Archive of Presentations - 2012

 

Friday 2 November 2012  8pm
"Dreams - language of the Soul"
Dorothea W
ojnar

“Dreams, then, convey to us in a figurative language – that is, in sensuous, concrete imagery – thoughts, judgments, views, directives, tendencies which were unconscious either because of repression or through mere lack of realization.

Precisely because they are contents of the unconscious, and the dream is a derivative of unconscious processes, it contains a reflection of the unconscious contents. It is not a reflection of unconscious contents in general but only of certain contents, which are linked together associatively and are selected by the conscious situation of the moment. I regard to this observation as a very important one in practice.”
Carl G Jung  Collected Works Vol 8 paragraph  477  

One of Jung’s greatest achievements is that he plumbed the depth of his own being, his own soul and used the knowledge gained from his inner world, imagination or soul to form a theory that stimulates, facilitates and elaborates this knowledge in other’s soul.  The Jungian vision is of a coherent and meaningful psychic whole existing in a world in which there are processes of growth to be experienced and breakdown that needs to be handled.  It is a vision of a world in which the individual psyche matters. 

Working with dreams has been part of human culture for thousands of years.  In our current culture people are fascinated by dreams or dismiss them as irrelevant.  In this presentation Dorothea will introduce you to the symbolic language of dreams. By learning how to correlate dreams with events in waking life you can use the creative potential of the dreamscape for greater self-awareness.

We considered the following areas:

  • Dreams in history, culture and the psychodynamic tradition
  • Place of dreams in ancient, mediaeval and non-western societies;
  • The work of Sigmund Freud and the split with Carl Jung
  • Dream structure and language
  • The Jungian model of the psyche and archetypal symbolism
  • The compensatory function of dreams.

Dorothea used examples from literature and from her own life.
She worked with dreams during the Dream Workshop on Saturday.

Dorothea is a psychotherapist and she is currently training as a Jungian analyst with the C. G. Jung Institute of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian analysts.  She has training and experience in Analytical Psychology , Transactional Analysis, Gestalt therapy, Solution Oriented Psychotherapy, Family therapy, Self Psychology and Psychodrama.  Dorothea has extensive experience as a group leader and therapist across a range of people and issues, working in both a public health facility as well as in private practice.


Saturday 3 November 2012  10am - 5pm
Workshop: "Dreams - Working at the Edge of Consciousness"
Dorothea Wojnar

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.

For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night.

There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. 

From C G Jung "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 304.

Dreams are fascinating, because of their continuous character of transformation and their rapid passages from the comic to the dramatic, from the ridiculous to the sublime, and from the moving to the grotesque.  This works together to transform the here and now time and space from external reality to the reality of the soul, and vice versa.

Freud referred to dreams as the “Royal road to the unconscious.   Jung compares the dream to a drama that is expressed and staged in a person’s inner world.   Moreno and Jung maintain that the goal of dream work is to take the dreamer inside the dream itself.  In this session we will be entering dreams and working with the edge of consciousness projecting the inner life of the dream onto the psychodramatic space (temenos / sacred space) created by the group.  We will be drawing on the traditions of Analytic Psychodrama, a popular European method, which combines Jungian psychology and Morenian psychodrama.

Following on from the Friday night presentation Dorothea reviewed some of the principles of working with dreams and lead a discussion on the contemporary use of dream work.  She demonstrated working with dreams drawn from the group.  This was followed by an opportunity to practice working with dreams in a small group setting.  Participants were encouraged to bring a dream to share.  The workshop is also suitable for participants, who do not remember their dreams or are sceptical about the usefulness of working with dreams.  We usied active imagination including dramatic enactments in working with dreams. The workshop is completely confidential and participants are asked not to discuss material from the workshop outside the group. 

Dorothea is a psychotherapist and she is currently training as a Jungian analyst with the C.G. Jung Institute of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian analysts.  She has training and experience in Analytical Psychology , Transactional Analysis, Gestalt therapy, Solution Oriented Psychotherapy, Family therapy, Self Psychology and Psychodrama.  Dorothea has extensive experience as a group leader and therapist across a range of people and issues, working in both a public health facility as well as in private practice.


Friday 5 October 2012  8pm
John Merchant
"Jung and the Wounded Healer Tradition:
An Update
"

Jung was one of the first to see in the Greek myth of Chiron the truth that 'Only the wounded physician heals'. Despite this origin, Jung makes relatively few statements which amplify the 'wounded healer' concept but as an innovative legacy it has become surprisingly popular across a diverse range of psychotherapeutic modalities.

Such use would indicate the concept is understood to be of some importance. This is probably because it acknowledges that all persons working in the helping professions are vulnerable human beings who carry their own individual wounds and that these can be brought to bear on their healing work in a positive way.

In the Jungian tradition, it is the shaman who is seen as the archetypal wounded healer par excellence, because they turn states of derangement into a self-cure upon which hinges their role as healers for their socio-cultural others. Little is written, however, to specify the zone of wounding which underpins the most effective wounded healer.

By examining Siberian shamanism ethnography, John proposes a contemporary model for the specific psychological construction of healers based on shamanic initiation thereby forging an entirely new approach to the wounded healer phenomenon. 

Dr John Merchant (Sydney, NSW) trained with the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts and is currently in private practice as an Analyst and Registered Psychologist. Over the last decade he has run a number of courses on analytical psychology through the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sydney. His recent book Shamans and Analysts: New Insights on the Wounded Healer (Routledge 2012) examines the archaic archetypal pattern underpinning the work of native healers and how this is reflected in modern psychotherapy.


Friday 7 September 2012  8pm
Patty Please
"Exploring an Australian Cultural Complex
Through the Lens of the Environmental Issue of Salinity
"

Placing Psyche (Series Editor: T Singer; Book Editors: C San Roque, A Dowd & D Tacey) is the first of a series of books in the Analytical Psychology & Contemporary Culture Series to explore the theory of cultural complexes in different parts of the world. Key questions underlying this series are: How does the theory of cultural complexes add to the discussion on the nature of psychological realities within and between groups? And how do those realities exist in groups and individuals?

Patty presented work that formed the basis of her chapter in this book, titled The Feeling of Salt, Land and Water that explores a possible cultural complex clustering around issues to do with the land. This work looks at the affective/emotional relationship to land of some of those who have worked on the Australian environmental issue of dryland salinity. The core of this work was drawn from her PhD research focusing on the issue of dryland salinity mainly in the south-western Murray-Darling Basin. The findings of this research were further developed into a cultural complex theory framework.

Based on input from landholders, scientists, natural resource managers (including an Indigenous natural resource manager) and agricultural extension specialists, Patty explores the notion of a culture in transition: from one that applied predominantly European land use management methods to the land to a culture that is more responsive to the uniqueness of the Australian landscape and manages the land with that particular knowledge and understanding. Underlying this cultural transition one can find a deep caring and felt relationship with the land.

Dr Patricia (Patty) Please currently works as a social researcher on land and water issues at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) here in Canberra. During her career she has also worked as a psychotherapist (ANZAP self psychology), hydrogologist, petroleum exploration geologist and water policy analyst. Drawing on her experience as a psychotherapist and as an earth scientist, Patty has developed an interest in the affective/emotional relationship of people to the land. This formed the core of her PhD research at Charles Sturt University titled 'Aspects of Self in Dryland Salinity Science' which forms the basis of this presentation.


Friday 3 August 2012, 8pm
Claire Dunne

"Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul"

"The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous…which is the real therapy" - C.G. Jung

Claire Dunne will present a human/spiritual portrait of Jung amplified by symbolic images from her illustrated biography Carl Jung: "Wounded Healer of the Soul". She will present personal struggles, breakdown and breakthrough experiences that powered the core work of this pioneering healer of the soul – the psychological path to the spiritual.

The near death experience that propelled the deepening consciousness of his late work added to controversial ideas on good and evil, his immanent relationship with God, and evolutionary vision for an earth rooted and spiritually centred co-creative wholeness in humanity.

Claire Dunne's biography Carl Jung: "Wounded Healer of the Soul" was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and is being translated into a number of languages. She has lectured widely on Jung and other subjects worldwide. Her diverse career in radio, television and film ranges from documentaries on Sigmund Freud to the history of the harp. Born in Ireland, and a resident of Sydney for many years, she has written books on Aboriginal Australia and Mary MacKillop. She was Foundation Director of two multilingual radio stations that became SBS, and was awarded an OAM for her contribution to multiculturalism, Celtic culture and ethnic broadcasting.


 

Friday 6 July 2012, 8pm
Film night

James Hillman
talks on
"Jung and Active Imagination"

The emergence of C.G. Jung’s Red Book from years of storage in a Swiss vault has re-kindled interest in active imagination. This method of self-exploration involves actively engaging one’s own imagination in dialogue, through writing, art, or the spoken word.

In this DVD, James Hillman — noted author, psychologist, and the first Director of Studies at the Jung Institute in Zurich — introduces the method and delves deeply into the therapeutic value it offers in an increasingly noisy and demanding world.

Hillman considers the history and theory of active imagination in Jung, its relationship to making art, and offers examples for scrutiny and discussion. He discusses the fear of inviting demons and opening wounds, and addresses the difference between the voices of inner figures and auditory hallucinations.

The major re-examination of Jung’s original ideas and inspiration doesn’t stop there, though. Hillman goes on to examine the role of imagination in contemporary culture, and whether imagination itself might need re-imagining. Hillman’s seminar was taped in December 2009, in front of a sold-out audience at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. We will be screening excerpts of this seminar.

James Hillman received his analyst's diploma from the C.G. Jung Institute in 1959 and was then appointed as Director of Studies at the Institute, a position he held until 1969. In 1970 he became editor of Spring Publications, a publishing company devoted to advancing Archetypal Psychology. He helped co-found the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture in 1978. Not wishing to create a school of his own, he proposed an "archetypal" or "imaginal" psychology that would restore the psyche or soul to a discipline he believed to have been diminished by scientific and medical models. He died in October 2011.

Friday 1 June 2012  8pm

"The Human Experience of the Divine:
C.G. Jung on Psychology & Spirituality
"

Dorothea Wojnar

Among all my patients in the second half of life - that is to say over thirty-five - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook. This, of course, has nothing whatever to do with a particular creed or membership of a church.”  
(C G Jung, Psychotherapists or the Clergy,
from the Collected Works Vol 11 paragraph 509)

As shown in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C. G. Jung had a lifelong interest in the spiritual life, as expressed not only in established religious traditions but also in a wide variety of other forms, including the great Western heresies, Gnosticism and alchemy. During his active life as a psychologist, he wrote extensively about many of the world religions, and especially in later years about his own background religious tradition, Christianity.  His practice of psychoanalysis was bent toward achieving a spiritually sound attitude for the individual, especially in the second half of life when issues of meaning, generativity and personal wholeness become critically important.
This presentation explores Jung’s spiritual journey including his midlife crisis which he called “the spirit of the depths” and his belief that all people share a native psychological tendency towards finding a spiritual basis known as the “religious instinct.”

Dorothrea.jpg   Dorothea is a psychotherapist, currently training as a Jungian analyst with the C G Jung Institute of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts. She has training and experience in Analytical Psychology, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt therapy, Solution Oriented Psychotherapy, Family therapy, Self Psychology and Psychodrama. 

Dorothea has extensive experience as a group leader and therapist across a range of people and issues, working in both a public health facility as well as in private practice.

 

Friday 4 May 2012

"Embodied Imagination"

Jennifer Hume & Jessica Rose

Embodied Imagination is a creative way of working with dreams and memories, pioneered in the late 1970’s by Robert Bosnak, a Dutch Jungian analyst.  It is a radically new technique, based on neuroscience and on the phenomenological work of Carl Jung and can be used in many different modalities including art, drama, personal experiences of place, illness and disease, counselling and psychotherapy.

Embodied Imagination gives each of us an opportunity to experience imagination in the body through images, feelings and bodily sensations. It captures transitory and ephemeral images - the beautiful, sad, frightening, grotesque, comforting, the familiar and unfamiliar. 

In a state of consciousness between waking and dreaming, through empathic observation and mimicking, we can enter the images and explore them from a variety of perspectives focussing on feelings and sensations manifested in the body.  This stimulates unfamiliar, as opposed to habitual, states of consciousness and helps us to become aware of what is hidden in the psyche. 

Imagination moves swiftly, but in this process it is slowed down to become more focussed and dense and therefore more able to be embodied. This leads to a re-organisation of conflicting elements into a more complex pattern which expands both our awareness and psychological flexibility and allows for something new and profoundly transforming to unfold.

JENNIFER HUME             

Jennifer Hume has a private practice in counselling and consults for community agencies in the ACT. She was a part time lecturer in the Community Counselling program at the University of Canberra from 1993 - 2004. She then designed and taught the inaugural Graduate Certificate in Counselling Supervision from 2004 – 2008.

Jennifer offers professional supervision to a wide variety of professionals, workers and groups as well as training and support in the areas of group facilitation skills, communication and counselling skills, professional boundaries, supervision and self-care.

She has had a long term fascination with dreams and a more recent growing interest in bodywork. Since beginning training in Embodied Imagination in 2009 she has worked with Jessica running two group courses and also with a small number of individual clients using the method. Her clients’ experiences of working in this method have been profound – unexpected, revealing, provocative and generally deeply satisfying.

JESSICA  ROSE

Jessica has a private practice in counselling and psychotherapy and works with individuals and couples. She also facilitates course in Mindfulness, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life and co–facilitates dream groups with Jennifer. Her background includes training in General and Psychiatric Nursing, Psychology, Sociology, TA– Gestalt, Psychodrama, NLP, Marriage Guidance, Psychotherapy and Dreamwork.

Jessica taught the Crossroads transformational courses in Canberra from 1990 to 2008. She developed numerous personal and professional development courses from 1998 to 2008, and taught them mainly through the Centre of Continuing Development at the ANU. She has worked as a life coach and also as a communications consultant for the public sector.

Embodied Imagination gives her the opportunity to work with dreams in a creative and dynamic way, moving beyond habitual consciousness– drawn into a world that is mysterious, surprising, vibrant and profoundly rewarding.

~0~

Friday 30 March 2012

Shauna Winram

"Van Gogh's Boots: A Guided Tour through Psychosis"

Van Gogh's Boots: A guided tour through psychosis is a play written by Shauna Winram in 1997 and produced by Van Gogh's Cobblers in 1998 and 1999.

The play was shown at various festivals in Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne, as well as featuring at numerous mental health conferences.

It depicts Shauna's first psychotic episode in 1991 and involves two performers (Shauna Winram and Catherine Stuart) who give an inside account of how a simple trip from Tasmania to Sydney can turn into quite a spectacular ride when it becomes a quest whose ultimate outcome could be the survival of the human race itself!

Vampires, angels and the second coming all make an appearance, as our hero fights to 'stay humble' with the dawning realisation that her thoughts are what will determine the outcome of Armageddon. Van Gogh's Boots is essentially a pretty honest recounting of what it is like to go to the heart of madness. It is the tale of a twenty one year old in search of her natural mother, and her tribe, and shows how madness can perhaps hold its own truths, even while it  distorts reality in unpredictable, disturbing, (yet somehow fascinating) ways.

Van Gogh's Boots was directed by James Manser. The Canberra Jung Society will be showing a DVD of this performance when it featured at the 1998 Newtown Festival.

Shauna Winram has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Masters of Analytical Psychology degree and is currently studying psychology at the ANU. She spent many years making art, and continues to write when she finds she can no longer avoid it. She and her husband Jeff live in Canberra with their two furry "daughters".

***

Friday 2 March 2012

"THE BLACK MADONNA
 Reclaiming the Dark; Journey to Wholeness"

Joan Harcourt

The archetype of the sacred feminine, an indwelling energy in all nature, has been known throughout the ages in many forms under many names. In Christianity, she is known as the Black Madonna. At this time of huge global upheaval the Black Madonna is appearing in many dreams.

She comes with authority often at a time of wounding and crisis. In our culture we are raping mother earth and the feminine in all of us. The Black Madonna calls us to care for our earth, our bodies. Earthy, luscious, fertile, knowing the cycles of life death and renewal, she acts as the bridge between body and spirit. She accepts our suffering, grief, and joy, with compassion. Her wisdom, humour, loving acceptance of all, of all aspects of each of us, transforms, allowing us, both women and men to become more truly ourselves.

This talk is based on the teachings of Marion Woodman.

Joan Harcourt is a Marion Woodman Foundation Trained BodySoul Facilitator who has recently moved back to Australia from the UK. She has led Body Soul workshops in both Cambridge and Australia, since 2007. Topics  of workshops include ‘Coming Home to Myself’, The Crone’, The Black Madonna and also co-led ‘Transitions’.

Joan retired from private practice as a body psychotherapist in Cambridge when she moved to Sydney a year ago. In Cambridge, she also co-led dream groups and cross-cultural groups.Her trainings include Trauma, Gestalt Therapy, and Group Analysis. She also has an arts degree and post graduate diplomas in Education and in Psychology.

***

Friday 3 February 2012

"Anima and Animus: 
A 21st Century Feminist Revisioning
"

Suzanne Cremen Davidson MA (Pacifica, USA), LLB (UNSW), BA, CDAA

Jung’s theory of the contrasexual element in the psychology of men and women was advanced and socially challenging when it was articulated in the 1920s. Jung used the term anima to describe the feminine component in a man’s psyche, his muse or soul, and postulated that an equivalent masculine archetype must be present in women, which he called the animus, representing mind or spirit.  Projection of the anima or animus accounts for the phenomenon and archetypal quality of romantic love.  “Talking about anima and animus means talking about all the messes we get into spiritually and sexually, about all the experiences that mark our lives” (Ulanov, Transforming  Sexuality, 1994).

The concepts of anima and animus have been helpful to both men and women in bringing to awareness the unrealized potential that has been repressed for so long, by history, myth, biology, and society. However, it is now recognized that much of what Jung took to be archetypal and biological about gender was in fact stereotypical and conditioned by society. This presentation will trace the developments of post-Jungian writers including James Hillman, Edward Whitmont, and Susan Rowland who have worked on reformulating the concepts of anima and animus as they apply to consciousness and gender. Jung’s psychology, at a profound cultural level, is an attempt to rebalance the gender symbolism that will keep the psyche healthy. Reformulated by his successors to accommodate changing cultural perspectives on gender, Jung’s theories also offer unrealised potential for understanding how we can address the critical task of reimagining and remaking the collective soul-sickness in our society and its institutions.  A dream, and a critique of the legal profession, will be offered as illustrations.

Suzanne Cremen Davidson MA (Pacifica, USA), LLB (UNSW), BA, CDAA
Suzanne is a PhD candidate in Depth Psychology (Jungian and Archetypal Studies) at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, from where she holds an MA in Engaged Humanities (Depth Psychology and Mythology).  Suzanne has degrees in Law and Arts, and is admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the High Court of Australia. She is a qualified careers practitioner, a professional member of the Career Development Association of Australian, an accredited Myers-Briggs practitioner and member of the Australian Association for Psychological Type and the International Association for Jungian Studies.

 A former practising lawyer, communications professional and conference producer, Suzanne founded a career consultancy for adults in mid-life called Life Artistry. With her husband James, she established eContent Management, an academic and scholarly publishing house. In 1998 she produced Australia’s first National Children’s Summit at Parliament House, Canberra, and has served on the boards of non-profits including the inaugural National Interfaith Festival, which won the grand prize in the Australian Multicultural Marketing Awards . She is the current President of the C.G. Jung Society of Queensland.

***


Canberra Jung Society
is a non-profit organisation,
which aims to provide a contact for people interested in the psychological insights of Carl Gustav Jung.Through monthly meetings, workshops, other activities and our library,
we seek to help people to understand their own inner journey and the world today –
from a Jungian perspective.
PO Box 554,
Dickson, ACT 2602.

Web site by RLJamez

<-Home