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MINNESOTA JUNG ASSOCIATION

EVENT DESCRIPTIONS 2007-2008

2008 LECTURES

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Friday, March 7, 2008

7:30-9:30 pm

Stub Hall, Luther Seminary

“From Bewitchment to Enchantment in the

Healing of the Traumatized Psyche”

Donald Kalsched, Jungian Analyst

Deprived of this lost spark, the outer personality is usually depressed and ultimately seeks help.

As psychotherapy begins a dramatic struggle ensues within the transference/countertransference relationship. This struggle results from the fact that a “vow” has been made, deep within the psyche of the trauma survivor, never to allow the lost heart of the self into relationship again. The lost soul secretly “wants” relationship and finds itself drawn to the love and understanding provided by the therapist, but primitive dissociative defenses prevent this return, encapsulating the soul and leaving it imprisoned by the dark powers of the archetypal world—what Jung called “possession by a spirit.” Dreams during the psychotherapy process often demonstrate such “possession” by the archetypal world, revealing both the “lost soul” and its “spirit protector”--now turned persecutory. And fairytales often describe how unbearable suffering leads to a bargain with spiritual powers that often turns into a Faustian bargain in which the soul is sold to the Devil.

How the psychoanalytic process, with its combination of intimacy and separateness invites the lost soul back into relationship and into the body, will be the focus of this seminar. By consulting both dreams and fairytales, we will explore how the numinous world of spirit provides both a sanctuary for the dis-incarnate soul of the trauma victim, and also a defensive fortress, preventing the soul's descent into the body—its “re-incarnation.” This will expose us to the “dark” side of the spirit world...to what Jung called the “dark side of God” and to the process through which this “darkness,” if accepted and suffered-in-relationship, leads to the light and ultimately to understanding and healing.

* * * *

Donald E. Kalsched, Ph.D. Is a Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist who practiced privately in the New York area for 35 years. He is a senior faculty member and supervisor with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and a training analyst at the Westchester Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Bedford Hills, N.Y. His major book The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit (Routledge, 1996) explores the interface between contemporary psychoanalytic theory and Jungian theory as it relates to practical clinical work with the survivors of early childhood trauma. Currently, he is at work on a new book Trauma and the Soul, exploring the “spiritual” or “mystical” dimensions of psychoanalytic work. He and his wife live in Albuquerque, New Mexico during the winter, and summer in Newfoundland, Canada.

Friday, April 11, 2008

7:30-9:30 pm

Stub Hall, Luther Seminary

THE MYTH OF NARCISSUS AND DEPTH PSYCHOLOGICAL

UNDERSTANDINGS OF NARCISSISM”

Christine Downing, Jungian Analyst

I will begin by retelling the story of Narcissus as it comes down to us from Ovid with the hope that this might lead us to lay aside what we already "know" of narcissism--that it's about "bad," that it's a pathology, a personality disorder, that it means arrogance, exploitation, grandiosity and entitlement, an excessive need for admiration, a lack of empathy and ability to connect with others--that it's about "them" not ourselves, or at most about a shadow aspect of ourselves. I will then go on to explore how this story has been understood in DEPTH psychology--by Sigmund Freud, by Lou Salome, by James Hillman--understandings that will turn out to be radically different from those with which we are more familiar.

* * * *

Christine Downing, currently a Professor of Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, was the first woman president of the American Academy of Religion, the primary professional association for religious studies scholars. She taught for almost twenty years in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University (a good part of the time as Chair of the Department) and during the same period as a member of the Religion Department at Douglass College of Rutgers University. She has also taught at the Jung Institute in Zurich and lectures frequently to Jungian groups both here and abroad at American and European universities. Her undergraduate degree in literature is from Swarthmore College; her Ph.D., in religion and culture is from Drew University. Her boods include The Goddess; Journey Through Menopause; Psyche's Sisters; Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, Mirrors of the Self, Women's Mysteries, Gods In Our Midst, The Long Journey Home, The Luxury of Afterwards and Preludes: Essays in the Ludic Imagination.

Friday, May 9, 2008

7:30-9:30 pm

Stub Hall, Luther Seminary

The Future of Jungian Psychology:

A Historian’s Prediction”

Eugene Taylor, Ph.D.

What is Jungian Psychology? And does it have a future? To address these questions, the evening’s lecture will emphasize the differences between the Freudians and Jungians, demonstrating that the Jungians have their own distinct lineage, which they have yet to claim.

In brief, the major difference between Freud and Jung rests with their different models of consciousness. Freud saw the unconscious as vast, inaccessible to consciousness except through pre-conscious material, containing all that was primitive, bestial, and uncouth about us, and bent on one goal only, the sexual reproduction of the species. For Jung, our deepest regions extend into the collective unconscious, which, through a dynamic relation of symbols, myths, and archetypes, joins us with all humanity. For Freud, the goal of life is adjustment to the external material world; for Jung, it was individuation, a dialogue between conscious and the unconscious in which the ego eventually gives up its control of personality, which then becomes centered in the self, a domain of human functioning that can only be described as an ascent toward the spiritual self-actualization of the person.

From a historians point of view, the future of depth psychology will probably look more Jungian than Freudian, whether both names are associated with it or not. In any event, such a depth psychology will no doubt encompass a number of specific domains, which will constitute the denoument of the lecture.

* * * *

Eugene Taylor, PhD, is an Executive Faculty member, Saybrook Graduate School; Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; and Senior Psychologist on the Psychiatry Service at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a Board member of the Philemon Foundation, which is bringing to press Jung’s unpublished correspondence and seminars, and a new edition of Jung’s complete works. He has published on William James and Carl Jung, Jung’s earliest reception in the United States , and Jung and the American psychotherapeutic counter-culture. From 1981 to 1988 he served as a research assistant to the late Henry A. Murray, co-inventor of the TAT, who had been a friend of Jung’s for forty years.

PAST LECTURES, 2007

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Friday, September 7, 2007
7:30-9:30 PM
Stub Hall, Luther Seminary
BENEFIT LECTURE FOR THE MINNESOTA JUNG ASSOCIATION
“Politics Banishes Psychology—and with it, Truth”
John Desteian, Jungian Analyst
It appears that everyone knows that politics is a mean business, a free-for-all, no-holds-barred turf war between rival gangs who use drive-by mudslinging, dirty tricks, spinmeistering and character assassination instead of Uzi’s to do their dirty work--- but to the same effect and as if it were their game and the rest of us are merely innocent bystanders who sometimes get caught in the crossfire. Or, where the dirty game is being played by the people in the other camp, the enemy--- but not our own side--- and we---whoever we may be--- are the victims. The ease with which the game is played and rationalized by participants, and implicitly assented to by way of citizen acquiescence and apathy underscores the perception explored in this lecture: That we have been inoculated against being infected by psychological understanding.
The psychological understanding, and with it notions of truth-seeking that this lecture will explore has nothing to do with a personalistic analysis of any single individual but of texts and ideas as they have been presented on the political stage. The lecture will use a psychological prism through which a simple idea can be seen through to the multi-layered, subtle, mind-numbing and highly effective propaganda that can and has promoted rapturous splitting, on the one hand, and at the same time--- in complete contradiction to it--- abject resignation on the other hand. Shifting metaphors, political discourse, or histrionic speechifying acts, like salt in a wound, as a psychological corrosive on the body politic---that is, the consciousness of the culture. The lecture will conclude with a series of postulates for truth-seeking, a psychological activity that may offer some small measure of immunity from propaganda.
John A. Desteian, J.D, DPsy, L.P. is a Jungian analyst in private practice in St. Paul. He is the author of a book on marriage, numerous articles and a frequent lecturer, locally and elsewhere. The subject of this lecture is taken from an article he wrote for a forthcoming Spring Books publication on politics and psychology, and which is also the introduction to a book he has been writing with the working title: Cacophony: The Unpsychological States of America.

Friday, October 12, 2007
7:30-9:30 PM
Stub Hall, Luther Seminary
BENEFIT LECTURE FOR THE MINNESOTA JUNG ASSOCIATION
“Eros Rules! Let Desire Reign!”
Lyn Cowan, Jungian Analyst
In a world where the erotic imagination has been largely relegated to mostly bad adult movies and believed to do more harm than good, some defense must be made of the stubborn fact of desire, appearing in the psychological imagination as the god, Eros. As much as Eros is associated with sexual appetite and spiritual longing, he is also associated with moral vices, such as lust and greed. But perhaps we would find his erotic style of imagination less threatening if we learned how to judge the god less and enjoy him more. This "fairest and first-born of the gods," as the Greeks knew him, is a complicated, powerful force in the psyche. His comings and goings take us on roller-coaster rides of strong emotions, but his way is also the way of self-knowledge, and individuation.
Lyn Cowan, Ph.D., has been a practicing Jungian analyst since 1980, Director of Training for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts for six years and past President of the Society, held a Professorship for ten years in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at Argosy University (Minneapolis), and recently concluded two years of teaching and lecturing at the C.G. Jung Center of Houston, Texas. She is the author of three books: Portrait of the Blue Lady: The Character of Melancholy, Tracking the White Rabbit: A Subversive View of Modern Culture; and Masochism: A Jungian View.

November 2007
Marian Woodman/ Robert Bly Event

For more information, go to the Woodman Foundation website: http://www.mwoodmanfoundation.org

Friday, December 7, 2007
7:30-9:30 PM
Stub Hall, Luther Seminary
“The Therapy of the Mirror: On the Nature of Psychological Reflection”
David Miller, Ph.D.
In a lecture on “Spirit and Life” in 1926, C. G. Jung called the psyche “an amazing mirror-thing”! In this he joined many psychologists who have proposed that therapy is a sort of psychological mirroring. But which mirror? What sort of mirror? Some mirrors distort—like fun-house mirrors and the mirror on the right-hand side of the automobile. Is there similar distortion in therapy’s mirroring?
Jacques Lacan, quoting a poet, once said that the mirror would do well to reflect a little more before returning our image to us! Dr. Miller’s illustrated presentation will attempt to do this. It will review the psychological theories that describe therapeutic and pathological functions by utilizing the metaphor of the mirror. And the presentation will reflect on the nature of different psychological mirrors by examining the wide variety of images of the mirror in the history of art. The purpose of this review of art-history—this mirroring of mirroring!—will be to differentiate a variety of types of psychotherapy, each based on its special manner of mirroring.
Dr. Miller has been an Affiliate Member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and in 2004 he was made an honorary member of the International Association of Analytical Psychology. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, The International Society for Humor Studies, the International Association of Jungian Studies, and Phi Beta Kappa. He has served as president of the Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture. He currently serves on the editorial board of Spring Journal. He is the author of more than one hundred articles and book chapters, as well as five books. The books include Gods and Games: Towards a Theology of Play; The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses; Christs: Archetypal Images in Christian Theology; Three Faces of God; and Hells and Holy Ghosts. Dr. Miller is also the editor of two additional books: Interpretation: The Poetry of Meaning and Jung and the Interpretation of the Bible.

Friday, January 11, 2008
7:30-9:30 PM
Stub Hall, Luther Seminary
“The Woman Behind the Man: Jung's Early Collaborators"
Judith Savage
After his split from Freud, Jung seemed surrounded by women. They came from all over the world to enter into an analysis with him. For many, it was almost a religious pilgrimage. Jung had ignited in them a longed for recognition of the value of a woman's mind. They have been called the Valkyries, the Jungfrauen, or the "spinsters". Whether wife, lover, mediatrix, collaborator, researcher, translator, secretary, colleague, friend, benefactor, or missionary of the Jungian gospel, each played a critical role in the early development of Jungian thought. This lecture will examine these early women, identify the roles they each played and the contributions they made.

Judith Savage, LICSW, LMFT, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in St. Paul, a licensed independent clinical social worker, and a marriage and family therapist. She has been on the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, an executive officer of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and on the Board of the Psychoanalytic Coalition of Minnesota. She is the author of Mourning Unlived Lives: A Psychological Study of Childbearing Loss and a contributor to The Soul of Popular Culture. She is formerly the coordinator of the Minnesota Seminar in Jungian Studies and is currently its treasurer and a core faculty member.

February 8, 2008
Rik Reppe Performing His Highly Acclaimed
'Staggering Toward America - The Journey Home'
7:30pm Performance
Northwestern Hall Auditorium
Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota

'Staggering Toward America' is Rik Reppe's post 9/11 quest to find out what it means to be an American. Amid the flag waving and patriotic displays following the Attacks, Reppe found himself disconnected and uncertain of what it was he was supposed to do to help in troubled times. He walked away from a lucrative management consulting business, tossed a sleeping bag and a tent into the back of a pickup truck and embarked on an eight week tour of the country - from Los Angeles to the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and a lonely haunted field in Western Pennsylvania. Along the road he talked to hundreds of people hoping to find what America is.

Reppe's vibrant storytelling comes alive with vivid portrayals of every day people and their small but profoundly moving acts of selflessness and courage as they struggle to find meaning in post-9/11 America.

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