Apology

In our last newsletter, we mentioned that we would be holding a two day workshop in Sandplay Therapy  with Ruth Amman. This is not the case. However, she will be giving an evening lecture to the Jung Society on  17th October, 2006.entitled "Grandmother, mother and daughter. Joys and pains of handing over feminine values".

Ruth will be in Brisbane to conduct a five-day Sandplay therapy workshop for the Expressive Therapies Institute (see under Bulletin Board).

Notice

The Jung Society is looking for an auditor who would be willing to check our financial figures once a year prior to our AGM. If you are willing to donate a little time to assist us with this, please contact Frank Coughlan on 3356 1127 or Brendan McMahon on 0402 583 701.

Reflections on Developmental Neurology

and its relevance to Therapeutic Work involving Imagery

Robyn Brady

“We are always in a perpetual state of being created and creating ourselves.”

 (D.J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are .Guilford Press, 1999, p. 221).

Siegel’s work is an extraordinary synthesis of modern research in neurobiology, attachment research, and psychotherapy and follows the lines of thought of Jungian analysts Craig San Roque and Patrick Burnett in their professional development seminars with the Society in 2004. I am presenting this outline because of its relevance to imagery in the therapeutic context.

I.  How the mind works

What is our Self? “An internally organised cluster of attitudes, expectations, meanings, and feelings” [1], says Siegel, each element of which relates to an engrained pattern of activation or connection across sets of neurons, genetically influenced and modified by our social and environmental experiences. Moreover, we have not just one self but a number of self-states, each of which corresponds to a particular set of circumstances, (e.g. mother, doctor, lover), varying degrees of authenticity with respect to our private feelings and varying degrees of compatibility!

According to modern neuro-physiological thinking, neuronal connections and brain development follow the principles of ‘complexity theory’. This theory describes the evolution of complex patterns in non-linear systems, e.g. clouds. Such ‘dynamical systems’ are characterised self-organising capacities, are non-linear, and have emergent patterns with recursive characteristics[2]. The resultant patterns, reinforced by that recursive nature of development, contain ‘attractor states’ (habits, reflex behaviour patterns, perceptual biases) which tend toward continuity and order. However, the system is always striving towards increased complexity, which requires a balance between the stability and flexibility of the system’, i.e. between rigidity and chaos.

The mind is striving towards complexity and wholeness, usually despite varying degrees of internal conflict and segmental under-development.

II.  Interpersonal experiences and brain development

Man is not an island, and the developing brain achieves most of its complexity through its close interpersonal interactions. A secure attachment with a care-giver is necessary for the development of auto-noietic consciousness (the sense of self across time), social cognition, autobiographical memory and narrative. Shared mental states (the experience of “feeling felt”) ground our experiences and allow us to develop a sense of mind: our own and others. Resilience may be not so much a trait but a brain function that emerges as our self-organisational processes develop and are facilitated by interpersonal relationships.

III.  Memory

 ‘The way past events affect future function’[3] is the definition that Siegel uses for memory. Note that this is not restricted to conscious, or ‘explicit’ memory. Memories can be semantic (knowing THAT one did X), autobiographical (recalling the experience of doing X), somatic, perceptual (eg visual, tactile), emotional, and behavioural, but the last four are only explicit if they are linked as associations to one of the first two. Even without explicit recall, however, these ‘memories’ influence an individual’s future as an increased likelihood of a particular pattern being activated. Thus in the drive for complexity, previous experiences bias our perception of the evolving present, so that we ‘remember the future’.

How can we recognise these implicit memories? By the emotional, perceptual, physical and behavioural ‘shadows’ they leave on our narratives.

IV.  Integration: the drive towards wholeness and complexity

The evolutionary specialisation of the brain has resulted in highly complex sub-specialisation of anatomical brain function including major differences in the functions of the left and right hemispheres. Right and left hemispheres can be thought of as having their own distinctive forms of consciousness and ways of inter-acting with other people’s corresponding hemispheres. However, maximal system complexity and optimal function will occur if there is top-bottom, back-front and left-right inter-linking so that all the component parts may create a whole ‘greater than the sum of the parts’, just as in a healthy choir each individual ‘member’ continuously and contingently adjusts itself to the output of the others to create a holistic musical experience.

In order to maintain a protective semi-stability in the face of conflicting experiences or traumatic disruption, dysfunctional states of mind may limit integration or the access to various functions of the brain, as for example in pathological dissociation. Also, for all of us various ways of knowing or responding will have been under-developed and as such will generally remain beyond conscious awareness. As the deaf person does not ‘know’ sound, so the person with under-developed right brain reflective capacities will not “know” that their social cognition and face recognition are handicapped: they may simply recognise frustration in interpersonal communication. Although specific perceptive abilities such as vision and language development have limited later-life acquisition, better integrated pathways can be developed later in life and can allow healthier patterns of relating and thinking.

V.  Therapy

The psychotherapeutic relationship acts in general as a non-judgmental ‘holding of the space’ to facilitate inner healing. Other aspects of a therapeutic attachment relationship include bearing witness, and the co-construction of stories. The gradual re-accessing of painful experiences in the safety of the therapeutic relationship allows new and more healthy linkages to be laid down, which increase ‘response flexibility’ and ‘windows of tolerance’ for painful emotions or traumatic experiences. “When processes become linked within consciousness they can be more strategically and intentionally manipulated, possibly shared, and the outcome of their processing can be adaptively altered”[4]. Also but no less importantly, “the experience of being understood develops a mental model or inner expectation that needs are important and goals are achievable”[5]. This creates a mental state of optimism which biases the future towards more healthy experiences. “Feeling felt” honours the unique meaning of the moment for a person, rather than providing an intellectual understanding of the generic experience.

Studies of hypnosis in children and adults[6] suggest the existence of a so-called ‘hidden observer’ or inner guide coordinating the integrative process and seeking the balance between excessive rigidity on the one hand, and chaos on the other. It may be that the best therapists are facilitators and supporters of this inner guide, rather than explicit remedial agents.

VI.  Imagery and integration

Siegel believes that experiences of creative flow such as free-flow painting or music facilitates integration, providing symbols which may come as “ a hunger…for whatever it is we lack…”[7]. Poised as the symbol is between the swirling mass of non-conscious representations and a consciousness eager for a unifying view, symbolic imagery may be one of the most powerful integrative capabilities of the emerging individual.

Says Siegel, “Guided imagery provides direct access to pre-linguistic symbolic imagination and processes driven by implicit memory… Emotional states become accessible in the form of images that they can come to respect. ..A more coherent narrative evolves, with a… new conscious awareness of self and others emotional processes …and [an] enriching sense of meaning in life”[8]. Nonverbal, symbolic representations in particular, because of their right hemispheric processing, receive direct input from primary emotions and directly output to the pre-frontal areas controlling affect regulation, response flexibility, and autobiographical sense of self, all of which have dramatic potential to alter subsequent behaviour and systemic functioning.

VII.  Respect

Modern psychology is bursting with new ‘processes’ which the practitioner can add to their “tool-kit” for selective use in their therapeutic alliances. But it is good to remember at this point the respect with which Jung holds the image itself, which is no less than that which one must have for the individual in whom it arose.

It is interesting that neurobiological studies suggest that shame and humiliation can be the biological outcome of un-repaired relational disruptions. Suppression of vitality follows because the individual feels that they cannot acknowledge this aspect of self. Again, the therapeutic process primarily must involve a simple (and yet so challenging) honouring and respecting of the individual and their emergent symbolic expressions.

Siegel quotes from Loevinger and Ogawa in saying[9]:  ‘Integration is not a function of the self, it is what the self is…therefore the failure to integrate salient experience represents profound distortion in the self system. When salient experience must be unnoticed, disallowed, unacknowledged, or forgotten, the result is incoherence in the self structure. Inter-connections among experiences cannot be made, and the resulting gaps in personal history compromise both the complexity and the integrity of the self… [When] experience is acknowledged and accepted, integration inevitably follows, because the self cannot help seeking meaning and coherence from experience…”

Upcoming events at the Jung Society

July 2006

The Alchemical Renaissance of the Sacred Feminine

A New paradigm, A New Cycle of Teachings

An impassioned view and presentation given by

Anna Davidovich

Thursday 6 July 2006, 7:30 pm

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

$10 ($5 - Members and concession)

“Unless spirit animates a social or political institution, it cannot initiate anyone into a higher state… Patriarchy can no longer recover this capacity… it cannot align itself with the creative spirit of the time, because that spirit is feminine, radial and transformative.” David Tacey: Remaking Men

“The feminine has never been positioned in human history as it is today… 

and it carries the radical power of dissolving all structures and dogmas, all

prisons in which we have sought so passionately to imprison ourselves.”

Andrew Harvey ‘Return of the Mother’

The personal and collective re-emergence and reclamation of the Sacred Feminine has the potential to bring about a new paradigm for humanity.   A paradigm urgently needed to meet and radically transform the power and influence of this patriarchal culture on our society, on humanity and the world. What has been absent in our time and culture is a mystical and practical path and passage of awakening that offers a body of knowledge, wisdom teachings, practices and yogas grounded in the primordial principles and alchemical mysteries of the Sacred Feminine. It is this path and its integration into our ordinary lives - into the mystical, the academic and the political - that is the new cycle of teachings.  It has the potential, through each of us individually, to set in motion ripples of change and renaissance in the greater collective – to ignite and establish a sane, compassionate and just society and evolved humanity.

In the manner and appearance of a prophet,

our secret origins, these are born

of woman who still lives inside of us,

though she is hiding from what we’ve become”

Jelaluddin Rumi

Anna Davidovich is known internationally as one of the pioneers and teachers working with the primordial and alchemical mysteries of the feminine principle and sacred feminine.  Anna is a mystic with a passion for the pragmatic and the academic.  Her work, which is informed by a distillation of 35 years of academic passions – including Jungian psychology - artistic pursuits, and immersion in the study and practices of both eastern and western mystical traditions, has brought forward a new cycle of teachings for our times and culture. In early 1988 Anna developed a radical initiatory blue print that gave birth to Unveiled, The Recognition – an experiential retreat opening women to a reawakening and reclaiming of the innate sacred through the feminine mysteries.  This initial work has now evolved into the Unveiled Body of Work, which consists of wisdom teachings, passages of initiation and practical integrations. The Unveiled Work and Rite of Initiation that has been presented in many communities of women – in Hawaii, mainland America, Australia, Europe and Israel – and is at this stage the signature work of the Numina Institute. 

The Numina Institute was established by Anna in 2003, as foundation and container for the Unveiled Body of Work, and is dedicated to the exploration and transmission of the mystical, esoteric and yogic sciences of the Sacred Feminine. Anna’s on going relationship to the work of Carl Jung began with a brief encounter with Jungian analyses in the late 70’s and continued with a more in depth experience that spanned over a five year period through the late 80’s and into the 90’s.  “It is the work of Jung and the writings of many Jungians, that gave me a context and foundation for understanding the non-linear, non-conceptual, radically altering, transformative and ineffable that was emerging from the work I was presenting.  And, it is the language of Jung that continues to render it possible for me to transmit a pragmatic understanding of the ineffable that is the realm of the Sacred Feminine.” 

August 2006

Healing and Growing within the Sacred Circle

A Shamanic Approach to Healing with

Heather Price

Thursday August 3, 2006

7:30 – 9:30 pm

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

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

Heather Price lives and works in Sandgate, a Brisbane bayside suburb, as a shamanic healing practitioner and creative therapist. Her work is based around the teachings of Sacred Circle, which she uses and introduces as an internal map to the psyche. When we understand our own individual maps of our internal territory of our mind, we are able to set our own course for healing. Heather's call to shamanism came about from her personal healing journey, beginning at a very early age when she turned to the trees and nature to help her cope with what was happening around her. She spent a lot of her childhood up trees, finding herself merging with their energy and also had a deep connection to the earth, wild-flowers and horses. Heather has always healed best when in nature and teaches others how to do this at her Shaman's walks, which she conducts for free by the water each month. 

"When we see all creatures of nature as living beings we no longer find ourselves alone on this journey and they are always ready and willing to help us heal. Each direction of the Sacred Circle helps us understand the map of the unconscious and the rich world of symbols archetypes, teachers and healers in the world within".

Heather's teachings for the work that she does have come from many different places. A large proportion has come from her inner guidance and personal journey, and she has been able to name her work and identify with Shamanism since meeting and learning from physical shaman teachers from New Zealand, North America, and Hawaii. She has also found support and affirmation of her work through literature on African and Native American shamanism and healing. Her work is also influenced by the ancient spirits and their teachings of our own indigenous peoples who have helped her to understand the healing power of nature spirits. She has also been fortunate in having support and teachings from indigenous peoples in the physical world.

Having been trained in social science, majoring in counselling, Heather has been exposed to both mainstream and more alternative theories and has chosen the schools of thought that fit best with her own personal healing philosophy. The work of Carl Jung stands out as being the most in line with the ancient teachings of Shamanism.

Like Jung, Heather's journey has observed the unconscious and its power. Finding a way to interpret this knowledge and use it to help others to become their own Healer has been both challenging and fulfilling for Heather. Like Jung,  she has discovered that each person who she works with has their own sense of time and space and if she can stay with them and hold the dream of her clients' healing long enough, they will find their own way, in divine time.

The Teachings of the Sacred Circle and Shamanism help bring the unconscious and subconscious worlds together into conscious reality, to allow clients to have a soulful experience and to trust and fully embrace their journey as they learn to remember who they really are and believe in themselves. It is a journey of Self discovery, healing and tremendous growth.

August 12 Seminar

David Tacey

Jung and the Meaning of the Dark God

&

Jung and the Spiritual and Political Future

Saturday 12 August, 2006, 9:30 am – 4:30 pm (Registration from 9 am)

Greenmount Beach Resort, 3 Hill St., Coolangatta

$80 ($65 - Members and concession)

Jointly held by the C.G. Jung Societies of Qld and Byron

Information: (07) 3511 0167. Booking form on page 11

Jung and the Meaning of the Dark God

In his childhood, Jung was beset by disturbing dreams and visions about a dark image of God. In his early experiences, God was imagined as a giant phallus in an underground chamber near his father's church, and in a daytime vision, which Jung found unbearable and struggled to suppress, he saw God defecating upon the Basel Cathedral and bringing about its destruction. These early experiences set the scene for his life-long engagement with the "dark side", not as an antagonist or enemy of God, but as an aspect of the divine character itself. Jung had a view of the cosmos similar to that of a Chinese Taoist sage: the cosmos was a balance of positive and negative forces, of darkness and light, and the Western image of God had excluded the dark aspect in its intense focus on the light, the positive, the perfect. Freud unveiled the darker side of life and thus brought to humanity a darker image of its character and meaning, and Jung continued this project, but insisted that the darkness was not only a part of our human nature, but belonged to the ultimate character of the divine. Hence for Jung, working on the shadow is not merely a human or personal work of psychological development, but a spiritual work that serves the evolution and development of the holy.

Jung and the Spiritual and Political Future

Jung was the original anti-psychiatrist, who believed that the true patient was not the suffering individual in the clinic, but a sick and ailing Western civilisation. He was not interested in developing a narrow therapy based on the cure of neurosis; nor was he concerned to fit the individual back into an untransformed society. Jung's real aim, in all of his writings and lectures, was a therapy of the West. He felt that the secular condition of Western society could not sustain life for long, and that is because we are essentially 'spiritual' in nature, and have spiritual as well as material needs. What are we to do with these spiritual desires in a post-religious and post-traditional world? Jung was uncertain how to answer this question. For some people, returning to churches and traditional religion was the answer, but most modern people were condemned to personal and often painfully isolating and lonely searches for meaning and value. In Jung's view, it was only a matter of time before the whole of society had to include the spiritual dimension again, and so the concept of secular society was limited and doomed. Instead, new forms of the spirit would arise, and we can only imagine or get glimpses of what these will be.

Dr David Tacey is the author of eight books and eighty-five published essays on Jungian psychology, spirituality, and cultural studies. His most recent books are "How to Read Jung" (London: Granta 2006), and as editor (together with London analyst Ann Casement) "The Idea of the Numinous: Contemporary Jungian and Psychoanalytic Perspectives" (London: Routledge, forthcoming in 2006). Other recent books include “The Spirituality Revolution” (London: Routledge, 2004), and “Jung and the New Age” (London: Routledge, 2001). David Tacey is Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Critical Enquiry, La Trobe University, Melbourne. He teaches courses on spirituality, Jungian psychology, and literature, and his main interest is the recovery of meaning in the contemporary world.

September 2006

Joseph Campbell’s Mythic Journey

A presentation by Jonathan Young

Friday Sept 15, 2006

7:30 – 9:30 pm

Rosicrucian Centre, 156 Norman Avenue, Norman Park

 Members and concession: $8; non-members $12

This exploration of the life and ideas of the world's best know mythologist will focus on the influence of Jungian concepts on Campbell's thinking. The author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces lived a story as fascinating as those he taught. His enormous influence on the Star Wars movies has been acknowledged by George Lucas. This is a rare opportunity to hear one of the leading researchers on Joseph Campbell's work on his first visit down under. Speaking of the importance of Campbell