The C. G. Jung Society of Queensland
Newsletter July - September 2005
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The C.G. Jung Society of Queensland

 

 

 

Newsletter                                                                  July - September 2005, No 44

 

 

President’s Letter

 

Large Group Therapeutic Processes

 

 

Although Jung's ideas about archetypes and the collective unconscious can comprise a psychology of nations, peoples and cultures, we tend to think of Jungian psychology primarily as an individual intra-psychic process. Sometimes we see its application in small group processes. In general, we think of it as a specialised field at the fringes of conventional psychology which itself is at the edge of conventional human behaviour as expressed in the everyday world. But there are some therapists whose aim is to place Jungian processes at the centre of everyday group interactions and especially at the cultural, national or international level. Anyone who has ever attended a therapeutic workshop will know about the group dynamic: a kind of independent life in the group that is more than the sum of the individual attendees' processes.

 

In our Jungian professional development workshops last year, we listened to case presentations by workshop attendees. Then we offered back intuitions, thoughts or sensations that came to us as we listened to the cases. Such feedback has meaning for the case presenter.

 

In the Robert Bosnak workshop recently, we listened to a dream from a workshop participant. We responded similarly, offering whatever had come into our awareness while listening to the dream: body sensations, images or intuitions.

 

At work here is the Jungian trust in the value of unconscious offerings from the group. To some extent these reflections are individual reflections but there is also a large group component which can be seen when the aggregate of responses seems to make a group statement or to introduce an idea that was not part of the individual responses.

 

The unconscious wealth of a group reveals itself outside the world of therapy too. Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of Democracy describes such an experience. In 1986, he was part of an anti-nuclear peace march camping and walking across the USA. Sheltering from a huge and demoralising thunderstorm and already down from eighteen hundred to four hundred, they argued for two hours whether to march through the countryside and cities in tightly organised groups or to string out loosely and chat to people along the way. The topic threatened to destroy the group. He writes:

 

As it proceeded, I noticed that speakers were increasingly taking into account what previous people had said. Even though there was no back-and-forth, and no facilitator, the monologues began to sound more and more like dialogue. I was REALLY blown away when one speaker after another began saying things that had only occurred to me moments before. I heard the ambivalences and nuances in my own head and heart being spoken and wrestled with in the public conversation I was part of. I started to sense us all working our way into what some native peoples call "One Big Mind." From the inside, I could feel that big Peace March Mind struggling to come to terms with all the elements of this difficult problem that it faced. It was doing just what my own mind does: "Well, let's see, if I do THIS, then.... but no, that wouldn't be so good. So I should try THIS, and then... But I need to take into account this other thing... etc." [1]

In the end both strategies were adopted and the march proceeded successfully.

As I stepped out into the flooded fields I suddenly realized that no decision had been made. No motion was made. No vote was taken. No one checked for consensus. Nothing was announced or recorded. The group just "knew" how we were going to behave as we marched down the streets and highways of America. And, in subsequent months, the overwhelming majority of us did just that.[2]

In summary, Atlee quotes Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onandaga Iroquois who said of his tribal council tradition : "We just keep talking until there's nothing left but the obvious truth."

A few pioneers are working to bring insights and therapeutic processes from Jungian psychology into practical use in large groups and even into society as a whole. Andrew Samuels, author of Politics on the Couch, suggested to a Brisbane audience recently that therapists and psychologists should offer their insights to political or community groups in which they are involved. In the workshop, he explored the topic of psychology and politics, not through debate, but by asking us about our earliest political memory. Mine involved a visit at age four in Ireland to the home of a Protestant rector and his family. Coming from a Catholic family, I was aware of entering a different world. I sensed a gulf between our lives and the lives of the children in the rector's house. I enjoyed playing with the children and longed to visit again but it never happened although we lived a stone's throw from one another. Others at the Samuels workshop had memories of moving house or country as the direct result of political upheaval. Some had been deeply affected, while their age was still measured in single digits, by the restricted roles of women, by political events such as Kennedy's assassination and by other personal experience directly the result of political developments in society at large. The point of Samuels' exercise was to get beyond intellectual and entrenched political debate and into political experience. As a group, we could feel the suffering these political moments held for each of us. The exercise showed us how consensus in the group could form through our experience whereas, in the normal debating atmosphere that constitutes political discourse, the same group would almost certainly polarise along the left/right political spectrum. In his workshop, Samuels described working with political groups, e.g., the British Labour party, in exactly the same way: bringing the group to the experience of politics and away from the polarised intellectualisation of politics. He writes: “It is difficult to present therapeutic thinking about politics so that mainstream politicians – for example, a Democratic senator or a Labour Party committee – will take it seriously. And the problem is not much reduced when the politicians and organisations are 'alternative'. But it can be done.”[3]

 

Arnold Mindell offers Process Oriented Psychology to large groups, especially conflicted groups,  through what he terms Worldwork. The work entails being in the process of whatever happens when a large group comes together. Alchemically, conflict produces heat that can then be used for the process of transformation. For example, in a Jewish/Arab Worldwork group of fifty people in Israel:

 

“The group work has been very intense. There has been so little contact between the sides (Arabs and Jews) for so long in this part of the world. The seminar started with every moment being a hot spot in the group, whether someone suggested moving some chairs, or whether we were talking about the Arab/Israeli conflict. It was relieving to go deeply into it.”[4]

 

Arnold Mindell comments:

 

"For me, the basic problem with democracy is that it is about power. It is not about awareness. Awareness is a very different kind of paradigm. Awareness has to do with noticing what is happening in yourself, in your interactions, awareness of your signal changes, awareness of your dreams, awareness of deepest things. So while cultures aim for democracy, we want deeper democracy in which awareness is central, not just power."[5]

I have spent the past two months promoting in eastern Australia the work of Jim Rough, a social innovator whose main interest is in bringing together groups of people from all walks of life to have “a different kind of political conversation”. Although not a therapist, Rough's work is in the same vein as that of Samuels and Mindell. All three work with processes largely rooted in Jungian psychology. Rough facilitates groups so that the usual 'conversations' take place first. Using many sheets of paper, group topics are identified. Problems, solutions and impediments are listed. Polarised debate is avoided by the channelling of objections through the facilitator into a separate line of thinking that becomes fully expressed (but not debated). The group exhausts its conscious ideas and usually enters a place of not knowing where to go next, a place of emptiness and depression. Somehow, by staying with the discomfort and the not knowing, a breakthrough can occur. It is as if the group as an entity has to go within itself to find something of value that needs to come out.

Rough's goal is to apply Dynamic Facilitation in the Wisdom Council, a group of twenty four individuals, randomly chosen from a large organisation, a city, a state or a nation. These individuals although small in number represent the larger group to which they belong.  They choose what topics to discuss over a two-day to one week period. In the end they make statements or offer choices and broadcast these to the neighbourhood, the city etc., perhaps at a city meeting or on local television. The intention is not to make decisions or to achieve any particular goal but to stimulate a particular type of discourse in the greater community, a discourse that is heartfelt and that has arisen from a deeper place than the usual political pronouncements. Beneficial results often emerge.

One experimental Wisdom Council prevented a controversial Walmart superstore getting established in a town. Surprisingly, another Wisdom Council of pro- and anti-abortionists succeeded in making a consensual statement about abortion. This last example highlights a key feature of the council: getting people beyond polarised positions.

Rough says: "I've always been interested in why, if creativity exists at all on the planet, we don't apply it to the crucial collective problems we face? When there is a possibility of war, for instance, or global warming, we don't seem to come together as a society and get creative. Instead, we ignore the problems or battle back and forth over partial solutions until a crisis confronts us. Generally, I found that the usual approaches for facilitating did not work for these big “wicked” problems. I experimented with the perspectives of Jungian psychology, heart-felt dialogue, analytical thinking, and creative problem solving. Blending these approaches I found something that did work."[6]

 

Best Regards,

Frank Coughlan
President

fcoughla@bigpond.net.au

[1]              http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_decisions.htm

[2]              Ibid.

[3]              Samuels, Andrew. Politics on the Couch (Karnak Press, 2001), p. xi

[4]              Gary Reiss, http://www.garyreiss.com/report.htm

[5]              http://www.pacificinstitute-europe.org/w_w-e.html

[6]              http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/files_people/Rough_Jim.htm

 

 

 

 

Upcoming events at the Jung Society

 

July 2005

The Enneagram and Awareness

A Presentation by Yaro Starak

 

Thursday July 7, 2005

7:30 – 9:30 pm

St. Mary’s House, Cn Merivale and Peel Sts, South Brisbane

 Members and concession: $5; non-members $10

 

Awareness is what life's all about. At least, it's what I'd like my life to be about. At the end of it I want to be able to say, truthfully, that I was aware - awake, attentive to what's going on, not dreaming or out to lunch'.

I don't mean aware all the time of course, but often, increasingly, to the best of my ability. Naturally I like having lovely feelings, enjoying peak experiences when they arrive, perhaps even taking off into mystical realms. But when they don't include experiencing who is in receipt of all such goodies, why then they're a sort of lapse into unawareness and (at best) pleasant vacations from the main business of my life - namely being really aware. Which means self-aware, and ultimately Self-aware.

This talk will reflect on the Enneagram's typology as a tool for developing self-awareness.

Yaro Starak, B.A., M.S.W., Adv.Dip.SW., Dip. GT. Yaro finished his undergraduate studies majoring in psychology at the University of Manitoba and later his post graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He continued further studies at the University of Toronto specialising in adult education, group dynamics and supervision. He trained as a Gestalt Therapist at the Toronto Gestalt Institute and after graduating he became a faculty member of that Institute for four years.

Over the past twenty five years Yaro has been teaching and training various professional groups and Gestalt groups in Brisbane, Tasmania,  Sydney and overseas in Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, Germany, Estonia, Italy and Spain.

Yaro has published and co-edited four books on Gestalt Therapy and Group Process, three training manuals and numerous articles in several international journals on group work, Gestalt Therapy, Family Therapy, Alternative living, Men’s issues and Deep Psychology. He is a founding member of GANZ and a regular presenter at the Psychotherapy in Australia Conference and the GANZ conference.

 

 

 

 

 

See page 10 for a list of new additions to the library.

If there are any books that you think should be purchased for the library, please let Marie Sinclair know before the end of July so that she can place an order by the beginning of August.

 

 


 
 

August 2005

 

Our True Colours - an introduction to the Human Energy Field

A presentation by Ruth Doherty

 

 

Thursday August 4, 2005, 7:30-9:30 pm

St. Mary’s House, Cn Merivale and Peel Sts, South Brisbane

Members and concession: $5; non-members $10

 

 

Dr Ruth Doherty MB BCh DCH MRCPsych is a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and healer. She graduated from the National University of Ireland in 1983 and obtained her membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London in 1991. She worked as a consultant psychiatrist in hospital practice in Ireland and New Zealand and had a successful private practice in psychotherapy.

Ruth has been aware of the human energy field from a very early age. She combined her extensive personal observations and professional experience to develop powerful yet gentle methods of working which promote healing and help the individual to grow toward their full potential in an integrated and harmonious way. In response to requests for training in the methods which she had developed, Ruth began teaching in 1991 and has been teaching full time since 1999.

In 1994 she founded the Annwn Institute to bring together the professionalism of allopathic medicine with the vision and approach of the complementary disciplines. In 2003 the Institute relocated to Australia where the Elarius organisation was established.

The Elarius Process was developed as a synthesis of all previous teachings and the new Antipodean framework. The Elarius organisation also provides training programmes for professionals in practice in orthodox or complementary healthcare.

 


 

 

September 2005

 

Celtic Mythology and the Other World

A Presentation and Workshop by Sarah Halford

Jungian analyst

 

Please Note that the evening presentation will take place on the

 SECOND THURSDAY of the month at the Quaker Meeting House

 INSTEAD of the usual first Thursday.

 

Thursday September 8, 2005, 7:30-9:30 pm

Quaker Meeting House, 10 Hampson St., Kelvin Grove

Members and concession: $5; non-members $10

 

Workshop: Celtic Mythology and Spring Equinox

 

 Saturday September 17, 2005

Members: $50; Non-members: $60; concession $40
9:30 am – 3:30 pm. Quaker Meeting House, 10 Hampson St., Kelvin Grove

The healing power of storytelling is an important element of this workshop.

Celtic myth and festival are embedded in experiences of the land. As they follow the seasonal round of the year, they provide access to a symbolic perspective on aspects of the individuation process and psychopathology. In this workshop we will focus on the mythic themes in the stories of Finn MacCumhaill and those associated with the season around Spring Equinox.  At this time, returning light/life hidden since Winter Solstice breaks out in new growth and generation. As the world of nature turns green, Finn comes of age and awakens to his own powerful nature.


Sarah Halford is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Brunswick, Maine, USA. She is president of the Training Board of the Boston Jung Institute and is on the teaching faculty of the Institute. She frequently lectures for the Brunswick Jung Center and other Jungian groups. Originally from Oxfordshire, England, she has lived half her life in the US. Her background is in teaching religion and mythology.

For the past several years, her teaching and research have been in Celtic Mythology and the seasonal festivals of the cross quarter days and the equinoxes and solstices. The importance of place and the experience of the land that underlie story and ritual are an important part of her presentations. She also includes clinical material through an exploration of an aspect of psychopathology that resonates with the story and ritual of a particular season.

To reserve your place at the workshop, please use the form on Page 11 of this newsletter.

 

 

 
The C.G. Jung Institute of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts

 

INVITES YOU TO A 2 DAY CLINICAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR

 

 “MINING THE BANK OF JUNG’S CLINICAL INTUITIONS” 

 

27-28 August, 2005

Mount Warning Conference Room, Greenmount Beach Resort, Coolangatta

 

 

The 21st Century clinical environment is radically different from the one Jung operated in. At the heart of this seminar is an invitation for us to explore how, in our practices, we are still informed or inspired by certain Jungian ideas or intuitions which grip us individually, and why. The seminar is also intended to offer space for us to consider what we have done with Jung’s clinical intuitions (including how we might be moving away from, or towards them) or how we have re-worked them into something which works specifically for us and our clients / patients / analysands.

 

Over two consecutive days members of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts from NSW, ACT, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and New Zealand will discuss these questions with the group of seminar attendees. Presenters and moderators will include Andre de Koning, Leon Petchkovsky, Giles Clark, Craig San Roque, Margaret Caulfield, Patrick Burnett, Lesley Devereaux, Joy Norton, Chris Milton and Sue Austin. As with the previous Professional Development Seminar, a meeting will be arranged for Friday evening, 26th August, at which one of the co-chairs of the CG Jung Institute will be available to discuss the future of ANZSJA’s analytic training on the east coast of Australia and in New Zealand.

 

Date:          Friday night 26 (optional) – 8pm – 9:30 pm – Q/A session about training

                  Saturday 27th August and Sunday 28th August 2005

Times:        As per programme

Venue:       The Mount Warning Conference Room, Greenmount Beach Resort, 3 Hill Street, Coolangatta

 

Hotel reservations available at a discount rate at the hotel for conference attendees

                        Free phone 1800 073211

                        E-mail sales@greenmountresort.com.au 

                       Web site www.greenmountresort.com.au

 

                 

                  Cost (inc. light lunch):       $290 for both days

                                                         $265 for both days, if booked and paid    for before 30th June

 

                  No refund for cancellation after 12th August 2005.      

 

For further details of all seminars see ANZSJA’s website at: http://www.anzsja.org.au, (go to Events Listing). Bookings can be arranged by emailing pds@anzsja.org.au or calling Lenore Kulakauskas on +61 2 9365 7750. Other queries should be directed to Margaret Caulfield on +61 2 9380 5409.  

 

Background: At the core of Jungian theory is an articulation of a defining and organising paradigm for the 21st Century's understanding of subjectivity and depth psychodynamics. Embedded in Jung's theory of complexes is a model of dynamic patterning which operates across scale, offering ways of engaging with the question of Self versus radical Other which dominates contemporary thought and clinical practice. If properly engaged with, an awareness of the implications of Jung's understandings offers exciting and challenging possibilities for post-Jungian praxis, already arguably the most radically intersubjectivist of all the depth psychology methods. Just what this 'proper engagement' might constitute is at the heart of this clinical forum and our ongoing debates about the nature of a Jungian 'method'. Whatever 'proper engagement' turns out to be, it must gesture towards, and resonate with, the shocking nature of spirit, creativity, and intimacy.

In the Western world, both the cultural landscape and the nature of clinical practice have changed markedly in the last decade or so. Post-modernism, the mass media, radical bio-materialism, and the technological explosion will have impacted on the way we and our clients/ patients think about life and the search for meaning (see, Giegerich, The Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, Vol 6, No 1, 2004). No doubt we are all exploring the implications of these changes in ourselves and in our work. Some examples that come to mind include:

 

How do we think about our work in a culture where people are enthusiastic about working with personal trainers and life coaches to address their struggles, but look on therapy with an increasingly critical eye?

 

How do we see our work in relation to the rise in accountability measures, such as evidence-based practice?

 

How are we making our Jungian tradition relevant in multi-cultural environments – what can our tradition bring to community health issues, such as addiction (eg., youth binge drinking), violence, and aboriginal health?

 

What changes are we aware of in our practices in terms of the changing material which people bring into analysis? How do we think about the increasing incidence of personality disorders in people seeking our help? How do we work with people who struggle in these ways, given that personality disorder (as we know it) was not something Jung encountered? (Or was it?)

 

How are we, as clinicians, bringing the potential embedded in Jung’s ideas to bear in these changing social, psychological and intellectual contexts?

 

 

                                                The Heroes Within

 

On April 7, Don Siebert presented to us in condensed form his workshop on the “Archetypal Heroes Within”. This workshop is based, with permission, on an expansion of the theories in Carol S. Pearson’s book The Hero Within: Six Archetypes we live by.  In her preface to The Hero Within, Carol Pearson writes:

 

Concepts from developmental psychology basic to this book are the belief that all human beings go through phases and stages, and that the successful completion of one stage makes possible movement to the next…  Embedded in each stage is a developmental task. (p. xxii)

 

The original six archetypes presented in The Hero Within have been expanded to twelve: Innocent, Orphan, Wanderer, Jester, Caretaker, Warrior, Magician, Ruler, Lover and Sage.

 

These represent stages in the hero’s journey, in which the hero undertakes a task, defeats the dragon and finds the treasure. In Jung’s terminology, this is the journey of individuation.  Pearson believes that we move through the stages characterised by these archetypes in a spiral rather than a linear motion. “The Innocent and the Orphan set the stage: the Innocent lives in the prefallen state of grace; the Orphan confronts the reality of the Fall…. The Wanderer begins the task of finding oneself apart from other; the Warrior learns to fight to defend oneself and to change the world in one’s own image.” (p. 4)

 

In Don’s workshop, we discovered the archetypes that seemed to have the most importance for our lives at present when we completed the Heroic Myth Index questionnaire developed by Pearson and her colleagues. We then formed small groups around the archetype that interested us the most, to answer a set of questions that helped us to discover how the archetype plays out in our way of facing the world.

 

Here is an example of the types of responses that have come up in Don’s previous workshops for the Wanderer Archetype.

 

Goal:                                        uniqueness, autonomy, independence

Worst fear:                                lack of control, rules, being trapped

Response to the dragon:                       rebellion, withdrawal, kill

Spiritual quest:                          to be true to oneself, to discover personal meaning

Nature of relationships:               independent, freedom, transient, low on commitment

Desired learning outcomes:       to explore, discover, find our for one’s self, self reliance, enjoy freedom

Treatment of emotions:              detach from others, explore own

Health/body:                             easily neglected

Approach to work:                     done in spurts, has to be interesting

Attitude to the world:                  wealth is a means to an end only, not important for its own sake.

Developmental task: