A Field Guide to Demons

"Demons are everywhere. They lurk at crossroads, crouch at the door, hide in trees, slip into bed, wait in caves, slide down chimneys, hover at weddings and childbirth, pretend to be friends, mates, or grandmothers. They slip into your mind and become your self." So begins a popular book about demons. Demons have been reported in every part of the world and in every moment of recorded history. But do we believe in demons today or are they just a superstitious remnant of earlier times? What does it mean to say someone is "possessed by a demon"?

This seminar will examine several stories of mischievous demons in hopes of learning where they reside, what they correspond to in the human psyche, and how we might deal with them in everyday life.

Fateful Meetings

The stories of many lives include a special cast of characters  - others who seemed magically to open doors onto a realm of depth and meaning: teacher, inspiration, lover, friend….  How might we understand these connections?  What is their place in the individuation process, so often described as solitary and self-contained?  This seminar looks at concepts such as projection, but this seminar will be based on the sharing of experiences.

Struck by Lightning

There are approximately 1,800 thunderstorms in progress over the earth every moment and lightning hits the planet one hundred times each second.  In the U.S. there are several thousand lightning-related injuries each year, with almost 600 fatalities. Lightning is a natural phenomenon evoking feelings ranging from fear to fascination.  But how are those who survive lightning strikes affected—physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually? What myths, stories, dreams has lightning provoked? This seminar examines the phenomenon from all these perspectives. Survivors are welcome.

When Relationships End

Most people have experienced the break-up of a valued relationship—the “divorce”, if not of a spouse, then of a friend or family member.  Sometimes the other confronts us with a fait accompli.  Sometimes we are the ones who decide to “leave”. Sometimes the level of conflict is so great that neither escapes the inevitable conclusion that something has been damaged beyond repair.  No matter what the circumstances, the parting is rarely easy.  How do we make peace with such life events?  And what if a sense of acceptance eludes us?

Anatomy of an Analysis

“What is Jungian analysis?  What is it like?  What is involved?  Why would I want to engage in an analysis?  Don’t I have to be in a crisis first?  Why are dreams so important?  What if I don’t remember my dreams?  What kind of training does an analyst undergo?  What can I hope to gain from analysis?” 

For many, Jungian analysis is an enigma.  Although there are common elements, every analysis is unique, because every analysis is highly individual, taking its cues from a person’s life story, his or her singular psychological unfolding and individuation process.  This seminar examines the structure and process of analysis - from beginning to end.  It will address practical considerations, the relationship between the analyst and the analysand, the stages of the analytic process, and why such a high value is placed on dream interpretation as well as other projective expressions.  And perhaps most importantly, time is allowed for the participants to ask their own questions.

Our society seems almost obsessed with finding the right way to think about homosexuality. Not so Jung’s; he rarely addressed this topic directly. Yet the bisexual potential of the human psyche was one of his basic premises. And Jung provided us with many tools for giving homosexuality its place in “the big picture” - not least, a basic respect for the uniqueness of every individual. In this seminar we will build on these resources to explore diverse forms of same-sex love – some specifically erotic, some not - in myths, stories, and dreams.

While much has been written about transference, the phenomenon of countertransference is often overlooked, if not avoided. In the therapeutic "field" which exists between client and therapist there are many levels of interaction, both conscious and unconscious. The therapist's thoughts, feelings, fantasies and dreams are just as integral to the healing process as those of the client. And in many cases, it is the therapist's own wounds which facilitate healing. Through the use of case studies and the insights of depth psychology, we will endeavor to understand the "chemical (alchemical) process" which leads to the transformation of both client and therapist.

We can sense a deep disturbance in the relationship today between human beings and the natural environment.  Yet Charlotte, this prolific green city, offers us ample opportunities to cultivate our own small plots as expressions of what we want that relationship to be.  At another level, the Garden has long been a symbol of how we cultivate ourselves, how the Self takes shape within us.  Participants are invited to bring cuttings or photographs, reminiscences or pipe dreams, as we reflect together on this living symbol.

See the garden

A blank page, an empty canvas, a ball of clay—each is waiting for soul to give it content, expression, form.  Until the spark of creativity is given room to jump from its hidden recesses, these mediums remain only silent potentials.  The same is true for us.  Jung believed that we contain a treasure house full of wisdom, healing and creativity.  But too often the door is locked with no way to access or reveal what lies inside.  This seminar invites its participants to play with clay in order to give soul a chance to express itself. 

Of all the animals we commonly encounter, the dog is the most attuned to human emotions and human language.  Scientists now believe that the dog has been companion to human beings for over 100,000 years, so that we can speak of a genuine co-evolution of the two species.  For some of us, life experiences shared with a special dog may carry as much meaning—whether joyful or traumatic, as those lived with fellow-humans.  But even those of us who have never grown attached to a pet may find ourselves approached by the Dog as a powerful archetypal image.  This seminar explores this image in fantasy, myth, and dream.

All of us have heard stories of meaningful coincidences in the lives of others—if we do not have our own stories to tell.  They have become the miracle tales of our time.  When C. G. Jung introduced the term synchronicity into common parlance in 1951, it caught on like wild fire—presumably because there is such a phenomenon in our lives just waiting for language to give it expression.  In New Age circles today, the concept of synchronicity creates barely a ripple.  Yet it is so difficult, so alien, to the Western mind that it deserves a closer look.  What have been your experiences of synchronicity?  How might you understand them?  What does it mean to live in a world where meaningful coincidences can occur?

Somewhere between the “what was” and “what now is” of our lives lie silent pauses that exist neither here nor there.  Subtle and elusive, they cannot be grasped.  The stuff of myth, fairy tale, and dream, these moments in life are particularly brimming with possibility; so heavy in fact, we can even feel them in our bodies.  They provide an invisible, creative bridge between old and new, nothing and something, isolation and relationship.  This seminar will examine the phenomenon of “pregnant moments” in an attempt to familiarize ourselves with their presence, understand their dynamics, and prepare ourselves for what they bring.

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 a discussion and exploration into the mysterious process of healing—whether physical, psychological, or spiritual.  Attention is given to the archetype of the “Wounded Healer” as it is found in myths, fairy tales, dreams and our everyday lives.

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.

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 unaware.  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, many 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.

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.

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.

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.

Last summer, we began to explore Jung’s idea that the symbolic houses of dream and fantasy often represent the very structure of our psyches in visual form. But if the House can be a symbol of psychic structure, it can also represent psyche’s capacity for bringing together diverse interests and values “under one roof”: in short, wholeness.

All of us have had the experience, at one time or another in our lives, of sharing a home with family, partners, or roommates. It is not always easy to live in close quarters with others—whether spouses with different tastes in furniture or the secret sharers of our inner worlds. This second seminar on the symbol of the House will focus on real-life anecdotes and dreams of these “house-mate” relationships and what they have to teach us about creating harmony out of difference.

In 1970, pastoral counselor Wayne Oates published a book with the provocative title “When Religion Gets Sick.” He understood a sick religion as one that obstructs the basic function of life. Carl Jung, decades earlier, also encountered religious attitudes and practices which seemed designed to hinder individuals from exploring and realizing their deepest spiritual yearnings. Today there appears a resurgent desire to understand the spiritual truths lying behind dogmas, doctrines and observances unreflectively adhered to by so many religious followers around the globe: spiritual truths that transcend intellectual assent & address the “heart of the matter.” This seminar will examine examples of “when religion gets sick” and ask how we can recover an authentic religious attitude that honors body, mind and soul. Jung’s letters will be explored for their insights into our religious nature, and the sharing of participants’ personal experiences will be welcomed as time allows.

Many believe that Jung’s most far-reaching contribution to the field of psychology was his theory of complexes. Jung understood a complex to be an emotionally charged group of ideas or images. Today we have become quite adept at identifying mother complexes and father complexes, especially in other people. But Jung wanted to remind us that although “everyone knows nowadays that people have complexes, what is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.”

This seminar will offer its participants an opportunity to identify some of the most common, and troubling complexes that effect us. Time will then be spent discussing how to minimize their destructiveness, while at the same time harnessing their power to help further the development of one’s personality.

When we look back over our lives, most of us experience at least a few regrets.  For some, regret is so profound as to be disabling.  Mistakes were made, opportunities missed, harm inflicted, and needless suffering incurred.  There is great comfort to be found in Jung's often-quoted remark that "the right way to wholeness is made up ... of fateful detours and wrong turnings."  But what did he mean by that?  The right way?  Could it be that individuation not only allows but requires us to follow a blundering course through our lives?  And how might specific life narratives be re-considered through this lens?

Jung once said that when we dream about sexuality we are entertaining, encountering, the gods.  There is something about our experience of sexuality, whether in our outer life or in our dream life, that carries with it a certain ecstatic quality.  In this seminar we will examine the stories and images of various religious traditions which seek to describe the essence of an experience where the human and the Divine meet intimately.  We will also examine contemporary dreams and poetry which address this eternal process. 

Fullness of life is often described in terms of "maximizing one's potential" - as if individuation were a matter of realizing one's greatest ambitions, or acquiring the most that life has to offer.  Yet sacrifice is an archetypal facet of the individuation process.  How can life's necessary sacrifices be understood as contributing to wholeness, rather than diminishing it?  Where choice exists, how are we to distinguish between meaningful self-sacrifice and neurotic "co-dependence"?  Join us to reflect on traditional images and stories of sacrifice, and to connect these to our own life stories.

Even with a strong commitment to our own individuation, each of us encounters limits in the “wholeness” we are able to achieve.  Human limitation is something we are often able to acknowledge in religious life, where learning to carry one’s imperfections with integrity is a virtue in its own right.  Psychology, however,  sometimes promotes a more naïve and utopian view, setting up perfect “health” as the goal at which one ought to arrive.  Jungian terms such as “individuation” and “wholeness” have been commandeered to express that ideal.  By contrast, psychoanalysis in the Jungian tradition is particularly accepting of individuals in the place where they find themselves.  Recovering Jung’s original sense of individuation as a process may be a first step towards the self-acceptance that actually makes individuation possible.

Old Age: Coming Full Circle

American society is not kind to the elderly.  Old age is seen chiefly in terms of its deficits, while youth is the object of one-sided admiration.  Our very national identity is sometimes expressed in terms dismissive of “old Europe,” as if we, by virtue of youthful vigor alone, were destined to win the great race to Progress.  The irony is, of course, that each of us moves daily farther into the aging process, ill-prepared to meet its challenges or to appreciate its values, whether in ourselves or in others.  Jung envisioned the years past mid-life as those in which individuation comes to its fullest fruition.  Let’s take an unsentimental look at this unique passage, through the lenses of poetry, fairy tale, myth, dream, and reminiscence.    

The Unfinished Story

Throughout our lifetimes we constantly find ourselves facing relationships, projects, dreams and experiences which begin with promise and determination, only to end before completion.  Sometimes we feel as though our life itself is one huge unfinished story, going nowhere and with no sense of resolution in sight.  This seminar will explore various fairy tales, dreams, and religious texts to determine what insights can be gained from examining those unfinished stories which beg for an ending.  The personal unfinished stories of the participants will also be welcomed with respect and imagination. 

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