Fall 1993 Archives - Oregon Friends of Jung

The Hundredth Dreamer

This talk will focus on the challenge each of us faces in helping develop a societal goal characterized as the new dream culture. The title comes from biology’s Einsteinian field theory, morphogenesis, popularly known as “The Hundredth Monkey” theory. Scientists observed all members of a species of monkeys on several islands developing an entirely new behavior after a critical number of them first learned the behavior on one specific island. This critical mass is called “The Hundredth Monkey”.

We’ll explore the cultural background that has led to a massive ignorance and resistance to the inner world and dreaming, drawing on Jung’s historical cultural view and other studies of our patriarchal culture. Its pathologies include fear of the inner feminine and related creative child: fear of the chaos of change and its creativity in society and the unconscious; the resistances that we each feel toward dream recall and work; and finally, dream ego confusion within the dream experience itself. In turn, we’ll consider how the unconscious is constantly pushing us to be artists, mystics and scientists of the elemental creativity that is the dream; and how both body and society must enter into an integral understanding of the dream work and its goal, individuation. Hopefully, our work will build toward that time in the future when one of us will be the hundredth dreamer.

The Journey With the Soul

Journey is one way of talking about and symbolizing the process of individuation, just as one can also speak of the substance of individuation as a consistent, personal identity. Both are as valid as microphysics’ viewing of an atom as both a wave and a particle. The journey is with the Soul, not of the Soul, since it is a “conscious” process, that “knowing with” journey, in which the other is not first of all our social partners but the unconscious itself. For our purposes here, Soul is a better term than Self or Psyche because in our Judeo-Christian tradition it refers to the life principle, a principle that includes body as well as society.

The Journey will consist of the following paths: Climbing the Mountain: the Value of Work; Falling into Darkness: the Value of Love; Spring of Creation: the Value of Play; and Fruition of Compassion and Justice: the Value of Prayer. The overarching stages of the Journey will be Jung’s Two Stages of Life.

The Journey is based on client dreams and many archetypal models. Bring your own dreams to help construct this odyssey that is both personal and collective.

Sexuality, Spirituality, and Individuation

Sexuality, in its wide range of manifestations, is among the least understood and most complex areas of human experience. Viewed symbolically, it can be understood as a bridge between ordinary reality and the archetypal world of the demonic and the divine. Using sexual behavior and fantasy as the central themes, this lecture and workshop will explore the archetypal dimensions of those experiences. The program will include slides.

Sexuality, Spirituality, and Individuation

The Spirit Mercurius: From Individualism to Spiritual Emergence

After his earlier explorations of gnosticism and the Eastern yogas, Jung found in alchemy a mythic system closely tied to the origins of modern consciousness. His observation that the individual psyche produces symbols which compensate for he conscious ego attitude could be applied to dominant myths in the collective unconscious as well. Seen in this light, the confusing and polymorphous imagery of alchemy represents a compensation to the rational culture in which we live. The central personification of the alchemical drama was the trickster figure, Spirit Mercurius, who is the allegorical agent for dissolving old structures and changing lead into gold. In early childhood development, the appearance of the trickster archetype presages a lifelong struggle between one’s own sense of reality and collective norms. Weaving a symbolic picture from the development of the trickster archetype, the dreams of a patient, and the near-death visions of Jung, Dr. Stein will discuss the tension between individualism and surrender in spiritual development and show how the evolution of the trickster can mediate conflicting tendencies in the unconscious.

Polarities of the Self

This workshop focuses on the myth-producing aspect of the collective unconscious, as seen in the form of an extended active imagination done by an artist in long-term analysis. Although trained as a performing artist, the patient’s native graphic ability developed considerably in the process of creating sixty unconscious drawings which portray her inner journey and provide the impetus for her personal and professional development in life. Major themes include the Demeter/Kore myth from the Eleusinian mysteries, the transformation of Osiris, and the alchemical coniunctio oppositorum. The material demonstrates a life pattern in modern women who develop an assertive, heroic ego as a precursor to the emergence of a deeper sense of feminine self. There will be ample time for dialogue about the material, in addition to Dr. Stein’s amplification and discussion of the case.

The Middle Passage: Misery and Meaning at Mid-life

Life requires three major transitions, or passages. The move from childhood dependency to provisional adulthood and the encounter with mortality frames this process. The Middle Passage occurs when one is forced to face the conflict between the formative experiences of childhood (internalized as provisional adulthood) and the instinctual urge of the Self towards individuation. This conflict is often described as the “mid-life crisis”, though its occurrence is not limited to the middle years. This presentation identifies the characteristics of the critical Middle Passage and the attitudes which lead toward a richer, more authentic second half of life.

Your Personal Myth

When Jung went through his personal crisis, he asked himself, “What is my personal myth?” When he could not answer his own question, he began his descent into the unconscious and the subsequent dialogue with the Self which we now call individuation, Jung’s myth for our time. In this workshop we will explore a number of questions which will help identify the conscious and unconscious values by which we are living. We will endeavor to explore patterns in our lives, especially those which derive from our families of origin. Please bring paper and pen, for we will be doing a lot of personal reflection and writing in response to the questions posed.