Category: Forums

At the center of Jung’s psychology is the majesty of the image and symbol. His statement that “image is psyche” captures the complex worlds of Spirit, Soul and Psyche. This week we will look at Jung’s sense of creativity and the suggestion that self- creation can be as important as the work of the poet.We will examine Jung’s own struggle with his Spiritualism and Christianity and how this battle took him deep into his psyche and mythology. The week is about finding soul but we will also explore ways to live with a suffering soul during a soulless time. We will also look for meaning in “Bearskin, a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm,” about a good soldier who becomes lost after returning from war. Psychologically this is about shadow work and navigating our purgatory.

We will conclude the week with an examination of Jung’s early warnings about information and media overload and how he seemed to predict the large and growing Shadow of Technology.

Monday, July 9
9:00– 10:00am
Registration, Welcome and Orientation

10:00 am – 12:30 pm, & 1:30 – 4:00 pm
The Spirit of Creativity

“But what can a man ‘create’ if he doesn’t appear to be a poet? … If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.” C.G. Jung, CW 11, p. 906

Jung said that there are five innate tendencies (instincts) and the creative impulse is one of them. Creativity is the instinct most akin to the gods, whatever cosmology. Seemingly out of nothing, something is brought forth. In this workshop, we will examine the archetype of creativity: how the gods created and how like them our own creativity is. Participants will have the opportunity to explore and tap into their own creative spirits.

Instructor: Julie Bondanza, PhD

Tuesday, July 10
10:00 am – 12:30 pm, & 1:30 – 4:00 pm
Spiritualism as a Significant Influence in the Origin of Jungian Psychology

In C.G. Jung’s early life he participated in family séances, wrote his doctoral dissertation in search of a medical answer to mediumistic behavior, kept aware of parapsychological research during his career and attended séances well into his fifties. His maternal Spiritualistic influences and his paternal Christian history were a constant struggle for Jung during his life time. Additionally, his religious experiences mediated through the collective unconscious were factors that contributed to Jung’s ongoing search to understand the intersection of spirituality and science. In his quest to unite the spiritual and the scientific, Jung leaned on his experiences with Spiritualism and his mythic life with the dead. This workshop will discuss how the origin of Jungian psychology was influenced by Jung’s exposure to Spiritualism, his descent into the psyche, and his mythic life with the dead.

Instructor: Jane Selinske, EdD, LCSW, NCPsyA-LP, MT-BC

Wednesday, July 11
10:00 am – 12:30 pm & 1:30 – 4:00 pm
Dwelling Imaginally in Soulless Times

“What’s madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?”
Theodore Roethke, In a Dark Time

“Economics are the method: the object is to change the soul”.
Margaret Thatcher’s interview for Sunday Times, May 3, 1981

We are living in times of great disruption: political passions are aflame, internal upheavals have brought nations to the brink of chaos, and the very foundations of our Weltanschauung are shattered… [One] cannot avoid coming to grips with contemporary history, even if one’s very soul shrinks from the political uproar, the lying propaganda, and the jarring speeches of demagogues… [One] has duties as a citizen ….and an obligation to humanity. (C.G. Jung CW10, pp. 177-178.)
From the Preface to the “Essays on the Contemporary Events,” 1946

What we hold close in our imaginal world are not just images and ideas but living bits of soul; when they are spoken, a bit of soul is carried with them. When we tell our tales, we give away our souls.
James Hillman, Myth of Analysis, 186

As screens of our pixelated devices shine ever more brightly, the world is getting darker. As the dazzling cool spirit of digital inventions gains more power, the world is getting warmer. As politics become ever more polarized, the world is getting more terrifying. Jung’s words written in 1946 in reflection on the horrors in Europe during the previous decade resound strangely familiar. When neoliberal politicians implement programs whose aim is to change human soul¹ , not only Jungian psychoanalysts, but all citizens need to worry.

How are we to orient ourselves in this confusing world? “And no one knows, ” as Friedrich Hölderlin already noted 200 years ago in his analysis of destitute times. However, whatever we approach we need to approach it with Eros: “Eros…might well be the first condition of all cognition and the quintessence of divinity itself.” [C.G. Jung, MDR, 353] In his Zarathustra Seminars 1934-1939, Jung wrestled with Nietzsche’s challenge of modernity in the background of the rise of the fascism and Nazism in Europe. In his reflection Jung provided the most definite critique of socio-political conditions of the time and the soul’s struggle with it.

I conceive this seminar as a collaborative endeavor. I will provide a set of Jungian poetic ideas and helpful stories that I find inspirational to explore these contemporary issues and we together engage in Conversation. I conceive this conversation, in its etymological Latin sense, as con-versare, to turn together with. So we will be turning around the subject of Dwelling Imaginally in the Soulless World. This turning together is for the sake of conversation, as the third of the many different voices that will contribute to it. Perhaps in this conversing we will contribute a bit or two to the soul-making.

¹: One of the favorite expressions of Joseph Stalin “engineer of human soul.” A version of it has been embraced by ideologists of neo-liberalism since 1970’s.

Location: TBA

Instructor: Sylvester Wojtkowski, PhD

Thursday, July 12
10:00am – 12:30 pm, & 1:30 – 4:00 pm
Bearskin: A Fairy Tale from the Brothers Grimm:
A Story about the Value and Meaning of Purgatory as a Place of Healing and Rebirth

Bearskin is a very old story, and as recent as today’s news. It is a fairy tale about a good soldier, one who knows the art and craft of war making. When the war ends he is discharged. His only provision is his gun. He is ill prepared for civilian life, since fighting wars is all he knows. His hard-bitten brothers refuse to help him out. “You are of no use to us,” they say. “Go and make a living for yourself.” Lost in a state of deep despair with no companions except the dark shadows from the war, this soldier, the hero of our story, wanders into a circle of trees within a laid-waste land. Here he teeters on the brink of chaos and near starvation.

Often, as is the case with our hero, in the hour of greatest need, when hope wanes and all seems lost, the god comes. A paraclete, a divine helper, appears. For Odysseus, the paraclete is Athene. For Faust it is Mephistopheles. For Dante it is Virgil. For St. Niklaus von der Flue, a 15h Century Swiss saint, Christ appears to him in a vision, first as a pilgrim carrying a coat. Later in the vision, this pilgrim transforms into Christ wearing a bearskin over his trousers and coat. In the case of our hero, the god appears as a stately man wearing a green coat, and with a cloven hoof for a foot. He makes an offer of help that involves the wearing of a bear’s skin over the helper’s green coat for a purgatorial period of seven years.

Why Bearskin? From a Jungian perspective, Bearskin helps us visualize and understand the psychological structures that shape the process Jung called individuation. These psychological structures include purgation and deep shadow work. In Bearskin we have a rich, full description of psychological purgatory, its value and meaning, its cost, and its promise. Purgatory is deep shadow work— an extended involutional state of intense introversion when one encounters and integrates dark places in one’s soul, body, and even one’s social world. In order to sustain ourselves and endure we need a map—Psyche’s road map—such as Jung describes: leaving the “collective,” entering involutional, purgatorial states for incubation (sometimes called the wilderness or wasteland), encountering the dark face of the mystery (the instinctive god within), transubstantiation, transformation, and integration on the level of the psyche (the treasure hard to attain), and the “return”.

During our seminar we will move slowly through Bearskin, and amplify the images as we go along. We will describe some ancient purgatorial rites and rituals, see how this fairy tale follows the pattern of cleansing, healing and rebirth well known to ancient peoples and indigenous societies, and draw on C. G. Jung’s descriptions of such states he described in his methodology. Such rites of passage were practiced in the great healing centers in ancient Greece, in shamanic based cultures such as those described by Black Elk, Oglala Lakota holy man of the 20th Century, by European alchemists during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and they are visible in the visions of St. Niklaus of Switzerland. Today we may find these same archetypal images arising in our dreams during analysis, as Psyche and Self encourage the soul toward individuation and wholeness.

Instructor: Bonnie L. Damron, PhD, LCSW

Student Dinner 5:00 – 7:00 pm:

Friday July 13
10:00am – 12:30 pm, & 1:30 – 4:00 pm
The Spirit in the Net: Jung’s reflections on the effects of media and technology on the psyche

Information overload, crazy-busy, and 24/7 connectivity are ubiquitous subjects in today’s media, yet “Generalized Media Disorder” is not yet entered in the official Diagnosis Manual. Jung was sensitive to the technological transformations happening around him, yet his voice is rarely heard outside of Jungian circles in discussions related to the subject of the psychological effects of electronic media technologies. In “The Effect of Technology on the Human Psyche,” he addresses his concerns, which he admits are “not at all easy to answer,” and in a recorded message sent to the Analytical Psychology Club of NY in 1952, he expressed his uneasiness about committing spoken words to tape. We will listen to Jung and discuss his thoughts on the effects of media on our behavior patterns and personality.

Instructor: Royce Froehlich, PhD, MDiv, LCSW-R

Summer Study 2018
Faculty

Julie Bondanza, PhD, is a Jungian analyst and licensed psychologist in private practice in the Metropolitan Washington DC area. She is Vice President of the C.G. Jung Foundation and a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, where she is member of the teaching faculty and past Curriculum chair. She is also on the faculty of The Interregional Society of Jungian Analysts, for whom she has frequently taught. She is a member of the Jungian Analysts of Washington Association, where she is a past Director of Education and where she is a frequent instructor.

Bonnie L. Damron, PhD, LCSW, , is a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in private practice in Falls Church, Virginia. She is a clinician, cultural anthropologist, artist, and storyteller. She teaches courses in mythology, fairy tales, Shakespeare, the Greek Classics, and the writing of C.G. Jung. She also leads contemplative retreats, and conducts study tours in Crete. She holds a Masters of Social Work from Catholic University, a Doctorate Degree in American Studies from the University of Maryland, and a certificate as an Archetypal Pattern Analyst from the Assisi Institute in Mystic, Connecticut.

Royce Froehlich, PhD, MDiv, LCSW-R, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in NYC. He is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, and the C.G. Jung Institute of New York. He holds a doctorate in media studies, and masters’ degrees in theology and social work. Formerly an audio engineer at ABC Radio Networks, now, along with his private psychotherapeutic practice, he is an instructor, supervisor and training analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York.

Paula Howie, MA, ATR-BC, LPC, LCPAT, HLM, worked for 25 years treating trauma at The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. She is a certified trainer for the ITT approach and uses it frequently in her outpatient practice. She is Past President and Honorary Life Member of the American Art Therapy Association, and currently lectures at Florida State University and School of the Visual Arts. In addition to numerous articles, she has edited two books, the latest of which is Art Therapy with Military and Veteran Populations. She is also an avid watercolor painter.

Heide M. Kolb, MA, LCSW, NCPsyA, is a Jungian analyst and licensed clinical social worker in private practice in New York City and Woodstock, NY. She has been in practice for over 20 years. She is a member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and a graduate of the University of Salzburg, New York University’s School of Social Work and the C.G. Jung Institute of New York. She lectures and teaches widely on Jungian thought and practice and has served on the faculty of the C.G. Jung Foundation, the Jung Institute, and the Blanton-Peale Institute.

Ronnie Landau, MA, LPC, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Philadelphia. She is a senior training analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts. She is the past President of PAJA and is currently Director of Training. She is also the past Secretary on the Executive Board of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Ms. Landau has taught and lectured on dream theory throughout the United States. She has also taught Transference-Countertransference dynamics in analysis throughout the US as well as Zurich, Switzerland along with “The Holocaust: Through a Jungian Perspective.”

Erica Lorentz, MEd, LPC, Jungian Analyst (IAAP) is a training analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Boston where she has served on the Training Board. She has been an adjunct faculty member at Antioch New England Graduate School of Professional Psychology, a training analyst with the Inter-regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and she has been featured on Pacifica Radio. One of her areas of expertise is working with the body in analysis. At the Ghost Ranch Jung conferences in NM (1988-1991), she led Jungian Movement workshops for candidates and analysts. In 2014, she presented at the Creativity and Madness conference in Santa Fe, NM. Since 1986 she has lectured and taught workshops in the US and Canada. Presently she is the president of the Jung Association of Western Massachusetts and has a private practice in Amherst, MA.

Jane Selinske, EdD, LCSW, NCPsyA-LP, MT-BC, is a licensed Jungian analyst in private practice, a practitioner of Mandala Assessment, and a Board Certified Music Therapist. She is past Vice President, Director of Training and Coordinator of the Referral Service at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, where she is a faculty member and current Chairperson of the Thesis Committee. She is President of the Board of the C.G. Jung Foundation and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology. She is also a faculty member at the Institute for Expressive Analysis, New York, NY.

Sylvester Wojtkowski, PhD, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in New York City. He is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York and received his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the New School. He gives workshops throughout the country on the Jungian and Archetypal Psychology topics and has presented at several national and International (IAAP) conferences on Analytical Psychology. His recent publications include “Deconstructing the Monstrous” in Archetypal Psychologies, ed. Stanton Marlan; “Marriage of Madness and Reason—The Red Book and the Invention of Active Imagination,” IAAP Congress in Copenhagen, 2013; and “Seeing Writing on the Wall—Art of Banksy and the Spirit of the Times,” IAAP Congress in Kyoto, 2016.