The C. G. Jung Society of Queensland
Newsletter October - December 2005
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The C.G. Jung Society of Queensland

 

 

 

Newsletter                                                                       October - December 2005, No 45

 

 

President’s Letter

 

 

The Voyage of Bran

 

Sarah Halford, Jungian analyst from Brunswick, Maine, has been engaged for seven years in a thorough study of Celtic Mythology. On Thursday night, 8 September, she told us this story from Irish Celtic mythology of the sea voyage of Bran.

 

Bran as king of Ireland, takes part in a ritual feast at Beltaine (May) aimed at achieving a plentiful harvest in a time when the prospects are not good. Stepping outside momentarily onto the ramparts of the castle, he hears beautiful music, then later in the banquet hall, a beautiful woman appears who tells them about a wonderful land of plenty called the Island of Women. She invites Bran to go there.

 

“Do not fall on a bed of sloth,
Let not thy intoxication overcome thee,
Begin a voyage across the clear sea,
If perchance thou mayst reach the land of women.” [1]

 

She disappears. Next day, heeding her call, he sets sail with a band of men to find this place.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   The short version of his epic journey is that he succeeds. They go ashore on the island and find that this is indeed a land of plenty. They happily spend their time feasting, seemingly for about a year or more, in the company of beautiful women.

 

“Unknown is wailing or treachery
In the familiar cultivated land,
There is nothing rough or harsh,
But sweet music striking on the ear.

'Without grief, without sorrow, without death,
Without any sickness, without debility,
That is the sign of Emain -
Uncommon is an equal marvel.”

Eventually, one of the men longs to go home. The idea gets discussed and grows among them. The woman who invited Bran discourages them. If they go,she says, they can never return. Neither must they set foot on the island of Ireland.

Heedless, they set sail and in due course arrive at the Irish coast. They see people in strange clothes onshore pointing at them. From the boat, Bran introduces himself and his men, telling of his regal status, his vision and their months in the land of women. The people onshore talk among themselves. They say, “We have heard stories of the adventures of Bran. But he lived in Ireland many hundreds of years ago. His stories are in our legends.”

 

Despite the warning, one of the sailors attempts to go ashore. As soon as he sets foot on the beach, he collapses and his body turns into a pile of dust on the sand. Bran and the other sailors set sail and are never heard from again.

 

Sarah went on to draw out our thoughts, from a Jungian perspective, about the meaning of this story. After some discussion, there was agreement that Bran is on an individuation journey though clearly one deeply related to community. (Thus, we are reminded that our efforts to individuate are as much for our community as they are for ourselves.) We set out from our existing place of “comfort” when we sense that a better way of being is possible. You might say this is what drives us into therapy when we feel dissatisfied with our existing orientation to life. If we persist, we do find a new place, a new psychic orientation, a way of being in life that nurtures our psychic selves. The psyche feasts in this new place, as it were.

 

Yet, how many of us want to return to that earlier place of comfort, at least for a while? But, what happens when we go back to our old friends, when we tell them about our new life and the nourishment for the soul we have found, through months or years of therapy, for example? We find that the story dies as surely as the sailor who went ashore. Our old friends hear our story about the therapeutic journey, for example, but we might as well live a hundred years apart for all it means to them.

 

Nevertheless, the communication from offshore is not meaningless. One can surmise that the travellers’ tales engender curiosity in some about this strange land beyond the shore of their known world. The seeds of desire for the voyage must surely become instilled in many in this way.

 

Whither go Bran and his men? In the mythology, there are many magical islands in the Atlantic ocean, each with the promise of some greater experience for the explorer. Do they find a new island? Do they wander aimlessly? How do they live as they journey? Are they destined for other worlds beyond the Atlantic itself?

 

“Thereupon, to the people of the gathering Bran told all his wanderings from the beginning until that time. And he wrote these quatrains in Ogam[2], and then bade them farewell. And from that hour his wanderings are not known.”

 

 

 

 

Frank Coughlan

President

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Story of Bran quotations taken from http://celt.net/Celtic/Myths/brantxt.html

[2] Celtic alphabet of fifteen consonants and five vowels found as lines or combinations of lines etched on stone. Originally probably inscribed on less enduring materials.

 

 

Upcoming events at the Jung Society

 

October 2005

 

Animal : Image of Divinity

A presentation by Marie Makinson

 

 

Thursday October 6, 2005

7:30 – 9:30 pm

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

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

 

 

This presentation explores animal images that are our primary sacred symbols.   Animal symbols represent not only some of the earliest images of 'the numinous' but also formations of collective contents that reach far into the evolutionary past.

 

 In attending to these images they confront us with the enigma of their essence: the divine aspect of their nature. When they appear in the spontaneous expressions of the psyche - dreams, visions and fantasies - they potentially open us to the riches of animal imagination and connection to the spiritual/instinctive matrix of the psyche. 

 

 Marie Makinson is a resident of the Northern Rivers region of NSW. After many years of practicing as an alternative therapist specialising in women’s health she left the area and went overseas to study Jung's psychology. She undertook a classical training in Jungian analysis and is now a member of the Guild of Analytical Psychology and Spirituality in London. She is a mother and grandmother and has a developing interest in animal imagery and the religious dimension of psyche.

 

 

November 2005

 

Jung in the Consulting Room Today : One Analyst’s Perspective

 

A presentation by Patrick Burnett

 

 

Thursday November 3, 2005, 7:30-9:30 pm

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

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

 

 

Much of the interest in Jung’s theory revolves around the discussion of cultural and social issues but, of course, Jung was first and foremost a practising psychotherapist. In this talk, Patrick will outline how Jung’s psychological outlook which was formed in the early twentieth century has influenced his own work as an analyst today. There will be a number of examples from his practice and those curious about what Jungian analysis actually is will find it interesting.

 

Patrick Burnett completed his analytical training at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and is presently in private practice in northern New South Wales. His other professional interests revolve around his ongoing interest in dreams and the contemporary science of consciousness and its relationship to Jungian Psychology.


 

 

Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul through Creativity

 

A one-day seminar with

 

David Rosen, M.D.

McMillan Professor of Analytical Psychology

& Jungian Analyst,

Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, U.S.A.

 

 

Saturday November 19, 9:30 am – 4:30 pm

Gold Coast location to be announced

Cost:    $120

$90 Members of the Jung Societies of Qld and Byron

$80 Concession (Student / pension)

 

 

This presentation will cover: understanding depression and the quest for meaning, knowing suicide and its creative potential, and egocide and transformation (an innovative Jungian humanistic therapeutic paradigm).  Egocide and transformation entail healing depressive and suicidal states through the creative technique of active imagination.  In other words, the symbolic death of the destructive ego (shadow) and false self as well as subsequent creative expressions lead to the birth of the true self.  Dr. Rosen will also talk about crisis points such as adolescence, mid-life, divorce, and loss of a loved one and how egocide can help.  In addition, this format will allow for the brief presentation and discussion of an actual case (a depressed and suicidal patient).  Participants will learn how the egocide and transformation model is applied and how it works.  The patient, guided by the therapist, analyzes to death or symbolically kills negative aspects of the ego and shadow (egocide and shadowcide) and the related depressive and suicidal state is transformed through the creative arts.  Suicide is literally a dead end, whereas egocide involves a symbolic death and rebirth experience.  Egocide and transformation allow the suffering melancholic individual to live, heal the soul through creativity, and find meaning in life. 

 

For information, please call Anne on (07) 3511 0167.

To book, please use the booking form on page 7 of this newsletter.

 


 

December 2005

 

The Story of Carl Gustav Jung

 

Film Evening and Christmas Party

 

Thursday December 1, 2005, 7:30-9:30 pm

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

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

 

 

This will be an opportunity to get to know each other better over food and wine. The evening will include the showing of the BBC films “The Story of Carl Gustav Jung” that were recently donated to the Society.

 

Please bring a plate of food to share if you can.

 

Wine and juice will be provided by the Society.

 

 

 

 

 

 From the Librarian

Marie Sinclair: mbs03@bigpond.net.au

 

Up-coming Additions to the Library

 

To whet your appetites, here are the titles of some of the books we have ordered and are expecting in due course from Inner City Books, Canada. Visit their website at http://www.innercitybooks.net/

 

Brinton Perera, Sylvia                  The scapegoat complex : towards a mythology of Shadow and guilt

Edinger, Edward                         Encounter with the self: William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job

Furth, Greg                                 The secret world of drawings: a Jungian approach to healing through art

Gardner, Robert                          The rainbow serpent: bridge to consciousness

Hannah, Barbara                         The inner journey: essays on Jungian psychology

Harris, Judith                               Jung and yoga

Russack, Neil                             Animal guides

Stephenson Bond, D.                  The archetype of renewal

Von Franz, Marie Louise             Redemption motifs in fairy tales

Young-Eisendrath, Polly              Hags and heroes: a feminist approach to Jungian therapy with couples

 

 

 

Notes on Borrowing

Only financial members may borrow from the library – a maximum of two books for a maximum period of two months.

 

Please call our librarian, Marie Sinclair, on (07) 3371-1285 or email mbs03@bigpond.net.au, if you would like to come over and browse through the library or have any of the books brought to one of our monthly meetings

 

 

Marie Sinclair


 

 

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

 

The Recyclability of Madness

 

a 2-day clinical professional development seminar

 

Canberra, Saturday and Sunday, 5 - 6 November 2005, 9:30 – 4:30

 

Jung wanted to know how the human mind reacted to the sight of its own destruction. He thought psychiatry’s renunciation of the symbolic in favour of normative functionality was ‘that biological reaction that seizes upon the so-called healthy mind in the presence of a mental illness.’  What else, then, can be done with madness?

 

These days analysis makes use of the contagion of madness: empathy, vicarious introspection, transference / counter-transference are all phenomena through which something is co-created, and differently experienced by analyst and analysand. In daydreams, fantasies, bodily sensations and worries the mind of the clinician becomes an instrument which may move the eruptions of the unconscious into a shared space, and therefore potentially able to be symbolized.

 

What are the limits to this? Can all madness be recycled into something creative? How do we know when a form of madness cannot be recycled through us? Clinical presentations on this topic will be offered by Giles Clark, Craig San Roque, Pam d’Rozario, Sarah Gibson, John Merchant, and Sue Austin. Respondents will include Joy Norton, Kate Chambers, Alison Clark and Leon Petchkovsky. Small group discussion will be facilitated by Susan Pollard and Margaret Caulfield.

 

My Name is Sabina Spielrein, a recent psychological film biography which touches many of the elements of recycling madness will be screened on the first day and followed with a panel discussion.

 

Saturday and Sunday, 5-6 November 2005, 9:30 – 4:30

Crosbie-Morrison Building, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Clunies Ross Street, Canberra

On Friday 4 November, 8 – 9:30 pm, Margaret Caulfield, co-chair of training, will be available to discuss the future of ANZSJA’s analytic training.

 

Cost (includes light lunch)           $265 for both days (if paid before 23 September)

                                                $290 for both days (register by 21 October please)

                                                No refund for cancellation after 21 October

 

Bookings and enquiries about accommodation options can be made by e-mail: pds@anzsja.org.au or by phoning Lenore Kalakauskas on 02 9365 7750.  Other enquiries: Margaret Caulfield – 02 9380 5409.

 

 

 


 

Bulletin Board

 

The Bulletin Board briefly lists upcoming events that might be of interest to members. For fuller information, please contact the persons named.

 

Two Part Course on Christian Mystics
Patrick Oliver will be offering a two-part series on the Christian mystics on the afternoons (12noon for 12:30pm to 5pm) of Saturday 1st October and 8th October at the Stillpoint Centre, Toowong. These two afternoons will
include topics such as: What is Christian mysticism? A brief tour through Christian mysticism; Seasons of the mystical journey; Some temptations in a mystical life; Discernment and mysticism; Understanding mystical phenomena; Christian mysticism and practical action.

The cost of the two part course is $60 ($45 students/concession). Contact Stillpoint on 3217.8992 for enquiries/bookings. Visit Stillpoint's website at http://www.stillpoint.org.au/ .

 

 

Creativity Group using Art Therapy Techniques :

Painting the heroic journey with its transformative archetypal symbolism. To be held for 6 weeks starting on Tuesday 4 October, from 1 to 3 pm. At Ahimsa House, 26 Horan St., West End (opposite the State School). $20 per session. Deposit $20. Early Bird price $90 for 6 sessions. Contact Pam Bouma on 3420 5169.

 

 

 

 

Booking form for David Rosen Seminar, Gold Coast, November 19, 2005

 

 

Attached please find my cheque or money order, made out to the C.G. Jung Society of Queensland,

 for (circle the one that applies)

 

$120                 $90 (Jung Society member)                   $80 (concession)

 

Name:  _______________________________________________________________

 

Profession:       ______________________________________________________

 

Address:          _________________________________________________________