Spring 1997 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: Psychotherapy as Mythology

Many psychotherapists are asking themselves the question: “Has psychotherapy reached the End of the Road?” It’s a chilling prospect for those who identify with the profession, or for those of us who still invest in psychotherapy. 

Ginette Paris will offer a vision of Psychotherapy as Mythology, and discuss the relevance of mythological passion for the renwewal of therapy, as well as for a deeper appreciation of our life stories. 

The lecture will be enhanced by the presentation of some of the computer animations taken from the exhaustive CDRom on Mythology that Ginette Paris has been working on for the last three years. She will lead us on a commentated tour of the electronic gallery, as well as look at new images of old myths. 

Workshop: Editing the Script of our Lives

If spychology is mythology, the question then becomes: “How does one understand, change, edit, and interpret the plot, myth, and scenarios of one’s life?”

Through a series of excercises done solo or in pairs, in writing or orally, participants will explore the mythological patterns of their lives. The excercises are a blend between active imagination and creative writing. 

Ginette Paris, PH.D. is a psychologist and core faculty member at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. She has authored books on Greek and Roman mythology, among which are Pagan Grace and Pagan Meditations. 

Lecture: Dracula, Frankenstein and the Holy Grail

 This presentation explores the mythic import of the tales of Dracula and Frankenstein as premonitions of the confrontation of the soul with fear facing us in the circumstances in which we now live. The popularity of these stories, reappearing in contemporary writings and films, indicates a need of the soul to produce images of fear, taking on the one hand, the ecstatic promise of dissolving into horrible immortality, and on the other hand, the form of technical achievement which produces disastrous results. Soul needs these images to picture the impending possibilities of its own demise. We will look to the legends and stories of the Holy Grail, particularly to the images surrounding the future of Klingsor, dark magician of the Castle of Wonders, to delve further into archetypal aspects of terror. In a world now pervaded by fear of every sort, our guiding question will be-What can free the soul from fear? 

Workshop: Freeing the Soul from Fear

We will extend the understanding of fewr developed in the lecture to an exploration of fear in the modern world. Following the approach of archetypal psychology we will first seek to take the rather unitary sense of fear and multiply it-fears, not fear. A soul-geography of fear will be developed which shoews the prevalence of nine forms of fear, identifiable as palpable presences in the world seeking the destruction of soul. What we usually call fear is but the bodily reaction to these presences. How fear insinuates itself into the body as anxiety, constricting the soul so that only the most material aspects of life come to count as real, is described. Central to our exploration will be how countering the presence of fears requires a fully concious development of soul life, and if this task of now having to bring soul conciousness does not take place, the archetypal fears can easily usurp the whole of soul life. Many examples from everyday life will be presented and specific suggestions given and demonstrated for developing imaginative conciousness. 

Robert Sardello, PH.D. is co-founder of the School of Spiritual Psychology based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This school, devoted to approaching the soul as a world concern, offers courses throughout the county, a correspondence course, conferences , and the MS and Ph.D degrees in Spiritual Psychology. A practicing psychotherapist for over twenty years, Dr. Sardello has worked extensively with James Hillman and Thomas Moore. He also teaches at the Chalice of Repose Project in Montana and at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He is the author of Facing the World With Soul, Love and the Soul, and the forthcoming, Freeing the Soul from Fear (Putnam). 

Lecture: In the Field of our Dreams

In interpreting dreams, we are in a field of relativity between our conscious and unconscious. When an image appears in a dream, it emerges out of a process, and furthers a process. Psyche speaks to and about itself, and also reflects and interacts with the world through itself. This lecture will explore the field of our dreams. 

Workshop: The Alchemy of our Dreams

For Jung, “the world of alchemical symbols definitely does not belong to the rubbish heap of the past, but stands in a very real and living relationship to our most recent discoveries concerning the psychology of the unconscious.”

In alchemy, Jung found the sensibility of modern science and dynamic depth psychology. Alchemical imagery in the dreams of modern men and women describes states of mid and body, of psyche and matter. As life is a moving process, we dream alchemically: of fire, air, water, earth; shapes and colors, planets and plants, ores and metals, rocks, stones and gems; fountains and couldrons; exiles, orphans and widows; strange couples and odd lovers. 

Beverley D. Zabriskie, CSW, NCPsyA, is a Jungian analyst in New York City, where she is on the faculty of the Jung Institute. She has been a member of the boards of the New York Institute, the Jung Foundation, the journal Quadrant, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, of which she is past president. She is also on the faculty of the Jung Center in Mexico City. Published papers include : “Jung in Process” in The Post-Jungians Today (in press); “Thawing the Frozen Accidents: The Archetypal Dimension of Counter-Transference;” “Jung and Pauli: A Subtle Asymmetry;” “Exiles and Orphans: The Healing Imagery of Alchemy;” “Jungian Ethics;” ‘The Feminine: Pre-and Post-Jungian;” “Incest and Myrrh: Father-Daughter Sex in Therapy.”

Lecture: Jungian Psychology: Past, Present, Future

This lecture will focus on where Jungian (analytic) psychology is today. Dr. Kirsch will discuss the first collective around analytical psychology-the Analytical Psychology Clubs, which were mentioned by Richard Noll. Then Dr. Kirsch will descibe the rapid development of three strands of analytical psychology in the world today: classical, developmental, and archetypal. He will discuss what the three strands imply for the future of analytical psychology as a profession, and for us individually. Also, he will speak about how analytical psychology has spread to all parts of the modern world. 

Workshop: Freud and Jung

Jung and Freud were among the most seminal thinkers of the twentieth century. Their influence has been felt in nearly every field of knowledge. In this workshop Dr. Kirsch will discuss the controversial relationship between Jung and Freud, focusing on the following themes: What was the impact of their relationship on Jung, and how did it influence his work? What did the conflicts and resulting split between the two mean to the development of Jungian thoughts, and to what extent has this legacy of conflict shaped the growth and development of the Jungian community internationally? Included in the workshop will be a video of part of an extensive interview of Jung made in 1957 by the University of Houston, and seldom seen. 

Dr. Kirsch, who knew Jung as a young man and whose family was intimately involved in the earliest development of Jungian training in this country, brings a personal and unique perspective to this topic. 

Thomas B. Kirsch, M.D. is a Jungian analyst in private practice in San Francisco and a Lecturer, Stanford University Dept. of Psychiatry. He is the most recent past President of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. He’s published numerous papers on dreams, the history of analytical psychology, the life of Jung, and the analytic relationship. He is co-editor of the Jungian section in the International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, Psychology and Neurology.  At present he is writing a book on the History of Analytical Psychology. Dr. Kirsch is familiar with Portland, having received his B.A. from Reed College.