October 8, 2010

Thayer Greene: The Shadow as Archetype and Personal Dilemma

Jung’s explorations of the shadow side of the individual and collective human psyche were both extensive and profound. This lecture attempts to provide a summary of his insights as well as more recent Jungian thinking in the following categories: 1. The shadow as a moral and ethical dilemma. 2. The shadow as an instinctual and somatic dilemma. 3. The shadow as an affective and energetic dilemma. 4. The dilemma of the individual in relation to the collective shadow. 5. The shadow as an archetypal dilemma, i.e., the problem of evil.

Thayer Greene, Ph.D. is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, a training analyst, a faculty member of the Jung Institute of Boston, and has lectured widely and is the author of a book and a number of articles in the field. He has a private practice in Amherst.

November 12, 2010

Karen A. Smyers: Does the Soul Like Facebook? Exploring the Friendship Archetype

Facebook has become a pervasive social force in the world today, with more than 500 million active users. Is this a natural and healthy extension of friendship into the latest medium, or a narcissistic and/or voyeuristic shadow of true relatedness, mediated by a business model? This talk will explore the meanings and varieties of friendship and its archetypal underpinnings, and will consider what the soul gains and loses as humans move more and more into “virtual” relationships.

Karen A. Smyers, Ph.D., is a former Associate Professor at Wesleyan University and a graduate of ISAP-Zurich. She has a private practice in Hadley, and is the current President of the Jung Center of Western Massachusetts.

December 10, 2010

Nomi Kluger-Nash: The Poetics of Dream: Our Truth Telling Visions of Night and of Day

Psyche’s symbolic speech can loose its subtle nuances if one looks too fast for an interpretation rather than allowing the symbol—always representing something unknown–to continually unfold of itself, and doing so by virtue of our honoring its presence and affect. As personal and unique as these images may be, we can nonetheless find in dreams sufficient universality to justify Jung’s notion of an Objective Psyche, the Collective Unconscious. Through the telling of dreams we shall view and explore images as illustrations in word and meaning of Jung’s basic concepts of Archetype, Complex, Shadow, Anima/Animus and the individuating journey to the Self.

Nomi Kluger-Nash, Ph.D., is a Jungian Psychologist and author, teaching at the Jung Institute in Switzerland. She has a private practice in Amherst.

January 14, 2011

Anita Greene, Ph.D: The  Present Moment-Living in the Here and Now

Jung once said, “But the great thing is the here and now, this is the eternal moment, and if you do not realize it, you have missed the best part of your life.” What is the present moment? Surely it has to do with qualitative rather than quantitative time, with Kairos rather than Kronos. To be fully present to moments of intense and truly lived experience requires a profound coming together of the emotional, imaginal and sensory realms of our beings. If the experience of “nowness” contributes to psychic growth and change, how can we nurture this experience within ourselves, in our relationship to others and in our creative living and working? Come and explore together.

Anita Greene, Ph.D., is a Jungian Analyst and Rubenfeld Synergist.  She is a graduate of the New York Institute where she taught and supervised  for many years.  She now teaches at the Boston Institute and has a private practice in Amherst.

February 11, 2011

Penny Tarasuk, Ph.D.: Curving Inward Toward the Heart: Confronting One’s Shadow and a Life’s Completion

Reading from her current manuscript, Penelope shares a woman’s dream of confrontation with shadow as a climax of years of analysis. Facing and touching the murderous, injured mother and vulnerable, needy child within becomes a means of self-redemption and recognition of self-compassion.

Penelope Tarasuk, Ph.D., a Jungian psychoanalyst, has a private practice in South Deerfield. Her workshops and lectures in the United States and abroad focus upon dreaming, active imagination, nature, art and body in spiritual development. She is a member of the Training Board of the C.G. Jung Institute-Boston, training analyst, and faculty. Her deepest interests include accessing the heart of creativity through dream- image-embodiment, the wake of trauma and development of spiritual life.

March 11, 2011

Russell Holmes, M.A.: As You Speak, So Is Your Heart

With this remark of Paracelsus as a cue, Holmes will discuss the numerous meanings of the heart as a pump, a book, a thought, and as the locus of the Self with references to literary, religious, philosophical, and Jungian themes.

Russell Holmes, MA, a Jungian analyst practicing in Jamaica Plain, is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich.

April 8, 2011

Manisha Roy, Ph.D.: Symptom, Symbol, Soul: How Symptoms Become Symbols to Heal Souls

This talk narrates how physical and emotional symptoms are often manifestations of deeper symbols produced by the collective unconscious. Put another way this is also a discussion of a symbolic approach to psychosomatic illnesses. As analysts we can never predict the formation and emergence of symbols in our analysands. Cases from my practice will be used to show the formation of such healing symbols.

Manisha Roy, Ph.D. is a former professor of anthropology at various universities including Chicago, Colorado and Zurich. She is a diplomate of the C.G Jung Institute-Zurich and has been at the faculty of Boston Jung Institute since 1985 and is in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Roy has lectured all over the world in both fields and has authored six books and twenty-five articles. She also writes fiction in both English and her mother tongue, Bengali, and does watercolor paintings among other things.

September 25, 2009

Karen A. Smyers, Ph.D., IAAP: The Canny Feminine: Problem Solving Through the Union of Eros and Logos

One of the most dangerous characteristics of our time is a stark splitting that occurs at psychological, social, and cultural levels. From within these polarized fundamentalisms, problem solving often works through confrontation and aggression, paying little attention to the relationship between the parties or the dignity of the other. What I have termed “the canny feminine” is a way of solving problems that preserves eros. It works through indirection, humor, and suggestion in a conscious modality, but one open to the gifts from the unconscious. Stories from the Bible to contemporary popular culture show that this modality is deeply human and has always been with us. I argue that it is another model of individuation.

Karen A. Smyers is a graduate of ISAP-Zürich and has a private practice in Northampton.

October 23, 2009

Ethne J. Gray, IAAP: Archetypal Patterns in Ancient Dream Incubation

“He Who Wounds Also Heals.”

Jungian analyst, Ethne Gray will discuss dreams as wounded and wounded healers, and the patron god of the dream incubation temples, Aesclepius, as divine patient. Remembering how music, art, drama and therapeutic waters played a role in the holistic dream incubation rituals at Cos and Epidaurus in Greece, she will also examine central images of the healing temple temenos: serpents, trees, dog, centaur (Chiron), and the feminine trinity, and explore their meanings for our dream work today.

Ethne J. Gray, born in South Africa, has lived and worked in many lands including Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Columbia, where she enjoyed learning religious, mythic and healing rituals. She is in private practice in West Newton and Cambridge, and is on the faculty of the C.G. Jung Institute Boston. She teaches Jungian Art Therapy at Lesley University.

December 4, 2009

Ira Sharkey: Coming Full Circle: The Challenge of Return and of Self-recollection in the Process of Individuation

Ira Sharkey will review Jung’s essay entitled “The Transcendent Function” (CW 8: para 131-193, pp.67-91). Jung observes that “the circle of consciousness is continually widened through confrontation with previously unconscious contents.” Ira will examine with us the notion of the “circle of consciousness” and consider some of the intricacies and difficulties inherent to the process of its “widening” stated in Jung’s formulation.

Ira Sharkey is a graduate of the Jung Institute-Zürich. He in private practice in Amherst and is an instructor at the Jung Institute-Boston.

January 22, 2010

Anita Greene Ph.D., IAAP & Thayer Greene, Ph.D., IAAP: Aging Body Ageless Spirit

Coming To Age: Journey Into Wisdom or Despair

The emphasis on youth in our culture does not make it easy for us to go graciously into old age now that we live in an era in which our longevity, at least in developed countries, has been increased by 25 years. In earlier cultures elders were honored in their tribes and villages as carriers of ancestral lore and rituals of daily life which held the community together and made it unique. Old age is a developmental process with its own singular characteristics. We may think of it as the third major part of life which earlier centuries rarely had to confront.  Anita and Thayer will share their psychological reflections on this emerging phenomenon in our contemporary culture.

Anita and Thayer Greene are graduates of the New York Jung Institute and are in private practice in Amherst.

February 26, 2010.

Jim Helling and Thayer Greene, IAAP: The Theory and Treatment of Severe Trauma from a Jungian and Neuroscientific Perspective

The word “trauma” has become current in our public discourse due to the impact of war’s effect upon the psyches of those who fight. In fact trauma has been a part of human experience since the beginning. Recent research has demonstrated the profound effects of trauma upon the integrated function of body, mind, and spirit. This presentation will combine a Jungian perspective with suggestions from recent neuroscientific studies to explore both the dissociative effects of trauma and a path toward integration and healing.

Thayer Greene, Ph.D., serves on the faculty of the C.G. Jung Institute of Boston and is in private practice in Amherst.

James Helling, LICSW, is a graduate of   the Smith College School for Social Work and also has been certified in Traumatic Stress Studies by the Trauma Center at JRI in Boston under the direction of Bessell von der Kolk, MD. He has a private practice in Amherst and is associated with the University of Massachusetts.  

March 26, 2010.

Richard Trousdell,  D.F.A., IAAP: Tragedy and Transformation; the Oresteia of Aeschylus,

Classical Greek tragedy dramatizes mythic patterns of human suffering and human survival that are still alive and meaningful to us today. The Libation Bearers of Aeschylus takes us into the lives of two trauma survivors: Electra and Orestes, the cast-off children of a father who sacrificed their sister to win a war, and a mother who murdered their father in revenge. Although Electra and Orestes survive their traumatic past, it is at the cost of their full humanity. Their family fate forces them into defensive character patterns we still recognize in ourselves: a hero defense strategy that defines and distorts Orestes, and a victim identification pattern that preserves but traps Electra. How they come to terms with these archetypal roles, and grow beyond them, tells an inspiring story of how conscious suffering can lead to becoming more fully human.

Richard Trousdell is in private practice in Northampton and a Professor Emeritus of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute-Boston, where he has taught and served on the Admissions Committee.

April 23, 2010

Pamela Donleavy, J.D., IAAP: The Individuation Process in Dreams

Individuation, or self-realization, is an unconscious developmental process that occurs in the personality itself. It can often be discerned as a planned and orderly unfolding that spontaneously expresses itself in the symbolism of a dream series. In this lecture, we will explore this process as it appeared as a source of healing during the course of an analysis.

Pamela Donleavy is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Arlington, MA. She is the past President of the New England Society of Jungian Analysts, the Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, and is on the faculty of the C.G. Jung Institute-Boston, and the Assisi Institute in Vermont. She wrote with Ann Shearer From Ancient Myth to Modern Healing, Themis: Goddess of Heart-Soul, Justice and Reconciliation, published by Routledge.