Jungian Seminars - 2002
“Wounding and Healing”
Saturday, January 26, 2002
On a wall in an ancient Greek Asclepian temple used for healing, these words were found: “God sends the wound - God is in the wound - God is wounded - God heals the wound.” These provocative words will form the basis of our discussion and exploration into the mysterious process of healing—whether physical, psychological, or spiritual. Attention will also be given to the archetype of the “Wounded Healer” as it is found in myths, fairy tales, dreams and our everyday lives.
Quotes to Live By
Saturday, February 23, 2002
During the course of our lives we find ourselves being provoked or inspired by words other people have said or written. These words may come from personal experience, intellectual reflection, poetry, or fictional writing. But something in the sentiment touches us and stays with us. Maybe we know why we are moved so, maybe not. This seminar invites its participants to bring their “quotes to live by” to share and explore. Quotes by Jung will be addressed as well.
Mephistopheles
Saturday, March 23, 2002
"The power which always works for Evil and effects the Good”: Thus Mephistopheles characterizes himself in Goethe’s Faust. There are many ways to think of Evil, many ways to experience it in our lives. But Goethe’s is perhaps most integral to the notion of individuation as later developed by Jung. Jung declared that “one cannot meditate enough about Faust,” so join us to reflect on this classic character who, for many, is the very personification of Western man. How are we like Faust? And what good might yet come of our misadventures with the devil, or the shadow side of life?
Life Stories
Saturday, April 27, 2002
The issue of personal identity has always loomed large in psychology—whether in the philosopher’s puzzlement about how psychic life maintains its continuity, or in the healer’s response to individual feelings of lostness and disorientation. “Who am I?” A question that can be approached from so many different angles—and differently at different times of life. Jung’s approach to the question of identity contrasts sharply with much of what we read in today’s pop psychology. He suggested that individuation is as much about shedding identities as about building one that will hold its shape. Jung displaced both personal character traits & personal history with its traumas to the background, inviting an archetypal sense of story to emerge. What is your life story? How do you make it out? Excerpts from favorite biographies—including Jung’s own—are welcomed.
Dream Visitors from the Past
Saturday, May 18, 2002
From time to time we are visited in our dreams by figures from the past. They may be historical people long dead, relatives who passed away some time ago, or figures who claim to be long-gone relatives, even though we do not recognize them. These visitors often produce a feeling of wonder and awe. This seminar will examine such dreams to determine what messages, personal or otherwise, are being brought.
Sincerely yours, C. G. Jung
Saturday, June 29, 2002
While many people find Jung’s Collected Works to be difficult reading, his Letters often come across with a warmth and simplicity that take us by surprise. His theoretical papers were certainly written “from the head”; his letters, however, were written “from the heart.” In this seminar we will read a number of letters, most of which conclude with the familiar “Sincerely yours, C.G. Jung.” They will offer us a glimpse into his humanity and religious passion. We will hear what Jung has to say to individuals who consulted him about such topics as the will of God, the meaning of life, prayer, suicide, euthanasia, death, and life after death, among others. Participants will be invited synchronistically to choose the letters we will read and discuss.
Dramatic Readings
Saturday, July 20, 2002
Jung once wrote, “The whole dream-work is essentially subjective, and a dream is a theatre in which the dreamer is himself the scene, the player, the prompter, the producer, the author, the public, and the critic.” While approaching our dreams as one would a drama is the most personal way to access inner material, it is also possible to use drama itself as a window into our interior lives. In this seminar we will synchronistically choose parts to read from various contemporary plays. It is hoped that our choosing and our “becoming” these characters will raise the curtain on some of our most poignant questions and experiences in life. Bring your flair for the dramatic.
“The Spoon in God’s Kitchen”
Saturday, August 17, 2002
One of the commonest ways to discount dreams is to attribute them to indigestion. Jung, a man who loved both cooking and eating, took the opposite view that these simple acts are especially apt symbols for the life of the imagination. “We are the spoon in God’s kitchen” were words that presided over Jung’s kitchen at Bollingen. And, whether in an alchemist’s laboratory or an ordinary home, he saw the transformational process of cooking as an image of individuation itself. This seminar will offer a generous sampling of dreams about food, the preparation of food, dining and its rituals, appetite and revulsion. And as usual, the meal will be potluck: Contributions by participants are welcomed.
“It’s time”
Saturday, September 28, 2002
The passage of time: one of those basic conditions of life that we all take for granted. Yet, as Jung observed, the true home of the psyche is relatively outside of both time and space. The annals of sleep are full of anxiety dreams where time exerts a relentless pressure. Meanwhile, symbols of Time such as the clock have a special place in “big dreams” which point to order in the cosmos. How are we to develop an individuated relationship with Time—an especially difficult task where the intuitive function rules? Join us to look for clues in myth and dreams.
Arid Patches: When Eros Takes a Holiday
Saturday, October 26, 2002
Most of us have been through what Jung called “arid patches” - times in life when our emotions are flat, our thoughts uninspired, and the outer world devoid of interest. For some, this malaise becomes chronic: Life can become focused on a seemingly futile quest for the partner, the career, or the spiritual path that will give us the heady feeling of “following our bliss.” When we cannot sense Eros at work in our lives, the sense of meaning also eludes us. Yet Jung suggested that this is precisely when we are most open to the divine. In the language of Christian mysticism, it is in the desert that one finds God. The seminar will attempt to re-connect us to this ancient paradox and to the attitude which allows ego’s drought to become the seed-time of the Self.
Quantum Change
Saturday, November 16, 2002
Anyone who has worked on changing his or her basic attitudes, breaking long-standing habits, or developing neglected functions knows what a slow process that can be. At times it seems to require more courage, persistence, and patience than we have at our disposal. Yet it sometimes happens that profound and lasting changes come over us almost instantly: “quantum change.” To be open to such experiences and to acknowledge them when they come opens up new possibilities in life; it offers hope where the status quo is especially oppressive. Participants are invited to reflect on their own and others’ experiences of quantum change, and what might be at work in them.
The Scapegoat
Saturday, December 7, 2002
The term scapegoat derives from an ancient Hebrew ritual for purging the community of negative energy: This animal was symbolically loaded with the sum of all sins and sent away into the desert. Jung helped us to see that naďve shadow projections serve much the same function, removing the shadow to a comfortable distance, but at a high social and political cost. Sylvia Brinton Perera examined the scapegoat motif in a very different context, linking it with the self-hatred so typical of modern depression. Where better to seek insight into this archetypal dynamic than in Judaeo-Christian variations on the theme of the scapegoat?