Spring 1991 Programming

Lecture: What Animals in Our Dreams Can Tell Us

By looking at animals as they appear in our dreams (through information from analytical psychology, myth and religion) we are provided with a window through which we can glimpse something deep within the instinctive-body-matter aspect of an individual’s psyche. We also glimpse the aspects of nature by which we know the inter-connectedness of all things. The animal can connect us to the instinctive level, but it is a mistake to simply interpret all animals as instincts without respect for the amazing, mysterious specificity within the psyche of choosing precisely the image required.

Inseeing is a term used by Ranier Marie Rilke to describe that exact moment in creation when God knew that each creature was perfect just as it was. By inseeing into the images of the animals in our dreams, perhaps we can better understand what they can tell us.

Workshop: Psyche and Nature

Because of the innate and inner need of humans to produce images of central value to relate to the world around them (which Jung called the religious instinct), primitive men and women identified themselves with the faces of nature-mountains, trees, water, and animals. Frightened as they may have been, they did not feel alienated from themselves or the Universe. But the human family moved from this state of participation mystique with nature to the opposite pole of alienation from the Universe. This is reflected in our current planetary abuse of natural resources and animals. We must now re-connect with nature to effect healing upon our earth and continue our own individual growth. Our consciousness, by nature of our capacity to remember, to re-member and reflect, can allow us to see the natural order of life. We are the space in which the Universe can be cherished in a new and intense manner.

In this workshop we will see how our everyday experiences can be used to remind us of our place in the natural order of things. NOTE: please wear comfortable clothing, and bring a mat, drawing material and a small picture of yourself as a young child.

Eleanora Woloy, M.D., is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Eastern Virginia Medical School with a private practice in Virginia Beach, VA. She received her medical and psychiatric training in both adult and child psychiatry at the University of Michigan and is a Diplomate of the Interregional Society of Jungian Analysts. She has lectured widely on the I Ching, the basics of Jungian psychology, and the Eleusian Mysteries. Her book, The Symbol of the Dog in the Human Psyche, was published by Chiron Publications this spring.

Lecture: Narcissism and the Experience of the Divine

An authentic religious experience is both an awesome and a potentially fragmenting experience that challenges the very structure of our personality. When accepted, contact with the numinosum may lead to transformation. Such contect may, however, instill terror and activate defense mechanisms. Dr. Corbett will discuss examples of religious experience, the ways they may or may not be healing, and the ways in which our own vulnerabilities and narcissistic defenses prevent us from experiencing their transforming power. 

Workshop: Psychotherapy as Spiritual Practice

Psychotherapy means service to the soul. In its most essential form, it is a process by which an individual can be helped to develop or clarify a sustaining relationship to the Divine. For both analyst and analsand, psychotherapy is a form of spiritual practice that utilizes the grit of human existence-the shadow, intense affective experience, narcissism, old wounds-as well as the human capacity for joy and suffering. This workshop will explore the nature and dynamics of this process and will assist participants in learning to practice psychotherapy as a spiritual discipline. 

Lionel Corbett, M.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Santa Fe, and Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico. 

Cathy Rives, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Fe, a canditate in the Analyst Training Program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, and Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico. 

Lecture: This workshop will review the many different ways in which Jung used the terms anima and animus, and will discuss the controversy these terms have inspired. We will explain why we believe taht anima and animus actually descibe particular intrapsychic functions, which are best understood as the operation of soul and spirit. This useage allows these functions to be separated vrom their historical association with contrasexuality, thereby freeing them from sexist bias. 

Lionel Corbett, M.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Santa Fe, and Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico. 

Cathy Rives, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Fe, a canditate in the Analyst Training Program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, and Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico. 

Lecture and Workshop: When Dr. Lavin presented his Depth Psychology of Alcoholism lectures here in Portland in 1986, he talked about Jung’s understanding that a person who lost contact with her or his inner creative spirit often went on to abuse alcoholic spirits in order to get high and warm again. 

In this lecture series, Dr. Lavin will discuss the many forms of spirit and the ways in which twelve-step programs support the rediscovery of the creative spirit both within and without. In their best form, twelve-step programs are meeting places and containers for the ecstasy of Youth and wisdom of the Wise Old Woman and Old Man. 

The lecture and workshop will discuss sobriety as a process of remembering one’s Self by loving the body, finding the soul, and accepting the embrace of one’s creative spirit. To grow in sobriety means letting go of dependence and co-dependence and walking a path which liberates the heart. 

Thomas Patrick Lavin is an Irish-Catholic Democrat who was born and raised on the south side of Chicago. He received his diploma in Analytical Psychology from the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. he holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and a Ph.D. in Moral Theology from the Univerity of Innsbruck in Austria. He is a founder of the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and served as its first Director of Training.

Dr. Lavin has received many awards for outstanding work in the area of alcohol and dug abuse rehabilitation both as chief clinical psychologist for the U.S. Army in Europe and in civilian practice in Switzerland, Germany, and the United States. He now lives and has his clinical practice in Wilmette, Illinois and lectures and consults both in this country and in Europe. 

Lecture and Workshop: Handed down over centuries, fairy tales are treasuries of wisdom distilling the observations and reflections of countless generations. In most familiar stories, like “Cinderella” or “Snow White,” the protagonist is a child or adolescent. These tales emphasize the psychological tasks of youth and end when the hero and heroine marry and (supposedly!) live “happily ever after.” 

A unique group of fairy tales feature protagonists who are in the second-half of life. These “elder tales” reveal what really happens in the “ever after”-when the Prince becomes bald and the Princess dons bifocals. 

In this lecture and workshop a number of “elder tales” from around the world will be retold and discussed. The stories contain deep insights about the tasks of maturity, from self-reformation and self-transcendence, to helping the next generation and being open to magic. In charming and poignant dramas, the tales depcit the final quest in life-for wisdom and illumination. 

Allan B. Chinen, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco, and is on the Clinical Faculty of the University of California. He is the author of In the Ever After: Fairy Tales and the Second Half of Life, published by Chiron. 

Lecture:  Body, Psyche, and the Emotions

“On the one hand, emotion is the chemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes…But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion.”

C.G. Jung

For Jung, the emotions are the foundations of the psyche. The highest aspirations of the human spirit have evolved and are developed from them. An emotion is at once somatic (bodily innervations, expressive physical action) and psychic (images and ideas). Active imagination, Jung’s analytical method of psychotherapy, is intricately interwoven with the expression and transformation of the emotions. 

A differentiated understanding of the emotions is of great value to both analyst and analysand. We can train ourselves to recognize the fundamental emotions. One of the most useful approaches is through the study of the prototypical expressive actions. Darwin was the first to differentiate between the fundamental emotions, the complex emotions, and the symbolic cultural gestures. This lecture will take up the fudnamental emotions, with particular attention to universal patterns of expressive behavior. This material is drawn from experiences in dance, dance therapy, and analysis, as well as the contributions of Darwin, Jung, Henderson, Tomkins, and Stewart. 

Workshop: The Moving Imagination

‘I move,’ is the clear knowledge that I personally, am moving. The opposite of this is the sudden and astonishing moment when ‘I am moved.’ It is a moment when the ego gives up control, stops exerting demands, allowing the Self to take over moving the physical body as it will. It is a moment of unpremeditated surrender that cannot be explained, replicated exactly, sought for or tried out. 

Mary Starks Whitehouse

This one day workshop will introduce an approach to movement that was originally developed by Mary Whitehouse. Sometimes called “authentic movement” or “movement in depth,” it involved a mover, a witness, and their relationship. We’ll take up the development of this work an its use as a form of active imagination. Building on material presented Friday evening, we’ll focus on the ongoing, interwoven relationship of body, psyche, and emotions. Morning and afternoon sessions will include lecture, movement experience and discussion. Participants are invited to bring journals and/or art materials. Enrollment will be limited. 

Joan Chodorow, Ph.D. is an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, in private practice. Her early backgroud inlcudes dance studies and performing and teaching; dance therapy training was with Trudi Schoop and Mary Whitehouse; she is a registered member (ADTR) and former president of the American Dance Therapy Association. She is the author of Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology-The Moving Imagination (Routledge 1991)

Slide presentation by Robin Jaqua on Archives for Ressearch in Archetypal Symbolism.