & bring it to life again, with all the immediacy of present reality. A simple phrase can be the key to removing seemingly hopeless obstacles, to call on the gods - perhaps even to perform magical acts. And the voice of a kindred spirit, however dimly reflected as marks on a page, or hiccups in cyber-space, can affect us across hundreds of years or thousands of miles.  It is the use of complex language, perhaps more than any other feature, that makes our species unique.

In contemporary life, we are so bombarded with empty language (like empty calories) that we often rebel against words, words, words. One remedy is to seek more of that silence which is, after all, golden. But we will be exploring another: to re-connect with the soulful aspects of language that give it its power and importance in our lives.

"Rules of the Game: Uniting Order & Spontaneity in Play"

Saturday, May 10. 2008

One of the most striking aspects of contemporary life is the difficulty that many individuals experience in finding satisfying ways to play - while, at the same time, fulfilling a responsible role in the work force.  With our society’s excessively accentuated work ethic, we seem to have split into two groups: the “slackers” who delay adulthood as long as possible, and those who rise to the challenge, only to find themselves drained by their work of emotional health, physical vitality, and creativity capacity.  Play, which has long been recognized as an archetypal human need in childhood, is beginning to look like an activity (or a frame of mind) that adults cannot wisely dispense with.

Jung often emphasized the importance of finding balance in life by uniting the opposites.  In this seminar, the opposites we will be considering are not so much work-versus-play as the element of structure, order, and discipline which is inherent in satisfying play itself – whether “following the rules” in baseball or writing a poem according to a predetermined pattern.  These are a couple of Howard and Karen’s favorite forms of play.  You are encouraged to bring your own examples.

“Life As a Waking Dream ”

Saturday, September 6, 2008

The dream world is peopled by strange characters, whether impersonations of the familiar or entirely new and unknown.  Its stories often unfold with a logic entirely different from that of everyday life – or no readily apparent logic at all.  In fact, the laws of physics may be suspended altogether in dreams.  When we wake from sleep, we expect to open our eyes to the same solid, reasonable and predictable realities that were in place the day before, and the day before that.  But sometimes it seems as if the author of dreams were trying his hand at a new medium - waking life itself - and suddenly we feel that we’ve slipped back into the symbolic moment.  Join us to share accounts of these waking dreams and to reflect on their meaning, in the same way that Jung taught us to reflect on the experiences that sleep brings.

“Going Home”

Saturday, November 22, 2008

There is a Native American saying: “Home is the place where we are always going.”  In today’s world, so many families have been uprooted, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, that a map tracing their migrations would look like one vast, world-wide tangle. In this country, it is a rare young person who does not leave home to seek his or her fortune.  And many individuals have lived in so many places since childhood that they look to none of them as a “home town.”  We cut ourselves off from family and cultural roots in ways that diminish our consciousness of who we are.  And yet a longing for Home persists as a powerful symbol that draws us on to “the place where we are always going.”  When have you found yourself in a place, with persons, or taking up a vocation that felt like “coming home”?  Reflecting on those moments together may tell us much, not only about our own paths of individuation, but about the nature of the path itself.

 “Give-Away”

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Gift-giving, with its many shades of meaning, in its many social contexts, is an activity as old as humankind.  In societies less secular than our own, sacred beings were incorporated into the web of giving and receiving, along with one’s family, friends, and would-be allies.  In the modern world, the giving of gifts takes on special value:  It releases us from the iron grip of an economic system in which everything seems to have a price tag.  And yet generosity and gratitude are not the whole story.  Like any archetypal situation, the giving and receiving of gifts has negative as well as positive potentials.  But this seminar will not only be about giving: It will include a traditional ritual in which participants arrive with one gift and leave with another.  For the Give-away ritual, you are asked to provide an (unwrapped) object of little or no monetary value which has had real meaning for you but which you are ready to release.

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