Spring 1996 Programming

Lecture: Elements of a Spiritual Life: The Individuation of the High Priestess Enheduanna

Enheduanna was a poet and a priestesss in Sumer in 2300 B.C.E. The record of her devotion to the goddess Inanna is contained in three long poems apparently written at different periods of her life. Pre-dating the advent of monotheism by 1000 years, the poems contain a picture of a woman’s spiritual life in the period when goddess as well as gods ruled the pantheons of our ancestors in the ancient Near Easy. Drawing on the passionate, personal account of the poems, we will trace Enheduanna’s individuation and compare her passage to our own contemperary experience. 

Workshop: Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart

The myth of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld paralells our modern experiences of spiritual death, transformation, and rebirth. Perhaps the oldest descent myth of record, Inanna’s Descent contains the elements familiar to us from alchemy as well as from other mythologies and religions. With this myth as our background, we will explore the stages of the psychological and spiritual process involved in a prolonged encounter with the unconcious. 

Betty De Shong Meador, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst in Berkely, California. She is the past president of the San Francisco Society of Jungian Analysts. Her translations of poems and myths of the goddess Inanna are contained in her book, Uncursing the Dark, and the poetry of Enheduanna is the subject of her forthcoming book, Inanna: Lady of the Largest Heart. 

Lecture: The Fallacy of the True Self

In our psychological culture, the quest for the real “unmasked”, true Self conceals an anti-Dionysian fantasy. This fallacy of a reasoning, orderly “real self” is a formidable souce of personal and cultural anxiety. In this lecture, Ginette Paris will focus on how crucial it is to bring back the mythological perspective towards our multiple identities. 

Workshop: Who am I? The Dominant Archetypal Patterns of My Life

Who am I? This fathomless question will be the starting point in the search for the archetypes and myths that are active in the life-scripts of each of us. During the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to explore differing interperetations of the “bare facts” of their lives. Ginette Paris will suggest excercises that elicit and reveal the mythic structure of personal events. The facts of one’s life cannot be altered. What can be altered are the degree of flexibility and the depth of awareness with which we interperet the facts of our lives. This workshop offers time to invite the facts into fantasy, into imagination, and into the world of myth. 

Ginette Paris, Ph.D., is the author of essays and novels, including Pagan Meditations; Pagan Grace; and The Sacrament of Abortion. She is a Professor in the Department of Communications, the State University of Quebec, and a faculty member at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. 

Lecture: The Friday lecture will explore the significance of anima and animus, the inner contrasexual complexes, as bridges between ego and Self, and show in many ways-simple, profound, recurrent-how they color our lives.

Workshop: The Saturday seminar/workshop will address anima issues in men and animus issues in women as the demands the Self makes upon the ego, forcing the spiritual side of our sexual identities into consciousness. Split the anima and animus and unlived life; rage and contempt between the sexes, fantasy and identity, inner and outer marriage will be addressed, with archetypal examples from music, literature, and the visual arts.

Ann Belford Ulanov, M. Div., Ph.D., L.H.D., is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, a Jungian Analyst, and a faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute, N.Y. She is the author of many books and articles, including The Feminine in Christian Theology and in Jungian Psychology; The Wisdom of the Psyche; and The Wizard’s Gate. 

Barry Ulanov, Ph.D., D. Litt., is McIntosh Professor of English Emeritus, Barnard College, Columbia University, and at present Lecturer in the Psychiatry and Religion program at Union Theological Seminary. Among his many books are Duke Ellington: A history of Jazz in America; The Two worlds of American Art: The Private and the Popular; and Jung and the Outside World. He has written for radio and television and edited four music magazines.

Together, Ann and Barry Ulanov have written Religion and the Unconscious; Cinderella and Her Sisters: The Envied and the Envying; The Witch and the Clown: Two Archetypes of Human Sexuality; The Healing Imagination; and Transforming Sexuality: The Archetypal World of Anima and Animus. They are co-editors of The Journal of Religion and Health. 

Lecture: Home or Homeless: On Losing and Regaining the Sense of Inner Home

This lecture focuses on the loss of the sense of inner home. Emphasis is placed on war, exile, early loss of parents and a difficult start in life. Such experiences can lead to the loss of inner home, insecurity, and narcissistic problems. The lecture will describe the felt experience, give its theoretical and archetypal background, and offer some therapeutic approaches for healing. 

Workshop: The Healing Self: The Soothing Voice of the Soul

This workshop will focus on the healing and soothing impulses from the psyche that some people receive after they have experienced suffering. The emphasis of the day’s material is on the felt experiences of people in and out of analysis. Dr. Asper will present historical sketches and examples, including: the dreams of two young students who resisted Nazi terror; the legend of Saint Martha, who tamed the dragon instead of killing him; the Feminine Super-Ego; the Ego Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the Trinitarian Aspect of the Numinous; the journal of Opal Whitely, and the symbol of the Labyrinth. Dr. Asper’s intent is for participants to experience the contents of symbols. A symbol becomes a symbol only after it touches us emotionally. For the same reason she will also discuss how she came to choose the different themes of the workshop and what each one touched in her. 

Kathrin Asper, Ph.D., was born in Kusnacht near Zurich. She is an analyst in private practice, a training analyst, lecturer and member of the Curatorium at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich-Kusnacht. She is the author of The Inner Child in Dreams; The Abandoned Child Within-On Losing and Regaining Self-Worth and numerous articles. Dr. Asper studied literature and education at the University of Zurich and wrote her doctoral thesis on Gustave Flaubert. 

Lecture: The universal, religious stirrings that originate in the depths of the human psyche often emerge in the form of the holy, divine child. Whether or not a person is of Christian background, this powerful motif flows through the dream imagery of modern men and women. The symbol of the holy child points to hope, new goals, and religious meaning. Case material and drawings generated during analysis will be presented and discussed in order to better understand the importance of this symbol in the psychic depths of us all. 

Kathrin Asper, Ph.D., was born in Kusnacht near Zurich. She is an analyst in private practice, a training analyst, lecturer and member of the Curatorium at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich-Kusnacht. She is the author of The Inner Child in Dreams; The Abandoned Child Within-On Losing and Regaining Self-Worth and numerous articles. Dr. Asper studied literature and education at the University of Zurich and wrote her doctoral thesis on Gustave Flaubert. 

Lecture: Psyche and Soul

Jung once observed that of all of the so-called “social sciences” psychology was the last to develop, in part, because the insights of pschology were once carried by the great myths and myth-sustaing institutions. In particular, Jungian practice arose in response to the erosion of those myths which once held society together and which linked individual to the four precincts of mystery: cosmos, nature, society and self. 

This lecture will review the salient features of “modernism” and the subsequent task of the individual in seeking out the old linkages of psyche and soul. It has been said that Jung’s concept of “individuation” is a myth for the modern without myth. If this is so, then Jungian psychology is not a set of beliefs but rather a cluster of attitudes and methods for accessing those manifestations of mystery which were once mediated by myth. What do we mean by the words psyche and soul, and what is the contribution whicha Jungian perspective may make to the individual upon whom the full task of finding meaning has fallen?

Workshop: The Enactment of Soul Through Myth

Our ancestors transmitted their values from place to place, and from person to person through the power of word and image. Those images which rose from the unconscious, or which overwhelmed consciousness in historic event, became the personal and tribal carriers of the deepest encounters with the mysteries of cosmos, nature, society and self. This workshop will study some of the great myths of the Eastern and Western tradition, analyze their mythopoeic statements, and consider their presence in our daily lives. Among such recurrent motifs are: “creation,” “the fall” (or primal loss), and “encounter with the Shadow.” Also, we will explore the two greatest of mythic patterns, the quest for identity and the “eternal return,” the linear and cyclic patterns, which animate history and our personal lives. Such mythic drama haunts history and, often unconsciously, directs the currents of the modern soul. We will, perhaps, re-experience the linkage of our modern, often isolated, lives with the timeless drama of which we are all, already and always, part. 

James Hollis, Ph.D., is a Zurich-trained Jungian analyst in private practice in Philadelphia and Linwood, N.J. He is the author of The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning at Mid-Life; Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men and Tracking the Gods, The Place of Myth in Modern Life, and numerous articles. For 26 years he has been a tenured Professor at various colleges and universities, and is currently Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein Medical School in Philadelphia. He is also the Director of Education for the Philadelphia Jung Institute. 

Lecture: Enchantment is the condition of being entranced, caught in rapture, spirited away, spellbound, and living more from deep imagination than from practicality. The soul has an unforgiving need for this kind of enchantment, and yet the modern world does everything it can to break the spell. Enchantment offers a reason for being, as basis for ecological responsibility, and a means for nourishing the soul. Yet, the modern preference is for understanding and control, information and manipulation. 

This lecture by Thomas Moore represents a further development of his work with the soul, but here the emphasis is on the world in which we live-the rivers, roads, buildings, houses, gardens, silence, music, ruins, stories, art, language, shrines, sports, graffiti, and food. It argues in favor of “natural religion,” piety rooted in nature as the basis of all religious and psychological values. It attempts to restore magic to its proper place in the dynamics of a soul-centered life, and recommends a radical alternative to the rationalistic and mechanistic philosophies of our age. 

Thomas Moore, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling books, Care of the Soul and Soul Mates.  He edited Blue Fire, an anthology of the writing of James Hillman, and has written The Planets Within; Rituals of the Imagination; Dark Eros; and Meditations: On the Monk who Dwells in Daily Life. His newest book is The Re-Enchantment if Everyday Life. He holds a Ph.D in religious studies from Syracuse University and an M.A. in musicology from the University of Michigan. For twelve years he lived as a monk in a Catholic religious order, and now resides in Massachusetts where he enjoys woodworking and music composition.