Frightening or upsetting dreams come to all of us sooner or later. It is sometimes hard to understand what they intend. Using clips of dream sequences from classic films that show both the horror and the humor of nightmares, Dr. Beebe will help us to see the positive, adaptive meanings of negative or disruptive dream experiences.
Season: Spring 2003
The Self in Dreams
Everyone has an ego that wishes, and wills, and fears. But Jung tells us that we also have a Self that has the ability to cancel our wishes, frustrate our wills, and intensify our fears, all in the service of a mysterious project: individuation. How do we recognize the Self? Jung found evidence of the Self in dreams. But how does the Self speak to us in dreams? Using examples from a variety of sources, Dr. Beebe will demonstrate how we can identify the Self and how the Self emerges in dreams as a dynamic presence, organizing a new psychological standpoint.
Symbols in Your Psyche: The Inner Journey
The uniqueness of analytical psychology lies in its emphasis on developing the capacity for symbolization. Jung’s life and work centered around the symbol-he imagined, dreamed, wrote, carved, painted, played with and sculpted the symbol. This lecture-slide presentation seeks to provide a meditative-experiential evening around such key Jungian concepts as the Meadow, Persona, Shadow, Anima-Animus and Self.
The Symbol in the Transference: Jungian Approaches in Psychotherapy and Counseling
“They tore the bark off the tree
but the roots will help it
grow.” (7yr old boy)
This workshop for professionals, students and interested lay people, seeks to return analytical psychology to its fertile roots–the symbol and symbolic expression. The day will focus on a variety of ways to activate and amplify symbols in the healing process. Hermes is invoked along with Eros and the Alchemy of Play so that Psyche leads Ego to new understandings and a new life. Priority is given to the therapeutic alliance and the symbol as it emerges out of the transference. Jungian theory (Primary Self, de-integratio, re-intergration, participation mystique (the interactive field), projection and introjection) will be linked to clinical practice. Slides, images, dreams, stories and active imagination will be shown and demonstrated. Transformation is witnessed as nigredo evolves to albedo and then rubedo and as chaos gives way to struggle and containment before the emergence of themes of reparation and resolution.
Aliveness / Deadness
“As long as the animals are there, there is life in the symbol.”
–C.G. Jung
In the opening years of our new century and under the shadow of terrorist attacks on American soil, these following questions have become urgent: What makes for our sense of aliveness and feeling real? What puts us in touch with our own voice? What confers a sense of finding and creating a path that is true for us? What kills it, making us feel deadness? The focus of this lecture will examine the space of aliveness, which is created between analysand and analyst, between the ego and animus/a, in worship between ritual and repetition compulsion, and in imagination between the factual and the symbolic.
Aliveness / Deadness / Regeneration
To feel alive and not dead is as basic as our need for food, air, and water. Fear of this lies at the root of illness. In this workshop we will explore the unconscious ways we make parts of ourselves dead and what spaces offer themselves for regeneration.
The Tears of God: Grief as an Opening to the Divine
The alchemy of the grieving process dissolves the conscious mind and its intentions, and in a descent into the soul’s seasons of grief one meets the Oprhan, an encounter which can transform personal loss into a journey of homecoming. Grief can be home-work, and the Orphan, the most homeless of all, can lead us into that place where the wounds to love are the cracks through which a sense of the Divine shines through. The wonder, even miracle, of this moment is the recognition that our human tears of grief are mirrored in the tears of the Divine who hungers for an encounter with us. We grieve because we have dared to love, and we can love again in an expanded way and allow ourselves to be loved because we have taken the time to grieve.
The Healing Power of Poetry
Poetry helps one breath better. It is to the soul and heart what vitamins are to the body. The images which poetry evokes, as well as the moods and memories, feed a hunger that soul has for beauty, mystery and a sense of the sacred.
Through readings and exercises, participants are invited to appreciate the powerful healing gifts of poetry. In addition, they are invited to attune their ears to the melodies and rhythms of poetry when it is read aloud, so that they can experience something of the joy that comes from exercising the muscles of the soul when the voice sings its song. Finally, participants will be encouraged to try their hand at writing a poem. In preparation for the workshop, participants are asked to bring a poem that has chosen them, or has been with them in their lives.
Active Imagination and the Visions Seminar
C.G.Jung described active imagination as “the creative secret of the mind” where –through visioning, dance and /or art work–consciousness and the unconscious work together in a profoundly healing way. The VISIONS SEMINAR is Jung’s great exploration of active imagination as a potent methodology for expanding the psyche and reuniting the patient with archetypal, healing images that lie beneath personal complexes. The active imagination in the VISIONS SEMINAR also expresses one woman’s quest for healing engendered by transformative, passionate feminine images –images flowering in many people’s psyches’ today.
Jung’s 1930’s seminars were based on active imaginations painted and recorded by Christiana Morgan, a gifted young woman from New England who had been in analysis with him. In the course of her research, Dr. Douglas discovered Morgan’s complete series of visions which link the chthonic, dynamic, and erotic feminine with the Divine.
Through slides and lecture, Dr. Douglas will explore the historical background of active imagination. She will examine the VISIONS SEMINARS relevance in the creation of Jungian theory, especially of active
imagination, anima and animus, typology, and the psychology of women.
Active Imagination: A Quest for Transformation
Images of the feminine that are transformative, powerful and passionate are emerging even as we find ourselves caught by old patterns and judgements. We search within ourselves and in the world for support of new ways of being. Christiana Morgan’s original work illustrates a unique and passionately feminine path of individuation. Dr. Douglas will show slides depicting Morgan’s quest to reclaim her feminine voice and power. Seminar participants will be invited to experientially follow the permutations of the tranformative feminine within their own lives through dreams, artwork, thoughts, feelings, and active imagination.