The Mask of Dionysus: Possession and Healing

Twice-born Dionysus is the Greek god who suddenly appears out of absence. Dismembered and reconstituted, surrounded by women, Dionysus is the giver of wine, healer who causes madness, and ecstatic lover. His strangely masked appearance called listeners to join his orgiastic celebrations. For both those who answered the call, and for those who refused, there were intense consequences. Jung described the Dionysian psychological quality as “a flood of overpowering universal feeling which bursts forth irresistibly, intoxicating the senses like the strongest wine…something instinctive and blindly compelling finds its expression in an affection of the bodily sphere, the breaking loose of the unbridled dynamism of animal and divine nature.”

In analysis, when the archetype of Dionysus erupts in the psyche, the individual’s fate is deeply impacted by the encounter. This lecture examines epiphanic moments such as possession by love or attraction and addiction to drugs or alcohol. How do we struggle consciously with such energy, and let it express itself without destroying what is already built? Slides of Dionysian initiation in Greece and in Roman Pompeii will be shown to amplify the clinical material.