Fundamentals of Jungian Psychology Course

Fall 2023  Virtual Lecture Series 

 

The Jung Society of St. Louis will offer an on-line “Fundamentals of Jungian Psychology” course in September and October of 2023.  The course will consist of eight lectures on basic concepts taught by a variety of analysts. Each lecture will be 90 minutes with lecture and ample time for discussion and Q & A.

 

Format:  online, eight sessions, 90-minute Lecture and discussion

 

Time and Dates:  Tuesdays, 12:00 – 1:30 pm, September 5, 12, 19, 26; October 3, 10, 17, 24.

                         

Fee:  $160       CEU’s:  12 (with an additional fee and attendance at all eight sessions.)

 

Registration:  Jung Society of St. Louis 

 

Topics/Presenters:

  September 5:            Jung – a brief biography; Therapy vs. Analysis – Rose Holt, MA

  September 12:          The Complex – Sheldon Culver, D. Min.

  September 19:          Shadow/Persona – Mary Dougherty, MFA, ATR, NCPsyA

  September 26:          Personality Types – John Beebe, M.D.  

  October 3:                 Dream Analysis – Ken James, Ph.D.

  October 10:               The Transcendent Function – Sara Sage, MS, LMHC

  October 17:               Anatomy of the Psyche – Boris Matthews, PhD, LCSW, 

  October 24:               Individuation – Ken James, Ph.D.

 

Sheldon Culver, M. Div., D. Div. is a Jungian Analyst with an active, soul-healing practice in Columbia, IL.  She is a graduate of Washington University and Eden Theological Seminary, both in St. Louis.  She is a Diplomate with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA), graduating from this North American training program in 1996. Sheldon is the director of the Heartland Association of Jungian Analysts (HAJA) Training Seminar, a weekend program for individuals interesting in furthering their understanding of Jungian Psychology and/or training to become a Jungian Analyst.

 

Mary Dougherty, MFA, ATR, NCPsyA is a Jungian psychoanalyst and art psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago.  She is former President, Director of Training, and chair of the Program Committee of the Jung Institute of Chicago, former President of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, and served eight years on the Executive Committee of the Council of North American Societies of Jungian Analysts.  She is contributing editor to the “Journal of Jungian theory and Practice” and has numerous publications in Analytical Psychology.  She lectures on the clinical implications of gender, the use of active imagination, and on the impact of Jung’s thought upon creative development and artistic production.

 

John Beebe, M.D. is the creator of the eight-function, eight-archetype model of psychological types. A Jungian analyst and past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, he is the author of Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness and co-editor, with Ernst Falzeder, of The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan. John has spearheaded a Jungian typological approach to the analysis of film and has written the preface to the Routledge Classics edition of Jung's 1921 book, Psychological Types. 

 

Rose Holt, MA began her career in science and business, areas in which she worked for over 20 years. At mid-life, she changed over to counseling and psychology after discovering Jungian Psychology. Her thesis paper for Analytical Training is “Alchemy of the Small Group.” It describes the journey of a core group of women who worked weekly with their dreams over a ten-year period. Many alchemical themes that Jung ascribed to the individuation process appeared in group members’ dreams, convincing Rose that work in small, intimate groups is an effective way to facilitate individuation.  Rose holds degrees in physics and counseling and graduated from the training program of the Chicago Jung Institute in 2001.

 

Ken James, PhD maintains a private practice in Chicago, Illinois. His areas of expertise include dream work and psychoanalysis, archetypal dimensions of analytic practice, divination and synchronicity, and ways to sustain the vital relationship between body, mind, and spirit. He has done post-doctoral work in music therapy, the Kabbalah, spirituality, and theology, and uses these disciplines to inform his work as a Jungian analyst.

 

Boris Matthews, PhD, LCSW, NCPsyA graduated from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, and maintains a practice of analytical psychology in the Milwaukee and Madison, WI, areas. He is particularly interested in working with persons who recognize a need to develop a balanced adaptation to the “outside” and to the “inside” worlds, work that involves awareness of the individual’s psychological typology. Dreams, active imagination, and spiritual concerns are integral elements in the analytic work, the ultimate goal of which is to develop a functioning dialog with the non-ego center, the Self. He has served as Director of Training for the Chicago Jung Institute and lectures nationally and internationally.

 

Sara Sage, MS, LMHC is a therapist in private practice in South Bend, Indiana, and a senior candidate in the Analyst Training Program at the C.G. Jung Institute in Chicago. Sara’s practice focuses on depth work for mind, body and spirit and specializes in LGBTQ+ clients. A former teacher and professor, Sara has a lifelong interest in Jungian work that centers around psychological type and gender and otherness in ways that expand the concepts for working with transgender, nonbinary, and all queer people. Sara recently presented in Zurich at a conference celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Jung Institute.  

 

 

Value and Meaning of Jungian Psychology Today

Some years ago I gave a presentation for the C.G. Jung Society of St. Louis on the value and meaning of Jungian Psychology today (aka Analytical Psychology).  This is a link to a clip from that presentation:  https://youtu.be/pJX-5YBRFEY.  The video of the entire presentation is available from the St. Louis Society website at  https://jungstl.org.

 THE REALITY OF DREAMS

In his autobiographical work, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung writes about his relationship with Sigmund Freud in some detail--their discussions, their travels together, their working with each other’s dreams, and his view of Freud as a father figure.  Jung writes: “. . . . Freud, who had always made much of his irreligiosity, had now constructed a dogma; or rather, in the place of a jealous God whom he had lost, he had substituted another compelling image, that of sexuality.  It was no less insistent, exacting, domineering, threatening, and morally ambivalent that the original one.  Just as the psychically stronger agency is given ‘divine’ or ‘daemonic’ attributes, so the ‘sexual libido’ took over the role of the deus absconditus, a hidden or concealed god.” 

Freud, according to Jung, had assigned to “sexuality” all the attributes historically assigned to Yahweh.  Only the name had changed.  Jung makes this important assertion: “If psychology did not exist, but only concrete objects, the one would actually have been destroyed and replaced by the other.  But in reality, that is to say, in psychological experience, there is not one whit the less of urgency, anxiety, compulsiveness, etc.  The problem still remains:  how to overcome or escape our anxiety, bad conscience, guilt, compulsion, unconsciousness and instinctuality.”

 

Applying Jung’s comment about “concrete objects” to the interpretation of dreams can be extremely helpful.  To illustrate the point, I will use some specific dreams:

 

I discovered a secret tunnel in my parents’ basement that led to the world outside.  This dream marked a significant turning point for the dreamer.  Hithertofore, she had lived in a too-small psychic space (psychic but as real as the parental basement in her waking experience and just as limiting).  The unconscious structure of that basement served as a filter of her experiences in her grown-up word.  Her childhood home was an unhappy one.  She "lived " in it into adulthood.  

 

I was sitting in a waiting room when Bill came in, loud and boisterous, upsetting everyone in the room.  The analyst asked, “So, what happens when you get into a “waiting room?”  The dreamer remembered that on the day before the dream she had her car serviced at a dealership.  The dealership computer system went down so there was a long delay. She became very angry and complained loudly.  

"And what about Bill?" the analyst inquired, introducing a bit of humor into a delicate situation as they both smiled, silently remembering the film, "What about Bob."  "Bill is a man I work with.  He makes mountains out of molehills."   

Bingo!  The “waiting room” in her psyche was very real and very troubling.  When she got into such a place in her real life, her unconscious "Bill," a very real factor in her psychic economy, was her trigger for anger as he grossly exaggerated small issues.  The dreamer had suffered an unconscious complex that had caused her much trouble in her life.  Information delivered by the dream freed her from that complex.

 

In both dreams, it was obvious to the analyst (and probably to others) what the dreamers’ problems were, but she knew a direct approach to them would raise up great resistances and would serve no purpose.  The analyst was also well aware that people will accept a lesson from a dream that not even a saint could deliver with mere words.  

Both these examples illustrate another, sometimes extremely subtle fact:  What is real is that which has real effects in the world.  They also point to the ways dreams can help us to, "overcome or escape our anxiety, bad conscience, guilt, compulsion, unconsciousness and instinctuality.”   

---

Jung, C.G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections

The Spirit of Our Times

In our country we are living through a frantic time in which there is an urgency to do something yet an ignorance of just what to do.  As ordinary citizens all we can do is vote, and a single vote seems inadequate to the challenges we face.  

 

The spirit of our times may come from a deeper place, from the spirit of the depths seeking expression.  At the end of his long life, C.G. Jung wrote that he merely sits at the stream and dips from it from time to time.  Something about study of Jungian Psychology helps put us in touch with and dip from the spirits of the depths.

 

The very thing that the depths seem to want to express and give voice to may be the "crippledness of the world."  No small wonder that many of us would rather seek a stream with only consummate beauty to offer, a nice desire but an idealism sure to alienate us from the depths.

 

In Jung's Redbook, he describes a fantasy of encountering the anchorite in the desert.  The anchorite is symbolic of his desire for a removed and remote contemplation of the world rather than intense encounter of his real self with the real world.  Jung found he could live out his real anchorite impulses at Bollingen, his retreat home, but had an obligation to live out other parts of himself by plunging into and encountering the real world.  

 

If Jung left us with an enduring message it is:  Be real, live an intensely felt life in a real but crippled world.  It is our human obligation, the payment we owe our ancestors.  How?  By meeting every moment with all the integrity, we can muster even though we fall short.  Of course, we cannot know how well we have succeeded or how it will turn out.  But then, neither did the Son of Man.

Vote.