Spring 2001 Programming

lady
    you are sea green
    to my blue song
    you fling the whole ocean
    out of your hair
    you speak in all the tongues

            Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

Lecture: Poetry has been an expression of soul, a way to sing praise, lament, invoke, tell stories, pray, since the beginning of human culture. Poets keep their ears to the ground of the changing myth; they are the instruments on which the gods play their music. It is the poets who can guide us in a time like our own, when the myths are changing. Poets know how to follow the waves of the cultural unconscious, how to fish in the vast waters of the collective unconscious, bringing up treasure from the deep.

This talk is an act of imagination, an articulation of an inner dialogue with the poetic Self. We will consider what poetry has to do with Jungian analysis. We will listen to the news as told by the poets, especially those who are bringing the goddess back to consciousness.

Workshop: Writing as Spiritual Practice. Creating a regular space to find words that express our deepest nature is a spiritual practice. We give a name to the wild thing that leaps to mind; we give voice to the stranger in our dreams; we follow the path of our own sacred words.

In this workshop we will discuss how to develop a writing practice. We will listen to poems that express the sacred and use writing exercises to open ourselves to the language of soul. Participants are asked to bring a poem they love, their own or someone else’s, that expresses a connection to the sacred.

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, Ph.D., is a poet, an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, and a reviewer of poetry for the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal. She speaks and publishes widely on "the feminine" and on "the creative" and her poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines. Her book of poems, red clay is talking, came out last year. She is also the author of The Motherline: Every Woman’s Journey to Find Her Feminine Roots.

This presentation will explore responses to this question from religious traditions and also from contemporary depth psychology, since in these first days of a new millennium there are as many winds of "spirit" blowing as there were two thousand years ago. Today there is talk about this "spirituality" and that one in many realms: politics, media, religions, New Age spirituality, advertising and athletics. How is one to judge what is going on spiritually in our time? This is as perplexing a problem now as when C.G. Jung wrote in 1928: "I believe that the spirit is a dangerous thing and I do not believe in its paramouncy!"

Workshop: My Name is Legion: Archetypal Images of Spirit. Some depth psychologists have avoided talk about the "spirit," preferring instead to speak about soul. But archetypal psychology may have much to teach about images of so-called "spirits," and especially about its shadow side, that is, about the dangers of spirituality to the individual and collective psyche. This workshop will explore the varieties of "spiritual" experience in everyday life and the different ways such experience is imagined. Ancient myths and religions will be explored for their stored-up treasury of images of "spirit" — images such as "wind," "breath," "fire," "frogs" and "pigs."

David L. Miller, Ph. D., is Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, a Core Faculty Member at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara and has taught analysts in training at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Kyoto University in Japan, as well as the seminar of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and Jung programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. He is the author of five books and more than seventy-five articles. Dr. Miller’s website: web.syr.edu/~dlmiller/.

Lecture: The evening lecture explores the barriers to the region of silence through the imagery of the Isenheim Altar and some of the writing of St. Anthony the Great. We will see that we have to find the gateway to Silence. Guardians have to be met and faced. How these guardians function in the present world is presented, along with suggestions concerning how to recognize them and how to honor their autonomy.

Workshop: The workshop explores the spiritual psychology of Silence. We will recover the importance of Silence for the life of images, prayer, healthy soul life, inner contemplation and for the speaking of the heart. The nature of Silence is described and differentiated from solitude along with how Silence belongs to creative speaking, the therapeutic relationship and a presence to the Soul of the World. Specific imaginal exercises will be presented that help develop sensitivity to the many layers of Silence and how to tell where you are in the region of Silence. We’ll also discuss how the rhythm of Silence opens and deepens intimate relationships and professional life.

Robert Sardello, Ph.D., is co-director of the School of Spiritual Psychology (based in Greensboro, NC) which offers courses and workshops concerning how to be present to soul life and open to the workings of the spiritual worlds. Along with Cheryl Sanders, these courses are now held in cities here and in Canada, England and Australia. Robert is the author of Facing the World with Soul, Love and the Soul (now re-issued as Love and The World: Foundations of Spiritual Psychology) and Freeing the Soul from Fear. Doing the Good: The Soul’s Path of Virtue is in press. Robert also teaches at the Chalice of Repose Project in Missoula, MT and at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. The School of Spiritual Psychology web site:http://www.spiritualschool.org/

Workshop: Working with Dreams. The half-day workshop will focus on a general study of dreams. It will begin with an overview of the scientific findings – the discovery of Rapid Eye Movement and its relationship to analytical psychology. The workshop will continue with an overview of Jung’s theory of dreams. To illustrate archetypal themes, initial dreams will be discussed and interpreted from different vantage points.

Thomas B. Kirsch, M.D., born in London, raised in Los Angeles, is a graduate of Reed College, Yale Medical School with Psychiatric Residency at Stanford, and graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is past president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. He is a member of the Academy of Psychoanalysis. He has been in private practice since 1967 and is the author of numerous papers on the biology and psychology of dreams. He is the author of The Jungians: A Social and Historical Perspectivepublished by Routledge in 2000.

Workshop: The workshop will amplify the lecture’s exploration through work on dreams and a fairy tale. This approach to the neurotic and the healthy orphan amplifies Jung’s pre-occupation with "being all alone in the world," ie. individuation.

Josephine Evetts-Secker, M. Phil., born and educated in England, taught in Canada and trained at the C.G. Jung Institue in Zurich. After taking an early retirement from the University of Calagry, she now is in private practice in England. Her papers on literature and psychology have been published in various journals and she has produced books on fairy tales for Barefoot Press, one of which won a Storytelling World Award in 1998. She lectures in Canada, USA and England and is a regular lecturer at the Jung Institute in Zurich. She is currently Co-ordinator for Advanced Candidates for one of the London Jungian training programs (IGAP).

Lecture: Archetypal Manifestations in the Individuation Process. Individuation is a second half of life process when we consciously return to our personal unconscious and our archetypal roots. We know much about working with personal unconscious material. Jung, however, pushes deeper in his work and invites us to research and work with archetypal forces that manifest in our personal process. These experiences are often pathologized, although they have been experienced, observed and discussed since the beginning of human consciousness. This lecture will discuss the importance of recognizing, witnessing and containing these archetypal energies when they become embodied and emerge in our lives and in our analysis. Case material and video clips will help to illustrate the subject matter.

Workshop: Body and Soul: A Spiral Dance. Body and soul are inseparable and mirror each other. Our bodies contain instinctual wisdom that we have been trained to ignore. In this workshop we will encourage a dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious (body) through a gentle non-structured movement meditation. To become whole we must go beyond learned patterns. If we listen deeply to our natural rhythms, movements, sounds and images, we can become more fully embodied and heal the rift between psyche and soma, body and soul. Verbal sharing will aid us in beginning to integrate our experience. Prior movement experience is not necessary. Wear comfortable clothes to allow ease of movement for this event. This workshop is limited to 24 participants.

Erica Lorentz, M.Ed., L.P.C., A.D.T.R., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Houston where she teaches at the C.G. Jung Center and is a co-coordinator of Beyond Words: Dance/Movement Therapy Training Program. She has taught and supervised on the graduate level and does workshops throughout the U.S. and Canada. In 1999, she was movement coordinator for Matthew Fox’s "Techno-Cosmic Mass."

Included in this series is a montage of people around the world responding to three questions: Do you dream? Do you think your dreams are important? Can you recall a dream? The film crew traveled over 25,000 miles, to Canada, England, France, Switzerland and the United States, for these spontaneous reactions.

The basic structure of the series is a more formal telling of personal dreams by a smaller group of men and women followed with interpretations of these dreams by Dr. von Franz. Certain motifs and archetypes are illustrated in these dreams and include : The male shadow; the negative and positive anima; patterns in dreams; the female shadow; negative and positive animus; dreams of our culture; dreams of relationships; dreams of The Self. Some of segment titles are: The Devouring Mother, The Inner Bride, The Hanged Man, and Hell Has No Mirrors.

Our The Way of the Dream weekend will include discussions led by local Jungian analysts. Though the film is segmented, it is continuous thematically and the two-day attendance is encouraged. This is the first showing of Boa’s film in Oregon in over ten years, a rare opportunity for our community.

Fraser Boa was a Jungian analyst practicing in Toronto and a professional film maker. His post graduate work in English was done at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and films studies at the University of California in Los Angeles. He was a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich.

Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz was a Jungian analyst, author and associate of C.G. Jung. She had interpreted over 65,000 dreams prior to the filming of this series and has long been held as one of the foremost authorities on analytical psychology.