Public Semester Program
Autumn 2021

Exploring Jung’s ideas with images and examples

** This course replaces the originally-scheduled lecture by Kathrin Asper. **

In the lecture I will explore the use of psychodrama as a means of deepening our experience and understanding of fairytales through enactment. As most fairy tales represent patterns of individuation, fairy tale drama attempts to capture the living quality of those patterns. Through enactment, fairy tales become embodied. They move mind, heart and body, hence are a potential for transformation.

C.G. Jung presented us with a model through which human beings progress on their psychological developmental journeys across the lifespan. We will explore the artistic work of Hilma af Klint, encounter universal motifs, consider the influence of culture and time in her work, and how interior processes are revealed in her art.

We will explore the transformational aspects of trauma and how traumatic experiences can trigger a change in consciousness and guide us towards individuation.

In this lecture we will look at Individuation on the collective level as seen in the West.
Following Jung, we will look at astrological aspects of the Pisces symbol and how the symbol of the Fish has changed since the beginning of the Christian era.

Throughout the Christian Middle Ages, religion played a much greater role in the fundamentals of medieval life, in a way now largely lost. Especially for women, the devotion to Christ represented the via regia on which their individuation process might unfold. In her sensuous and even erotic writings, Hadewijch, a well-educated Beguine from Antwerp († ca. 1240), describes her intimate, embodied encounters with Christ as Love-Made-Flesh. Her deep longing for a union with Him—in psychological terms: for wholeness—led her along a path that could, as she put it, “unite the opposites” (mind and body, divine and human, earth and heaven, etc.) and “reverse the paradox” (quoting Hadewijch).

“Falling in love” is not an act of will but rather an impulse or urge from psyche that nudges us along the path to individuation. Whether requited or not the experience has the potential to be transformative. Based, in part, on Jung’s essay in CW 17 “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship”, this lecture will explore the meaning of “falling in love” as a part of individuation.

“Only if you first return to the body, to your earth, can individuation take place” (Jung: Vision Seminars p. 1313-14). We will explore how attuning to the body furthers the individuation process and how objectification of the body hinders this.

** This course has been cancelled. **

Jung wrote only one essay on the father reflecting his absence in Western culture then and now. Clinical examples, the theories of absence of the French psychoanalyst André Green, dreams and the therapeutic relationship illuminate the effects of the absent father on the psyche.

** This course has been cancelled. **

Fairy tales portray the puer archetype prevalent in Western Cultures. With its connection to the senex both are indicated for the psychological tasks to leave the family and access the self. Jung said: “The archetype persists throughout the ages and requires interpreting anew” (CW 9i, §301).

Diversity is the lot of the manifest world, unity rather a transcendent principle, and complementarity expresses their inherent bond. Pursued in the manifest world, unity imbued with identity supremacism – excluding the different and the opposite – is a dangerous illusion doomed to lead to polarisation if not open warfare. Cultivated instead in the light of complementarity, it generates humanism and authentic creativity; this path requires utmost respect for, and integration of, the other, and self-limitation. Examples from biology, psychology (individuation), politics and dance.

“My works”, Jung writes in his autobiography, “... are fundamentally nothing but attempts, ever renewed, to give an answer to the question of the interplay between the ‘here’ and the ‘hereafter’”. This lecture explores these attempts in Jung’s private and scholarly writings from 1916 to 1934.

What forces are involved and benefit from disinformation and how do those affect the psyche? Does this reflect cultural complexes, or merely personal ones? How does the manipulation of media and information serve autocracy and do a disservice to the differentiation necessary for individuation, either individually or collectively?

The panelists will address the issue of individuation: is the goal to achieve individual realisation only or also to contribute to community?
The panelists include Dariane Pictet, Nathalie Boëthius-de Béthune, and Paul Brutsche. Moderation: Murray Stein.

The lecture will be a reflection on The Divine Comedy by Dante as a second half of life journey to wholeness by the means of active imagination. Comparisons with Jung’s Red Book will be considered as well.

A continued investigation into Jung on the making of Meaning, the current offering is designed for us together to “hold” and process dual (or multiple) aspects of the image Jung ascribed as depicting the archetype of Meaning.
(Part One of a trilogy/tetralogy in the making, I hope in coming semesters to offer in more depth example images from West and East.)

Historical background and practical application.

** This course has been cancelled. **

In times of chaos an ethical standpoint is pressed more firmly upon us. Collectively and individually, we are called to surrender old ways, and to grow into awareness that gives rise to a different way of living in the world and within ourselves. This process of change begins within and is guided by archetypal movements, reflected in the ‘Spirit of the Depths.’
Using Jung’s constructive standpoint, we will take a snapshot of the current world situation to discern the “living meaning” of these times, with an eye towards “psyche’s bridge to the future.” (CW 3 §398)
Through a combination of lecture, experiential reflective exercises, and group discussion, you will gain tools towards practical application in your personal and professional life, and be shown an active working model for institutional and social change.

This course requires extra work between sessions.

Following brief introductory remarks, dreams will be discussed in relation to case work with individuals, looking at solitary dreams and dream series.