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Friday 4th May 2018

Trish Brown:

"CG Jung's Work on Psychological Type
and its further Development by
the Myers-Briggs and MajorsPT-Elements
Psychological Type Inventories"

In 1936 Jung stated “The typology system I have proposed is an attempt, grounded on practical experience, to provide an explanatory basis and theoretical framework for the boundless diversity that has hitherto prevailed in the formation of psychological concepts. In a science as young as psychology, limiting definitions will sooner or later become an unavoidable necessity. Some day psychologists will have to agree upon certain basic principles secure from arbitrary interpretation”. (Psychological Types, Volume 6 of his collected works page 555.)

Jung concluded that differences in behaviour result from our inborn tendencies or archetypes, that drive us from within to use our minds in different ways. He felt what is important is our natural inclination to either “introversion” or “extraversion” combined with our preference for one of what he called the “four basic psychological functions”, thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition.

In his true fashion Jung then left it up to others to ponder his ideas and try to come up with a psychological technique that would validly and reliably measure a person’s preference for these tendencies.

In 1962 Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Myers, after spending 20 years studying Jung’s work, published the first Myers-Briggs Manual. This instrument has been developed further. It has been used (and abused) by many organisations over the subsequent years. In 2011 Mark Majors introduced the Majors PT-Elements inventory. This is a further development of Jung’s ideas, introducing subscales into the functions.

This event will present an overview of Jung’s ideas on personality types, and a brief introduction to the Myers-Briggs and Majors instruments. It will be followed by a one day workshop on Saturday May 12 for those who are interested in exploring the Myers-Briggs Inventory further and developing an understanding of their own preferences in relation to the psychological functions. This will be presented in an informal, fun way.

It will be necessary for participants in the workshop to fill out a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire at least a week before the workshop. Workshop attendees can contact Trish at trishbrown2002@hotmail.com.

Trish Brown is an accredited presenter of the Myers-Briggs and MajorsPT-Elements (Step 11) personality inventories. She has a B.Ed and Masters Degrees in Paychology, Law and Dispute Resolution. She has worked as a school teacher, psychologist, school counsellor, union organiser, lawyer and mediator.

Currently she works as a Family Lawyer in her own practice and is registered with the Attorney General’s Dept. as a Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner conducting family mediations in litigation and non litigation matters. Throughout her career Trish has found the ideas of Jung as reflected in the Myers-Briggs and MajorsPT-Elements inventories invaluable in contributing to her attempts to understand differences in personality types and has tried to use this understanding in assisting parties to resolve conflicts.

Saturday 12th May 2018

Trish Brown:

"A One-Day Workshop on the Myers-Briggs
Psychological Type Inventory"

A week after her lecture on Friday 4 May, Trish will be presenting a one day workshop on Saturday May 12 for those who are interested in exploring the Myers-Briggs Inventory further and developing an understanding of their own preferences in relation to the psychological functions. This will be presented in an informal, fun way.

It will be necessary for participants in the workshop to fill out a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire at least a week before the workshop. Thus, intending participants should contact Trish at least a week beforehand via email at trishbrown2002@hotmail.com.

Please let Trish know the best address to send your forms to as the questionnaire is a paper and pencil test so will need to be posted to you.

All responses to the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaires will be treated with the strictest confidence.

The cost for the workshop, to be held at our regular venue, the MacKillop Conference Centre at Lyneham, will be $60 for members or $70 for non-members, payable on the day by cash or check, or via EFT.

Morning and afternoon tea provided. Workshop participants are to supply their own lunch. Fridge and microwave oven are available.

Trish Brown is an accredited presenter of the Myers-Briggs and MajorsPT-Elements (Step 11) personality inventories. She has a B.Ed and Masters Degrees in Paychology, Law and Dispute Resolution. She has worked as a school teacher, psychologist, school counsellor, union organiser, lawyer and mediator.

She currently works as a Family Lawyer in her own practice and is registered with the Attorney General’s Dept. as a Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner conducting family mediations in litigation and non-litigation matters.
Throughout her career Trish has found the ideas of Jung as reflected in the Myers-Briggs and MajorsPT-Elements inventories invaluable in contributing to her attempts to understand differences in personality types and has tried to use this understanding in assisting parties to resolve conflicts.

Friday 1st June 2018

Dr David Russell:

"In Therapy ... a Celebration of Subjectivity"

It is the personal, interior life that gives us something to think about.
The rest is only drama.
(John Ashbery, American poet)

As the gods constituted the inner world in ancient Greece so Jung allowed the figures of his psyche to work on him. He let them instruct him. Being in Jungian therapy is an ongoing invitation to enter a Socratic dialogue in which the question at stake is not what is being talked about, but who is doing the talking. In the language of today it is the voices of the inner world, the images of our dreams that do the talking and that constitute the psychological life.

We know from the Red Book that Jung took the images and the voices that came to him with utter seriousness. His psyche had things to tell him. And he felt that he needed to listen. He felt he needed to take what was said at face value, even to take it literally: the tone, the manner, the language, the very accent.
The organising image for this talk will be the delightful Persian poem The Conference of the Birds by the 12th century Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar. Henry Corbin, the French scholar of Islamic philosophy called it a “peak of mystical experience”.

David is a past president of the Sydney Jung Society. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies and research in psychology at the University of Sydney. Here he was introduced to the writings of Sigmund Freud (unusual for a Department of Psychology) and developed an ongoing enthusiasm for the history and philosophy of psychology. After a few years in private practice he moved into an academic career, which culminated in the establishment of the Master of Analytical Psychology degree at the University of Western Sydney. David has currently returned to private practice in Sydney CBD.

Friday 6th July 2018

Robert Tulip:

Carl Jung's Book "Answer to Job"

Is God good? This is the fundamental question that Carl Jung wrestles with in Answer to Job, a book he said is his only one that he would not want to revise at all.

Jung’s psychoanalysis of the Old Testament Book of Job looks at questions such as the possible motivation of God to allow Satan to torment Job, even though Job was a good and pious man. Jung maintains that his analytic framework here is not Christian theology but scientific psychology, seeking to see phenomena as they are rather than make any supernatural assumptions. This method leads him to confront the psychological desire of human societies to construct their theories of God in their own image, as in the example of the comforting traditional belief that God is good.

This talk will open a discussion of how Jung handles these moral themes in Answer to Job, and how he extends this contested moral framework into a broader discussion of Christian cosmology. Answer to Job is Jung’s sequel to Aion, which I discussed for Canberra Jung Society in 2017 (Available here).

Robert Tulip has Bachelors and Masters Honours Degrees in philosophy from Macquarie University. After thirty years working for the federal government, he is now returning to focus on these intellectual interests, especially the philosophical problems of psychology and religion.

Friday 3rd August 2018

Dr Richard Barz:

"The Anima, the Animus and the Yoginis"

Of all of the concepts that Carl Jung has bequeathed to the world, none is more intimately accessible than the anima/animus.

On the subject of the anima, the feminine side of a man’s psyche, Jung wrote in his 1954 article “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” that “Although she may be the chaotic urge to life, something strangely meaningful clings to her, a secret knowledge or hidden wisdom, which contrasts most curiously with her irrational elfin nature… This aspect appears only to the person who gets to grips with her seriously. Only then, when this hard task has been faced, does he come to realize more and more that behind all her cruel sporting with human fate there lies something like a hidden purpose which seems to reflect a superior knowledge of life’s laws. It is just the most unexpected, the most terrifyingly chaotic things which reveal a deeper meaning.”

As for the animus, the masculine side of a woman’s psyche, Jung describes him in “The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1949/50) as the masculine personification of the unconscious which is confronted by a feminine consciousness. Since the anima and animus are universal archetypes, it is not surprising that both of them should be embodied in statues of ancient Hindu feminine spirits called yoginis.

In his talk Richard Barz will introduce some of these images, which he photographed on a recent trip to India, and the secrets of the anima/animus that they hold. One of these images is this portrayal of Śrī Vībhatsā ‘the cruel yogini’ seated on a prone male figure.

Bheṛāghāṭ, Jabalpur District, Madhya Pradesh, photo R. Barz

Dr. Richard Barz is a retired member of the Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific.