Lecture: Narcissism and the Experience of the Divine
An authentic religious experience is both an awesome and a potentially fragmenting experience that challenges the very structure of our personality. When accepted, contact with the numinosum may lead to transformation. Such contect may, however, instill terror and activate defense mechanisms. Dr. Corbett will discuss examples of religious experience, the ways they may or may not be healing, and the ways in which our own vulnerabilities and narcissistic defenses prevent us from experiencing their transforming power.
Workshop: Psychotherapy as Spiritual Practice
Psychotherapy means service to the soul. In its most essential form, it is a process by which an individual can be helped to develop or clarify a sustaining relationship to the Divine. For both analyst and analsand, psychotherapy is a form of spiritual practice that utilizes the grit of human existence-the shadow, intense affective experience, narcissism, old wounds-as well as the human capacity for joy and suffering. This workshop will explore the nature and dynamics of this process and will assist participants in learning to practice psychotherapy as a spiritual discipline.
Lionel Corbett, M.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Santa Fe, and Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico.
Cathy Rives, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Fe, a canditate in the Analyst Training Program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, and Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico.