The C.G. Jung Society of Queensland

President’s Letter

Dear Readers,

Mind and Body and Other Realities

For this last quarter of 2007, we look forward to more lectures that will stimulate our thinking about the psyche in the world. In October, our speaker will be Jungian analyst Sarah Halford, from Maine, USA.  This will be Sarah’s second visit to our Society, the last one being two years ago when she charmed us with Celtic mythology and her sensitivity to nature and the seasons. Her talk on 4 October entitled “Ecstasy: Nature’s Way of Healing” is perfectly timed for Spring when mind and body unfold. Her Saturday workshop on 6 October will explore the role of myth and ritual in our quest to know ourselves.

Our November event is a lecture by Dr Neil Pembroke, from the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland, whose lectures on Jung, I hear, are much appreciated by his students.  He will open a dialogue with us on leading a moral life in the light of Jung’s ideas.

In December, Stuart Douglas will give a presentation on the concept of the Transpersonal. And, following what has now become a tradition, for this last event of the year we shall also share food and drink and an opportunity to get to know each other better.

Sarah Halford’s approach to the interface between psyche and nature falls into the Romantic tradition, that is, the belief in the link between the soul / the unconscious and nature.

In his lecture on 6 September, entitled “The Organ of the Soul”, Forrest James introduced us to Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869), a German physician and artist who was an admirer of Goethe and who flourished in the period of German Romanticism. Carus’s paintings, depicting soulful humans in dreamy landscapes, remind me of the paintings of his contemporary Caspar David Friedrich. As Forrest pointed out, in his approach to the psyche, Jung was an heir of German Romanticism. It occurs to me that the never-substantiated rumour in Jung’s family that his great grandfather was the illegitimate son of Goethe is symbolic of this inheritance.

Jung frequently refers to Carus in his writings on the development of the idea of the unconscious. To give just one example, in “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”, (CW 9, part 1, p. 152) Jung writes “Although various philosophers, among them Leibnitz, Kant and Schelling, had already pointed very clearly to the problem of the dark side of the psyche, it was a physician who felt impelled, from his scientific and medical experience, to point to the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche. This was C.G. Carus [in his work “Psyche”] ...” The talk on Carus led me to refresh my memory about what philosophers had said about the mind body problem, or the relationship between body and mind. After grappling with monism and dualism and their variations, I decided to close that door and return to my habitual “Romantic” view that the mind is embodied in a way that is mysterious to me.

And speaking of embodiment, and of the mind body problem, Robert Bosnak’s latest book, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel (Routledge, 2007), presents the current state of his ideas on dream work and embodied imagination. I have had the privilege of following the development of his thought over the past nine years in which I have been involved with his work and it was a great pleasure to see it laid out in his latest book. Bosnak posits a real world between matter and spirit, “a place outside the mind-body conundrum” (p. 11). This is the reality that we know that we are in when we are dreaming. It is the reality that becomes manifest in Active Imagination in which images appear spontaneously while we are in a hypnagogic state, i.e. a state between waking and sleeping - these images being “autonomous components of a reality that [Jung] called soul” (p. 14). Based on the idea that “[e]motions are fully embodied states existing throughout the physical body” (p. 38), Bosnak’s dream work method helps the dreamer to create a network of embodied states, allowing them to communicate with each other within the one body. These states arise from the images and emotional states belonging to both the dreaming self and dream “others” and represent the complexity of states in the psyche. In particular, his ideas on the placebo effect of embodiment are very exciting.

While taking a psychological rather than a philosophical view of the mind might be comparatively recent in Western thought, in Eastern thought a psychology of the mind dates back several millennia.

I am currently attending weekly classes to study Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, teachings about the mind derived from the Vedas, the soil in which Buddhism had its roots. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are in fact a treatise, written in Sanskrit in aphoristic style, on the nature of the mind, in particular the characteristics that prevent us from seeing reality clearly. I am finding that I recognise the 2,000 year old mind that is described there perfectly well.

For some years I have been promising myself that I shall explore the interface between my interest in Jung and my interest in Yoga. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, in the chapter entitled “Confrontation with the Unconscious”, Jung says:

I was frequently so wrought up that I had to do certain yoga exercises in order to hold my emotions in check. But since it was my purpose to know what was going on within myself, I would do these exercises only until I had calmed myself enough to resume my work with the unconscious. As soon as I had the feeling that I was myself again, I abandoned this restraint upon the emotions and allowed the images and inner voices to speak afresh. The Indian, on the other hand, does yoga exercises in order to obliterate completely the multitude of psychic contents and images. (p. 201)

I am not sure that it is true that the object of yoga is to obliterate the psychic images. “In yoga we are simply trying to create the conditions in which the mind becomes as useful as possible for our actions” (T.K.V. Desikachar “The Heart of Yoga”, p. 123).

But my musings on my attempts to reconcile these two attitudes to the psyche must be for another time…

Peace and Joy to you all

Anne Di Lauro

Our 6 December event is also our Christmas party.

Everybody is welcome – members and non-members alike.

The Jung Society will supply liquid refreshments.

Please bring some finger food to share if you can.

See you there!

Upcoming events at the Jung Society

October 2007

Ecstasy: Nature’s Way of Healing

Sarah Halford, Jungian Analyst, USA

Thursday 4 October 2007, 7:30 – 9:30 pm

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

Members and concession $5; Non-members $10

Ecstasy is a universal experience documented cross-culturally from earliest cave paintings to contemporary surveys. In traditional cultures ecstatic states are a vehicle for the expression of full humanity in relationship to the environment. Trauma, whether personal, cultural or environmental, steals the birthright to live ecstatically. This talk will explore how psyche’s natural healing process facilitated by analysis can restore connection to ecstatic states and open the way into new relationship with body, nature and community.

Saturday Workshop with Sarah Halford

Myth and Ritual: Psyche’s Bedrock

Saturday 6 October, 2007, 9:30 am – 3:30 pm

Quaker Meeting House, 10 Hampson St., Kelvin Grove

$70 (Members and concession: $60)

Are myth and ritual relevant for the 21^st century? This workshop “dig” is an opportunity to bring your questions about Jungian views of myth and ritual.

How do myth and ritual arise? How do they function in one’s personal life, in family, or groups and nations? How do they function in analysis and therapy? What is the relationship between myth and truth? Ritual and reality? Myth, ritual and the natural world? Can we live without myth? Are there new myths? Does context matter? What is helpful about Jungian perspectives?

Looking at different cultures and traditions, the workshop will use discussion and group exercises to focus on the ways myth and ritual address our fundamental human questions, such as: “Who we were, and what we have become; where we were…whither we are hastening; from what we are being released; what birth is, and what is rebirth.” Theodotus, (c. 140-160 CE), Gnostic teacher

Sarah Halford is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Brunswick, Maine, USA. She is president of the New England Society of Jungian Analysts and is on the teaching faculty of the Boston Jung Institute. She frequently lectures for the Brunswick Jung Center and other Jungian groups. Originally from Oxfordshire, England, she has lived in the US for 30 years. Her background is in teaching religion and mythology. She is also a storyteller of traditional and original stories and gives workshops on the healing power of story. Her workshops grow from her love of the land and mythology. The power of place and the experience of the land that underlie myth and ritual are an important part of her presentations. She is delighted to be back in the beautiful land of Australia and to be sharing her passion for myth, ritual and the natural world.

November 2007

Jung and the Moral Self

A lecture by Dr. Neil Pembroke

Thursday 1 November, 2007, 7:30 – 9:30 pm

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

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

In Jung's writings, the question of the moral life is prominent. As Don Browning puts it in his book Religion and the Modern Psychologies, ‘the science of psychology for Jung becomes a moral science that undergirds a moral practice’ (p. 167). I will be arguing in my talk that Jung's suggestion that we must be both kind to ourselves (self-acceptance) and hard on ourselves (self-reformation) is expressive of the paradoxical nature of the process that all persons who are serious about the moral life must enter into.

Dr. Neil Pembroke is Senior Lecturer in Pastoral Studies, The School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His recent publications include: Moving Toward Spiritual Maturity: Psychological, Contemplative, and Moral Challenges in Christian Living (New York: Haworth Pastoral Press, 2007); Renewing Pastoral Practice: Trinitarian Perspectives on Pastoral Care and Counselling (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); and Working Relationships: Spirituality in Human Service and Organisational Life (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004). Dr. Pembroke's areas of scholarly interest are pastoral care and counselling, theological reflection on public practices, and the integration of psychology and theology.

December 2007

The Transpersonal: the Bridge between Psychotherapy and the Spiritual

A presentation by Stuart Douglas

Thursday 6 December, 2007 7:30 – 9:30 pm

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

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

The transpersonal is the bridge between psychology and spirituality...at one end of the bridge psychotherapy is firmly supported on the ground of conversation, research evidence, the body, the physico-chemical and all the rest of it…at the other end is spirituality. In other words, to reach the end of the bridge means facing and exploring the numinous, the holy, the divine.

The Transpersonal: Psychotherapy and Counselling – John Rowan

Transpersonal experiences may be defined as experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond the individual, or personal, to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche, and cosmos

Paths Beyond Ego – Walsh and Vaughan

We have to distinguish between a personal unconscious and an impersonal or transpersonal unconscious. We speak of the latter also as the collective unconscious, because it is detached from anything personal and is entirely universal Jung, CW Vol. 7, Par. 103

The term Transpersonal, first became widely used, in relation to psychology/psychotherapy, in the late 60s with the discipline of Transpersonal Psychology becoming known as the fourth force in psychology (following the behaviouristic, psychoanalytic and humanistic approaches).

Most people with any experience of, or exposure to, psychology/psychotherapy will be familiar with the term but far fewer will have a clear definition of what the transpersonal actually is.

So what exactly is the transpersonal? This presentation seeks to define the transpersonal – both in terms of its perspective and its approach.

For many people, religious or spiritual experience is seen as central to the transpersonal agenda. However, the transpersonal may or may not take a spiritual form. In defining the transpersonal, this presentation will give particular emphasis to the nature of this relationship between the transpersonal and the spiritual.

Carl Gustav Jung was one of the early pioneers of the transpersonal and he is widely regarding as having made one of the most significant contributions to the field. Indeed, some regard Jung as being the first to use the term transpersonal. This presentation will also consider the work of Jung with a view to orienting it in the field of the transpersonal.

Stuart Douglas M.Sc. Stuart holds a Diploma in Transpersonal Counselling and is working towards the Advanced Diploma. His main interest in the Transpersonal is the way it can provide a spiritual context for the practice of psychotherapy, or seen from a different perspective, the way it can provide a grounded psychotherapeutic framework for spiritual development. Over the last 15 years, Stuart has been a keen student of a number of spiritual traditions – including Tibetan Buddhism, Christian Mysticism, Yogananda’s Self Realisation Fellowship, Sant Mat and more recently, Zen. In the past he has been a practicing Kinesiologist and Touch for Health instructor registered with the Australian Kinesiology Association

This is also our Christmas party. Everyone is welcome.

The Jung Society will supply liquid refreshments.

Please bring some finger food to share if you can.

Bulletin Board

Feeling stressed?

Discover your Inner Space

Guided Relaxation and Imagery, Mindfulness, Embodied Imagination, Creative Expression

Ongoing weekly groups on Wednesdays from 7 to 8:30 pm at 78 Enoggera Terrace, Red Hill. $20 per session.

Enquiries: Margaret: 0417 614 985   Anne: 3511 0167

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Painting the Inner Landscape and Meeting the Twelve Archetypes

Six weekly creativity workshops beginning on Monday 8 October, 2007 from 10 am to 12:30 pm.

An initial questionnaire will give you your present archetypes.

Held at the Stephens Uniting Church Hall, cn Kadumba St, and Kingsley Pde, Yeronga

Cost $25 per session or $110 for 6 sessions if paid in advance.

Ring Pam on 3392 7173

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ANZSJA EVENT

THE USES OF SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE:

A Weekend of Conversations between Analysts and Academics Who Work with Jung's Ideas

Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st October 2007, 9am – 4.30pm

Vibe Hotel Carlton 441 Royal Parade Parkville Melbourne

Cost (inc. light lunch):$349 (GST inc) for both days

Contributors include: analysts - Margaret Caulfield, Giles Clark, Dale Dodd, Andre de Koning, Leslie Devereaux, Peter Fullerton, Sally Kester, Anne Noonan, Leon Petchkovsky, Craig San Roque, and academics - David Tacey (keynote speaker), Frances Gray, Jadran Mimica, David Russell, Brendon Stewart, and Terri Waddell.  

BOOKING: email: pdseminar@anzsja.org.au  for forms. Once completed post with payment or advise EFT payment details to:  Lenore Kulakauskas 4/21 Sir Thomas Mitchell Rd Bondi Beach NSW 2026 ph +61 2 9365 7750 

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An intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy training to be delivered in Brisbane

The Conversational Model, a Psychology of the Self developed by Emeritus Professor Russell Meares and the late Dr Robert Hobson, will be delivered part-time over three years from 2008.

The course may be of interest to psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and others in the mental health professions.

The course is accredited as a Graduate Diploma with an optional fourth year that produces a Masters qualification. It will cost approximately $5000 per annum and will also require some personal therapy.

For further information see http://www.anzapweb.com/training.php. Anyone with an interest in pursuing this training in Brisbane/S.E. QLD, please email Forrest James at:   forrestjames@qpastt.org.au