Spring 2012 Programming

Lecture: Notions of divinity are psychoactive. Whether one is a believer, an atheist, an agnostic, a spiritual seeker or a student of religion, it is difficult to contemplate questions of God without significant investment in the answers. This lecture will discuss the “complex” psychology of our response to the God topic. It will show how a Jungian approach can provide a way to negotiate the associated conundrums and controversies. From contemplating the death of God to the psychodynamics of fundamentalism and the search for meaning in between, our goal will be a deeper appreciation of the psychological stakes involved.

Workshop: God — Finding a Perspective for our Times The role that religion continues to play in today’s secular world is distressing to some and comforting to others. Jung’s notion of a “religious instinct” and his understanding of the “God-image” in the psyche provide a point of entry into the controversy and a fitting perspective for our times. Through viewing film clips, personal reflection and discussion of the changing God-image, this workshop aims to equip participants with timely, intelligent ways to approach prevailing religious questions. It will move toward contemplating a sense of the sacred that is conversant with today’s individual and collective challenges.

Glen Slater, Ph.D., has studied and trained in religious studies and clinical psychology. For the past 15 years he has taught Jungian and archetypal psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He edited and introduced the third volume of James Hillman’s Uniform Edition, Senex and Puer, as well as a volume of essays by Pacifica faculty, Varieties of Mythic Experience, (with Dennis Patrick Slattery). He has also contributed a number of essays to Spring, where he is the film review editor. He lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

The realm of psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. -C.G. Jung

In her lecture, Jane Zich will explore the “living reality” of the psyche as evidenced in the visual language of the unconscious that emerges in depth psychotherapy, dreams,
films, and extended active imagination processes. She will use paintings from her Vision Journey series — an image-mediated dialogue with the unconscious that has spanned seven years — to illustrate how recurrent cycles and shifts in imagery suggest a purposefulness in the visual language of the unconscious that can promote and support an “I-Thou” attitude of partnership between ego consciousness and the unconscious. Specific psychological tasks that seem required for specific stages or types of imagery will be described, as well as impasses that tend to result when those tasks are avoided or incompletely met. Dr. Zich will illustrate the role of  “orienting intentions” in navigating extended dialogues with the unconscious, and will refer to image stages and related tasks for ego consciousness that can be seen in C.G. Jung’s Red Book, in cultural contexts, and in societal impasses. Time for discussion will follow. 

Workshop: Opening the Gift  This workshop is designed to foster an experiential exploration of the material presented in Friday’s lecture.   After choosing a personal “orienting intention” for the workshop, everyone will select a wrapped gift.  Before unwrapping the gift, we will take time to expl ore our expectations, thoughts, feelings, intuitions, sensory impressions, and attitudes stirred by this “unknown other,” symbolized by the wrapped gift.  Then, as we each unwrap our gift, we will have a chance to observe our approach to discovering the “other,” including the ways our expectations around the anticipated (wrapped) gift have influenced our experience of the actual (unwrapped) gift. Through drawing, painting, collage-making, and clay-molding, we will explore the visual language of the unconscious, our personal pacing, inner resources, and rituals for honoring what is meaningful to us in such dialogues with the unconscious. Participants’ experiences will be discussed and amplified in terms of Jungian concepts and depth work as applicable to creative projects, psychotherapy, and personal growth.  Art materials  will be provided by OFJ.  Space is limited — register early.

Image:  Jewels of the Jungle ©2004 Jane Zich

Jane Zich, MFA, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and visual artist.  She is Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and has depth psychotherapy practices in San Francisco and Kentfield, California. Insights and understandings she has derived from her career paths as artist, psychologist, and psychotherapist converge in her articles, lectures, and workshops on the processes and potentially profound effects of conversing with images from the unconscious. Among her recent articles are Patterns of Imagery and Tasks During Dialogues with the Unconscious (Jung Journal, 2011) and The Role of “Orienting Intentions” in Dialogues with the Unconscious (Jung Journal, 2008). Her award-winning Vision Journey paintings can be viewed at www.zichpaintings.com.    

Lecture and Workshop: Our time is pervaded by a great paradox. On the one hand, we see signs of an unprecedented level of engaged global awareness, moral sensitivity to the human and non-human community, psychological self-awareness, and spiritually informed philosophical pluralism. On the other hand, we confront the most critical, and in some respects catastrophic, state of the Earth in human history. Both these conditions have emerged directly from the modern age, whose light and shadow consequences now affect every part of the planet. 

We seem to be living at the end of an era. The past and the future are converging in our time with extraordinary force. Old structures are cracking, the moment of creative chaos is upon us, and the drama of our age has become a great question: What new principles, what new structures—social, political, economic, ecological, psychological, spiritual—will emerge to shape our future? So much is at stake. We are facing a threshold of fundamental collective transformation that bears a striking resemblance to what takes place on the individual level in initiatory rites of passage, in near-death experiences, in spiritual crises, and in critical stages of what Jung called the individuation process. Can we find a place of equilibrium, an eye in the storm, from which we can engage this time of intense polarization and radical change? And in such an era of transition, what is the role of “heroic” communities like that of Jungian institutes and societies — or the Bioneers or Schumacher, CIIS or Pacifica, Esalen or Findhorn — which carry principles and perspectives that run counter to the mainstream modern world view?

To help us navigate this threshold of transformation, we need multiple perspectives and sources of insight. Join Richard Tarnas this weekend as he draws on depth psychology and archetypal astrology, philosophy, religion, and cultural history as we seek together a larger context for both understanding and action. 

Richard Tarnas is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He also lectures on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, and is on the Board of Governors of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view widely used as a text in universities, and Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, which received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network.

OFJ members and their guests are invited to our annual meeting.  The keynote speaker for this event will be poet, Paulann Petersen, speaking on “The Waking Dream: Poetry’s Everyday Life.”  Friday, May 18, 7:00 to 9:30 pm, at the First United Methodist Church, Collins Hall, 1838 SW Jefferson, Portland.  This is also an opportunity to meet the board, honor our volunteers, and find out about next fall’s speakers. Light refreshments will be served.

Oregon’s sixth Poet Laureate, Paulann Petersen has five full-length books of poetry:    The Wild Awake, Blood-Silk, A Bride of Narrow Escape, Kindle, and The Voluptuary, published by Lost Horse Press in 2010. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and the recipient of the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts.  A current Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute, she serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the January Stafford Birthday Events. 

OFJ’s Fall 2012 Season covers a wide swath of Jungian thought, and we are delighted to announce the follwing lineup of speakers:

September 21-22:  OFJ Founding Member Karl Marlantes (author of Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War) will be joined by Dr. Joseph Bobrow of San Francisco in a lecture and workshop on What it Means to Go to War.

October 12-13:  Jungian analyst Marea Claassen of Ashland, Oregon, will present a Friday lecture on The Call of Our Ancestors and a workshop on Wisdom of the Primordial Psyche.

November 16-17:  Dr. James Hollis, a mainstay of OFJ’s programming, will be returning with a lecture and workshop on The Sailor Cannot See North: The Psychospiritual Dilemma of Our Time.

December 14-15:  Jungian analyst Dr. Guilford Dudley of Albuquerque will have his OFJ debut with a lecture and workshop on The Other Side of Christmas:  Incarnation as the Awesome Burden of Opposites.

Locations and other details for these events will be posted at www.ofj.org in the weeks to come – and will also be included in OFJ’s Fall 2012 brochure, which will be mailed in late August.