Wednesday, December 17, 2008
C.G. JUNG
JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY – A DEEPER LOOK
An Online Course
Presented by Rose F. Holt, M.A., and Boris L. Matthews, Ph.D.
From January 26, 2009, through March 20, 2009
This course will cover fundamentals topics of Jungian Psychology—archetypes and myths, dreams and dream interpretation, persona, shadow, complex, typology, anima/animus, Self, and individuation. It is designed for people who have some knowledge of the subject but would like a more structured and comprehensive overview.
Online Discussion Forum: A portion of the website for this course will be devoted to a forum discussion on which participants may post reflections, questions, and responses to others’ posts.
Seminar Web Events: We will hold four online web seminar events as part of this course. Times: Mondays, 7:30 to 9:00 pm, on February 2, 16; March 2 and 16, 2009. Seminar participants will need a high-speed internet connection (DSL or cable), a webcam (to participate in the on-line discussions by video), and long distance phone service (for the audio portion of the on-line discussions).
Learning Objectives: Participants will gain greater understanding of
•The archetypal / mythic roots of human experience
•The relationship between waking (ego) consciousness and other structures of the psyche (shadow, anima / animus, Self)
•The role of the feeling-toned complex in the psyche
•Fundamentals of psychological type
•Individuation
Required Text: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung. Other course readings will be posted on the course website.
Fees: $170
$195 for CE credits.
CE’s: 16 CE credits available
For additional information contact
RoseHolt@aol.com
314-726-2032
borismatthews@verizon.net
608-217-5184
Monday, December 15, 2008
A SHORT COURSE ON DREAMS
An Online Course
Presented by Rose F. Holt, M.A., and Boris L. Matthews, Ph.D.
From January 22, through March 05, 2009
Dreams have been important sources of information for individuals and groups in all times and all ages. Though often misunderstood, even dismissed, dreams have powerful and lasting effects on individuals. In this short course we will explore (1) the function of dreams, (2) ways of working with dreams, (3) some universal and helpful dream symbols, and (4) the value of dreams for furthering individual development.
Course participant will have access to a website where an ongoing forum will be available for discussions and where additional course resources may be posted from time to time. Additionally, a part of the course will be four (4) web-hosted seminars for real-time interaction between presenters and participants. Seminar time and dates: Thursday, 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CDT, January 22; February 05, 19; March 05, 2009. Participants may join the seminar through webcam and phone or through phone only. Detailed information for seminar participant will be provided to participants when they register.
Learning Objectives:
*to understand the value of dreams
*to develop strategies for approaching the dream
*to develop an understanding of dream symbolism
*to see how dreams can facilitate individual development
Cost: $155 [plus $20 for those taking the course for eight (8) CEU credits.]
Class size is limited
Texts:
C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols, Chapter 1
In these two texts, Jung gives us his most mature exposition of his understanding of dreams—their symbolism and their meaning.
If you are interested in registering or in having more information, please feel free to call me (314) 726-2032 or e-mail me, www.roseholt@aol.com. You may also sign on to the Chicago Institute website, www.jungchicago.org to register.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
for its analyst training program. Because the institute website has
been down for some time, this change in format has not been broadly
announced. The Institute will probably slip the February 1, 2009,
application deadline into March or April.
Part of the rationale for shifting from a weekly academic program to a
one-weekend-each-month program is to allow people from far-flung
places to have access to training. If you or anyone you know is
interested in training to be an analyst, please take note of this
important change.
The Chicago training program is demanding and rigorous and has, thus,
an excellent reputation. To apply, one needs a clinical degree, to be
a licensed clinician in the state in which he/she works, and to have
undergone 100 hours of personal analysis.
Boris Matthews (www.borismatthews.com) will become Training Director of
the ATP in the Fall of 2009. He can answer any questions you may have
about the program and this major change in format. Boris' e-mail address is: borismatthews@verizon.net
In addition to the Analyst Training Program, the Chicago group also
offers a two-year Clinical Training Program. The next window for
applying to the CTP will be in 2010 when another group will be
admitted.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
A SHORT COURSE ON DREAMS
An Online Course
Presented by Rose F. Holt, M.A., and Boris L. Matthews, Ph.D.
From December 08, 2008, through January 15, 2009
Dreams have been important sources of information for individuals and groups in all times and all ages. Though often misunderstood, even dismissed, dreams have powerful and lasting effects on individuals. In this short course we will explore ((1) the function of dreams, (2) ways of working with dreams, (3) some universal and helpful dream symbols, and (4) the value of dreams for furthering individual development.
We will use two texts for this course: MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS, Chapter 1, by C.G. Jung, et. al., and MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS by C.G. Jung. Participants will have access to a restricted website where other course materials and a discussion forum will be available. A part of the course will be four (4) web-hosted seminars for real-time interaction between presenters and participants. Seminar time and dates: Thursday, 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CDT, December 11, 18, 2008; January 08, 15, 2009. Participants can be included in the online seminar by webcam and phone or by phone only. We encourage participants to post questions, reflections, and thoughts on the discussion forum and to take part in the lively exchange in the online seminars.
Learning Objectives:
*to understand the value of dreams
*to develop strategies for approaching the dream
*to develop an understanding of dream symbolism
*to see how dreams can facilitate individual development
Cost: $155 which includes online seminar costs [plus $20 for those taking the course for eight (8) CEU credits.]
Class size is limited
Suggested Reading:
C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
---------------------
If you would like additional information about the course, please e-mail either Dr. Matthews (www.borismatthews@verizon.net) or myself (roseholt@aol.com). If you would like to talk with me about the course, please call (314) 726-2032.
To enroll, please visit the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago website: www.jungchicago.org
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
C.G. JUNG – GUIDE TO THE INNER LIFE
By Rose F. Holt, Jungian Psychoanalyst
C.G. Jung (1875-1961)
”One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a lot of things—psychiatrist, theologian, historian, anthropologist—but above all else, he was an explorer. He explored first his own inner life, his interiority, through what he called his “confrontation with the unconscious,” then he helped many, many of his patients explore their own interiority. All this work was his primary field of research from which he developed a powerful theoretical construct, a “map” for those of us who dare to go on our own voyage into the interior. Today that field of endeavor is called Jungian Psychology or Analytical Psychology.
Before Jung, few people dared go beyond the collective understanding of human nature. Like the maps of old, the collective understanding was edged by mythical monsters, so there was a frightening prohibition against journeying there. The primary function of religions was to protect people from venturing into those areas where the roads ended-- areas of mystery, death, birth, sacred experience. Religious rites and sacraments served as containers for the sacred. They were prescriptions to keep people safe, confined within an area of understanding determined by others and sometimes misused in the interest of power. It was unthinkable, even dangerous, for people to venture on their own without benefit of the shelter of a given religious understanding. There were (and are) severe penalties for those who did so. Some who ventured successfully we remember as mystics, saints, or founders of new religions. They described their discoveries, but until Jung, few could adequately guide others to their own unique and individual discovery of their interiority. Interiority was assigned or assumed by faith and dogma, not discovered.
Jung opened the way for the many. He eventually understood that an early part of the journey is an exploration of one’s personal unconscious—that area of psyche to which experiences, thoughts, feelings, impressions unacceptable to conscious understanding were unwittingly banished. Initially, these unconscious contents reach consciousness through projection, i.e., some quality that rightfully belongs to the individual is assigned to some loved or hated “other.” Through careful attention to one’s feeling reactions, to thoughts, and to dream images and motifs, one can eventually withdraw the projection and begin to integrate this hitherto unacceptable quality—good or bad—into one’s own personality. Such withdrawal requires humility in accepting what was unacceptable and a sense of responsibility for either managing or developing the newly-discovered quality. No wonder, then, that many of us shirk the duty to work toward increased consciousness!
With continued work on oneself, these personal unconscious contents become more differentiated. There will be the projections onto people of the same gender, of the opposite gender, onto heroes and hags, onto saviors and demons. Once this clearing out of the personal unconscious is more or less complete, an entirely new territory begins to show itself, the collective unconscious, as Jung called it.
Jung demonstrated that all humankind shares not just a collective consciousness but also a collective UNconsciousness. In the territory of the collective unconscious one finds the archetypal [arche = ancient and typos = imprint] images, motifs and patterns that underlie the common experience of humankind. It is a collective heritage to which everyone may lay claim. For Jung archetypes are simply the typical patterns of human behavior. Some important ones include the journey, mother, father, the hero, home, the child, birth, the savior, king, queen. Underlying all other archetypes, Jung describes the central organizing principle of the psyche and of individuality—the Self. It is the Self that gives rise to consciousness and our sense of individual existence.
An important tool in one’s journey into interiority is the dream. Like a key, the dream has no logic to its shape. Its logic is that it turns the lock. An example might be a dream in which a loved one dies. Taken at face value the dream is disturbing, even terrifying. Like a key, however, a symbolic understanding might allow the dreamer to “open” a message that something ‘alive’ in the unconscious has died, i.e., is no longer active there. Whatever energy the figure represented might now be available to the dreamer on a more conscious level and, therefore, more amenable to the will. Same dream, vastly different approaches to it, vastly different effect on the dreamer. In working with dreams we make a kind of "Pascal's Wager." We can't know with certitude what a dream means. Therefore, let's wager on a meaning that promotes growth and enhances life because we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Jung demonstrated clearly that dreams carry messages from the unconscious to consciousness, and they do so in a manner finely tuned to the attitudes, needs, and desires of the dreamer. Attitude is of critical importance. The dream messenger is Janus-faced. If one dismisses the dream as unimportant or irrelevant, that is just what dreams become. However, if one takes dreams seriously and pays attention to them, dreams speak with increasing and sometimes astonishing clarity.
If one thinks about all this, it makes very good sense. Humankind has always and everywhere felt the need for story. Dreams are primarily story. They can be extremely important because they are deeply personal and capable of providing meaning and value to the individual. Research has shown that, deprived of dream sleep, an individual will become ill in a very short time. Almost everyone has had an impressive, unforgettable, even numinous dream. Almost everyone has had the experience of waking in a particular mood determined by a dream. The old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” particularly applies in working with dream images. It hardly needs be said that dreams have always been an important component of psychic life and development. Only we moderns, with our “not invented here, therefore not of value” attitude, have denigrated the dream.
When one has ventured deeply enough into one’s own interiority that archetypal patterns, figures, and motifs begin to appear, something happens of singular importance. One begins to experience healing—often illusive, difficult to explain or prove, but definitively a feeling of wellness. In religious terms, this feeling is characterized by the word “salvation,” or as something akin to “God’s in his/her heaven, all’s right with the world,” but viewed experientially the feeling is a psychological fact. One’s life becomes imbued with meaning and purpose, and even a seemingly mundane existence takes on great value to one gifted in this way.
Jung writes poetically about this state:
“The state of imperfect transformation, merely hoped for and waited for, does not seem to be one of torment only, but of positive, if hidden happiness. It is the state of someone who, in his/her wanderings among the mazes of his/her psychic transformation comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him/her to his/her apparent loneliness. In communing with him/herself, he/she finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner, more than that, a relationship that seems like a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth, holding out the promise of future harvests.” [From Vol. 14, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Para. 623, modified slightly in the interest of inclusive language.]
I think Jung is describing here the state of someone who has glimpsed that the Self is at work in his/her life and is sustained by that glimpse.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Online courses with live video seminars are proving to be an extremely effective way for people in far-flung places to access information about Jungian Psychology, to share their thoughts, reflections, and questions, and to connect with like-minded folk. Participants can join in the audio portion of the seminars by phone, or in both audio and video by phone and web camera.
Boris Matthews, Ph.D., and I will be collaborating this Fall to do two courses, both entitled Alchemy and Psychotherapy and both using Edinger's ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE as the primary text. One course will be offered through the Chicago Jung Institute and one through the Jung Society of St. Louis. Although basically the same outline and syllabus, our experience tells us the two courses will vary widely because of the participants, their backgrounds, and the directions in which online discussion forums and internet seminars take.
In previous online courses we have been extremely careful not to let study of Jungian Psychology become strictly an intellectual exercise. Through discussion, limited sharing of dream images and synchronistic experiences, and through approaching our subject using thinking, intuition, feeling, and sensation, we find participants become deeply involved and can effectively use their learning to enhance their daily lives. Above all else, Jungian Psychology is a psychology of practical daily life and enhanced relationships. Feedback from participants has indicated they find the material rich, rewarding, and useful.
For those new to Jungian Psychology, this type study makes a wonderful launch onto a journey of self-discovery. For those well-versed in the topic, such study deepens and adds to appreciation and understanding.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Boris and I are finding this mode of teaching extremely effective for reaching people interested in Jungian Psychology but who do not live in an area where they have access to offerings of a Jungian Society or Institute. In the course we are conducting currently, we have people enrolled who span the country, from Alaska to Florida.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
July 18th and 19th
“Psyche & the Sacred: Spirituality Beyond Organized Religion”
Presented by Lionel Corbett, M.D.
Spiritual structures require periodic renewal. When our spirituality cannot be contained within traditional institutions, there is an urgent need for new ways to articulate our experience of the sacred. From within the depth of the psyche, a new image of the divine is emerging alongside and within traditional Judeo-Christian images. Depth psychology gives us a language to articulate this emergence, allowing our experience of the sacred to be articulated without the need for recourse to traditional theology, doctrine or dogma. This lecture describes an approach to spirituality based on personal experience of the sacred.
Lionel Corbett, M.D., trained in medicine and psychiatry in England and as a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Dr. Corbett is a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. His primary dedication has been to the religious function of the psyche, especially the way in which personal religious experience is relevant to individual psychology. He is the author of Psyche and the Sacred, and The Religious Function of the Psyche. He is co-editor, with Dennis Patrick Slattery, of Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field and Psychology at the Threshold. He has also authored “Spirituality Beyond Religion”, a set of audiotapes published by Sounds True.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
(no subject)
THE GOAL
Here is Jung writing about the goal of the work, study, and analysis we do on our journeys:
"This (referring to the work of alchemists) recalls the impressive opening sentence of Ignatius Loyola's 'Foundation': 'Man was created to praise, do reverence to, and serve God our Lord, and thereby to save his soul.'" (Paragraph 252)
"Accordingly, if we divest the opening sentence of the 'Foundation' of its theological terminology, it would run as follows: 'Man's consciousness was created to the end that it may (1) recognize (laudet) its descent from a higher unity (Deum); (2) pay due and careful regard to this source (reverentiam exhibeat); (3) execute its commands intelligently and responsibly (serviat); and (4) thereby afford the psyche as a whole the optimum degree of life and development (salvet animam suam).'" (Paragraph
253)
We could rewrite this quote in gender-neutral language, but I think it captures the essence of what we are about when we engage in the work with psyche--in our dreams, fantasies, imagination, and daily work.
From: AION, Vol. 9ii of Jung's Collected Works, page 165
Vote for your city's best dining and nightlife. City's Best 2008.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Boris and I are formulating our next course offering (with web seminars) which will begin in late May or early June and, like the first two, will run for eight weeks with CEU credits available for those who desire them. We are considering the following:
1. A reading and discussion of one Jung text, perhaps the 1925 SEMINAR ON ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY which is essentially a transcript of Jung speaking about the origins and development of his work. Another possible work might be Jung's controversial ANSWER TO JOB. Still another might be "A Study in the Process of Individuation," which is Jung's attempt to follow one of his patients via her dreams and her artwork through the individuation process.
2. A course devoted to one topic of particular interest, perhaps working with dreams or exploring Jungian complex theory or Jung's notion of the Self, or his views on Individuation.
3. We are also scheduling another "A Deeper Look into Jungian Psychology," scheduled to begin on June 2, 2008, because of the interest people expressed after it was too late to register for the first 'deepening' course. If you or anyone you know might wish to participate, please contact us.
Formal announcements and registration forms will be available on the Chicago Jung Institute website: www.jungchicago.org soon.
Of course, we want to present topics of burning interest that will help individuals in their own development and work. To that end, would you please provide any suggestions you have to help us in our planning. Boris' e-mail is borismatthews@verizon.net and mine is roseholt@aol.comMonday, February 18, 2008
A DEEPER LOOK INTO JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Facilitated by Rose F. Holt, M.A., and Boris Matthews, Ph.D.
March 24, 2008, through May 19, 2008
Jung’s ideas fascinate us, touch us, and ultimately can lead to discovery of sound and lasting meaning for our lives. Many people discover Jung through references in literature, various university studies, Jung’s own writings, or affiliation with a Jung Society. Jungian Psychology provides a framework for understanding the wholeness of the human person.
typology
complexes
shadow
personal and collective unconscious
archetypes
Self and individuation
The only prerequisite is a curious, inquiring, open mind. This course is oriented toward persons who want to learn more about Jungian (Analytical) Psychology, including professional counselors, social workers, and psychotherapists.
"A Deeper Look Into Jungian Psychology" offers the opportunity for people in far-flung locations to come together in a readings/discussion/seminar format. Participants will have access to a restricted website where readings will be available and where they can discuss and post on an online forum. They will also be invited to join in four (4) web-hosted simultaneous seminar sessions.
Course Objectives:
(1) develop a basic understanding of Jung’s primary contributions to psychology,
Sixteen (16) CEU’s are available from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago ($25 additional processing fee)
Cost is $110
Text: C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
You may also contact Rose Holt [314 726-2032 or roseholt@aol.com ] or Boris Matthews [608 217-5184 or borismatthews@verizon.net ]
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
In a lengthy letter to Pastor Tanner dated 12 February 1959, Jung explains his psychological definition for the word religion.
First he provides a definition the ancients used: religio derived from relegere or religere, “to ponder, to take account of, to observe (e.g., in prayer).”
Then he gives the definition the Church Fathers used: religio from religare, “to bind, to reconnect,” which speaks to relationship with God. Thirdly, Jung writes of a contrasting conception that was “current in pagan antiquity: the gods are exalted men and embodiments of ever-present powers whose will and whose moods must be complied with. Their numina must be carefully studied, they must be propitiated by sacrifices . . . . Here religion means a watchful, wary, thoughtful, careful, prudent, expedient, and calculating attitude towards the powers that be . . . .”
Finally, Jung provides his own thinking about the meaning of the word religion:
“By ‘religion,’ then, I mean a kind of attitude which takes careful and conscientious account of certain numinous feelings, ideas, and events and reflects upon them.” Jung’s notions about the psychological meaning of a religious attitude are more akin to that of the ancients and pagan antiquity than to that of the Church Fathers.
C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 2, 1951 – 1961. Selected and Edited by Gerhard Adler, Princeton University Press, 1975. “To Pastor Tanner,” pp. 482-84.