Lecture and Workshop: This lecture and workshop will explore the archetypal masks of mid-life as depicted in fairy tales from around the world. Some dozen stories from Germany, Persia, Russia, Japan, Israel, and Italy will be retold and discussed. These tales portray crucial tasks of mid-life: transforming youthful ideals into practical action; breaking gender stereotypes to free the anima and animus; for men, learing new forms of masculine power from a Spirit Brother; for women, embracing a Sisterhood of Nature beyond patriarchy or matriarchy; and for both men and women, reconciling opposites through contact with a primordial life source, a center of creativity and healing.
Allan B. Chinen, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco, and on the Clinical Faculty of the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of In The Ever After: Fairy Tales and the Second Half of Life (Chiron Publications), and a just published book: Once Upon a Midlife: Classic Stories and Mythic Tales to Illuminate the Middle Years (Tarcher).