Season: Spring 2007

Although neither traditional nor radically alternative, creative expression in Jungian analysis arises as the third transcendent healing opportunity, completing the dyad of analyst and analysand. This creative third can be a dream or an active imagination, sometimes in the form of a work of art, sometimes not, but always expressing the transcendent function of the Self in its creative play of the tension of opposites. Using examples from clinical cases, social experiments, and excerpts from the films of the Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa, the function of creativity will be explored both on a personal basis and in its larger collective and cultural role in our societies and our world community.

The word “hero” is so broadly used in our day that it begins to lose its mythic sense. But the mythic Hero – larger than life and required to accomplish impossible tasks at great risk, bringing hope and redemption to lesser mortals – stands in an important relationship to the Self. Implied in the Hero’s grand mission are ideas of personal responsibility and vocation, two themes we meet frequently in Jung’s theory of individuation but do not often examine. This presentation, illustrated with film clips from the feature film, Seabiscuit, will invite conversation about the collective psychological phenomenon that was a horse named Seabiscuit – a true mythic Hero, and the human partners who engaged with him in a mutual process of transformation.

One of the most remarkable capacities of the psyche is its ability to manage traumatic experiences. Taking as examples major innovative works of art from the history of painting and film, Dr. Beebe will illustrate the strategies the psyche adopts when forced to manage its sense of violation and disillusionment through creativity. He will then relate the solutions endorsed by artists in times of cataclysmic social upheaval, with the choices analytic patients sometimes are able to make when faced with overwhelming life events.

Jung began to examine astrology as early as 1911, when he mentioned his inquiries in a letter to Freud. That interest gradually developed into a major focus of investigation, and in his later years Jung devoted himself with considerable passion to astrological research. “Astrology,” he stated, “represents the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.” Insights from these studies influenced many of his most significant formulations in the final, extraordinarily fruitful phase of his life’s work, including archetypal theory, synchronicity, and the philosophy of history. Since his death, reports from his family and others close to him have revealed that in his last decades Jung came to employ the analysis of his patients’ astrological charts as a regular and integral aspect of his clinical work.

Yet astrology runs so directly counter to the long-established cosmology that encompasses the modern world view that one can appreciate Jung’s reluctance to make public the extent of his use of astrology, and the resistance of many Jungian analysts to further explore the astrological direction their founder had pursued. However, recent research by Richard Tarnas and Stanislav Grof gives new support for Jung’s intuition of the value of astrology and of the trans-psychic (or “psychoid”) nature of the archetypes. These observations suggest the existence of an extraordinarily consistent synchronistic correspondence between planetary movements and the archetypal patterns of human experience, reflecting something like a cosmic anima mundi in which the human being participates.

On Friday, Dr. Tarnas will summarize this evidence, discuss the new light it sheds on the human psyche and the unfolding drama of history, and explore the implications it holds for Jungian psychology.

For each of us there are energies, motives, agendas which operate outside our conscious control and sometimes are contrary to our professed values. These energies, which Jung collectively identified as the Shadow, might best be defined not as evil, but as that which makes us uncomfortable with ourselves. Such energies represent an enormous invitation for greater consciousness, for living more ethically, and whose integration brings a greater possibility of wholeness. This program will define and illustrate the many ways in which the Shadow operates in personal and social life.