LECTURE: Aphrodite’s Shadow in Beverly Hills and Hollywood
No mere sculpted image or poetic fragment from ancient time, Aphrodite lives mightily today in the lilt, glance, style, indeed — in the Fate of countless women and the bedazzled admirers who pursue her. Whatever Aphrodite’s claim to Beauty and the ‘erotic moment,’ hers is a shifting image whose nocturnal associations may have as much to do with a night of death as a night of love. Drawing upon a childhood in Beverly Hills and her ten years as a Hollywood actor, Dr. Landau will thus explore the impact of the archetype on women¹s lives with clinical examples, tales of bygone actresses, mythical amplification, and feminine typology generally in this uniquely personal analysis of the Aphrodite archetype.
WORKSHOP: Dionysus and Aphrodite: Desire and the Search for Beauty
From Socrates or Euripides to the Inquisition to Jim Morrison or the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the irresistible power of Dionysus plays essentially the same role. Arousing erotic desires, fomenting revolt, conjuring visionary experience, Dionysus unveils religious dimensions of sexuality and the body that normative institutions invariably condemn. While the cosmos of Dionysus includes an entourage of phallic deities, his beloved Aphrodite (whose identity extends to maenad, Ariadne, Persephone, Great Goddess) remains the prime image of Beauty on which eros focuses. Dr TePaske will explore this archetypal pair in various social and individual contexts, emphasizing the intrapsychic tandem of desire and Beauty so central in the soul’s realization. (slides and video excerpts will be used).
Arlene TePaske-Landau, Ph.D. is a native of Beverly Hills and a veteran of Hollywood film and television, who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Masters Degree in Psychology from Cal State Northridge, and both a Masters and Ph.D. Degree in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. Landau is an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and the Interregional Society of Jungian Analyst, and possesses a highly differentiated grasp of both Jung’s classic psychological types and the mythically-based typological approach of Archetypal Psychology (Hillman).
Bradley A. TePaske, Ph.D. is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich, a clinical psychologist, and an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. An accomplished artist and religious historian, Dr. TePaske holds an Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking and Art History from UMASS Amherst and a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology from the Union Institute of Cincinnati. His areas of research include Hindu Tantra, Shamanism, Graeco-Roman Mystery Religions, Gnosticism, and the Goddess traditions particularly those of Kali, Mary, Magdalen, Sophia, Aphrodite, and Demeter/Persephone.