We normally meet 8-10pm on the

first Friday of each month

at

MacKillop House Conference Centre,

50 Archibald Street, Lyneham (See map)

 

Cost for meetings: $12 (Seniors $10, Concession $6, Members free)



 

 

Programme

 

 

Friday 2 July 2010, 8pm

Jeff Ward

“On finding and forgetting the self:

The developing dialogue between Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis”

 

There are many practices employed by human beings to ease suffering and enhance personal growth. Prior to the development of psychotherapy, these practices were mainly associated with religion, and many of the features that define psychotherapy can also be found in religious practices. For example, a close relationship with a spiritual advisor is often an important part of religious practice.

 

Since the inception of psychotherapy, many psychotherapists have taken an interest in the spiritual practices and teachings of the various forms of Buddhism (e.g. Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, vipassana/insight practice as part of Theravada Buddhism). One enduring area of cross fertilisation has been between the psychoanalytic tradition and Zen Buddhism, which began in the 1950s with dialogues between people such as Carl Jung and Erich Fromm and Japanese Zen scholars.

 

The meeting between Carl Jung and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu will be used as an example of an early attempt to establish a conversation between the two traditions that failed. Jung thought that a more productive exchange might be possible by having experience with both traditions. More recently this hope has been realized, with books being published by authors who have extensive training in both psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism. This more recent literature will be discussed, highlighting key areas where Zen can make potential contributions to the practice of psychotherapy, and where psychoanalytic theory can offer useful insights to Zen Buddhism.

 

Jeff Ward is a psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice in Canberra. He is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychotherapy, the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and the Australian Psychological Society. Jeff has been involved with Buddhist practice for over 35 years. He has practised Zen in Japan and Australia and has for many years been the practice leader of the Canberra Zen Group which is a satellite group of the Sydney Zen Centre.

 

 

Friday 6 August 2010, 8pm

Dr Jonathan Marshall

Archetypes of Chaos

We tend to flee from disorder and chaos, identifying chaos with evil and destruction. However what if spiritual, social and psychological growth necessarily involves living with, or passing through, chaos?

Jung differed from our usual Western approach, embracing the fragmentary propositions of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, about world as flux, and the productive and disordered struggle between opposites. This view was reinforced after Jung’s studies in alchemy when he suggested that the experience of chaos, the materia confusa, is also the experience which both leads to transformation and is essential to transformation. At this time, the order that the ego wishes to impose on the world or the unconscious no longer works, and this failure is the moment of the possibility of new life. The whole spirit is hidden in chaos, and disorder is not just to be feared. Indeed, we might say that life is that which resists order and predictability, and the more we are alive, the more fraught is the relationship between what we call order and disorder.

This talk investigates what it might mean to take chaos and disorder seriously, by exploring symbols and images of chaos in Christian, Jewish, Babylonian, Greek, Chinese and other mythologies, and by a return to hidden messages of the ‘collective dream’ of alchemy.

Jonathan Marshall is an anthropologist and a Research Fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney. He is the author of Living on Cybermind: Categories, Communication and Control and Jung, Alchemy and History, and the editor of Depth Psychology, Disorder and Climate Change

 

Friday 3 September 2010, 8pm

Sandra Kay Lauffenburger

Self-Psychology: Just Another Psychoanalytic Theory or a Dynamic Regenerative Research Program?

 

“Evidenced-based practice” is the current criteria for choosing therapeutic models. Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy have suffered as therapy of choice because of the presumed “non-scientific nature” of their procedures and outcomes. In a recently published text on the Self-Psychological theory of Heinz Kohut, Lee, Rountree and McMahon (2009) propose that Self-Psychology offers us a science and a scientific method, but of the individual rather than the general (as is the case for psychology). Viewing Self-Psychology from within a Lakatosian framework, where a central postulate provides the basis for testing and evaluating auxiliary ideas and theoretical corollaries, this psychoanalytic approach becomes a vibrant, dynamic science with the possibility of ongoing regeneration.

This talk will touch briefly on the Lakatos framework, using it to discuss the interweaving of the theoretical components of Self-Psychology. Case vignettes will be used to illustrate the Lakatosian model of Self-Psychological theory where empathy is the core postulate driving any theoretical innovation.

 

Sandra Kay, B Ed, M Sc, B Soc Sci (Hons) (Psych), maintains a clinical practice in Self-Psychologically-based psychodynamic psychotherapy in Canberra. For the past 12 years she has worked with a spectrum of issues such as chronic pain, multiple personality, OCD, personality disorders, and borderline presentations. Professional training in Self-Psychology and over 25 years of exploring the body and movement therapies inform her clinical work. Sandra holds credentials in Laban Movement Analysis and is a lecturer in Dance/Movement Therapist. She is on the faculty of the Wesley Institute (Sydney) where she teaches courses in non-verbal clinical interventions as well as lifespan developmental issues. She also offers face to face and phone supervision to psychotherapists and Dance/Movement Therapists.

 

Friday 8 October 2010, 8pm

John Kassoutas
 “
ITHAKA RE-VISITED”

The Odyssey in ancient Alexandria

(Place-making in the gap between myth and reality)

______________________________________________

There is an island there in the heavy wash of the open Sea,

 in front of Egypt, and they call it Pharos

(Odyssey, Book 4, lines 354-355)

Quoted by Plutarch in

‘The Life of Alexander’ in Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, 75AD

_______________________________________________________________________

 

From these two lines of poetry, reputedly recited by Homer to a dreaming Alexander the Great, the city of Alexandria, in Egypt, was founded in 331BCE. But thanks to Alexander’s leading General, Ptolemy 1, and, later, the historian Plutarch Homer’s reputation may have suffered gravely by this mythologising entanglement.

 

In the Hellenising (colonial) program for Egypt the tale of wandering by ‘cunning and resourceful Odysseus’ was overlooked for Homer’s other great tale of Achilles wrath and the sack of Troy (Iliad). Stories of Achilles’ heroic exploits and divine heredity were promoted as Alexander’s story after his death (Alexander Romance).

 

John writes, “by asking ‘how much more of the Odyssey is in ancient Alexandria? I’m seeking more material evidence of design linking Odysseus’ exploits and his character to the city”. John recognises Odysseus as a ‘Trickster archetype’ * and will focus his talk almost exclusively on the scenes leading into the underworld and the return (Books 10-12). John concludes, “if Achilles/ Alexander is the idealised action hero, Odysseus is an expert hunter, familiar with traces and histories of movement in the landscape; hinting at an ‘environmental unconscious’”.  **

 

John Kassoutas was a postman when a heart attack and stroke (2007) felicitously delayed the earlier presentation of this talk, as ongoing recovery of mobility and sensation yielded personal insights into an unconscious haptic sensibility. John has graduated in Social Ecology/Analytical Psychology (UWS); Media Art (UNSW); and Primary Teaching (SCAE).

 

Notes

*Joseph Russo, ‘A Jungian analysis of Homer’s Odysseus’ in The Cambridge Companion to Jung, 1997, p 240;

 see also

* C.G. Jung, ‘On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure’ in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Vol 9, I, 1975.

** Paul Carter, Dark Writing: Geography, Performance, Design. University of Hawai’i , 2009.

 

 

Friday 5 November 2010, 8pm

Speaker to be confirmed

 

Friday 4 February 2011, 8pm

Speaker to be confirmed

 

Friday 4 March 2011, 8pm

Dorothea Wojnar

“Achetypes and Fairy Tales”

 

Beginning with the fathers of the field, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, psychoanalysts have turned to fairy tales in an effort to understand the human mind. Fairy tales are inextricably linked to the work of Carl Jung. The “collective unconscious” that lies at the core of his work, and which is shared by all human beings, is revealed through archetypes, forms and symbols found in fairy tales.

 

Fairytales are oral forms of folk tales with moral and ethical aspects, which teach us how to behave and how to deal with others in the community. Marie-Louise von Franz considers fairy tales as the purest and simplest expression of the collective unconscious of psychic processes. Fairy tales represent the contents of the collective unconscious, the archetypes, and offer an understanding of the basic patterns of the human psyche and can guide us through the individuation process.

 

We will be considering the following questions drawing from ancient and contemporary material:

Why are we so enthralled by fairy tales?

Are fairy tales stories for adults or children?

How do they differ from myths, legends and sagas?

How do you interpret fairy tales?

How can that help me with my own individuation journey?

 

 

Saturday 5 March 2011, 10am to 4pm

Dorothea Wojnar

A workshop on “Fairy Tales”

 

Participants are asked to bring their favourite tale - either one they have heard and love or a fairy tale they have written. We will experience the fairy tales through enacting them. Participants will have the opportunity to become the archetypal characters in the fairytale. This can be a powerful experience as you become, for a short time, the witch or the evil king or the divine child. Participants will be asked to bring various props that will help them to become the character in the tale. After de-roling, each actor then speaks within the closed group about what it felt like to be in that role and how they experienced the other characters.

 

We will be interpreting the fairy tale after the enactment within the group. This can become a profound way of grasping the power of the fairy tale and one which can leave us with a deeper appreciation of just how the psyche undergoes the individuation process. This workshop is completely confidential and participants are asked not to discuss material from the workshop outside the group. Acting ability is not important, because we will focus on your developing an ability to experience your own and other’s psyche. Most of us acted out stories and tales as children - this is similar to that but with two major differences - we fully become the archetypal character with intention, and we fully debrief the experience.

 

Dorothea Wojnar 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.

 

 

Later in 2011 – “Watch this space!”

Sally Gillespie

Apocalypse Now: Dreams and Myths

 

The spectre of apocalypse is alive and well in the 21st century, haunting our media through the dire predictions of scientific reports on climate change, species decimation and failing oil reserves. The message is our world is fragile and teetering on the brink of a terrifying future. Yet this is not a new message – throughout millennia humanity has anticipated, dreamt, and mythologised the end of world, generation after generation. Yet for all the prophecies the world has kept turning and the human species has flourished - so far.

This talk explores the archetypal dimensions of apocalypse through an exploration of end of the world dreams, mythologies and millennial movements. This material will then be considered in the light of the current discourse on global warming and ecological degradations to illuminate how the unconscious archetypal dimensions are expressing themselves and shaping debates and responses in both the private and public domain.

What truth lies in Robert Bosnak’s belief that ‘the current faith in global warming is a religious expression of millennial fears’ which at least in part relates to ‘the quasi-physical dream that we are that chosen generation which lives at the limit of time’? Or in Michael Ortiz Hill’s warning that if ‘we do not take the apocalypse into the psyche where it truly belongs and suffer through it as a rite of passage, we will be compelled to live it out literally...’? This talk will enter into the heart, mind and soul of the apocalyptic imagining of our present times.

 

Sally Gillespie is a Jungian psychotherapist who has recently begun a PhD exploring the topic of Climate Change and Psyche. She is the author of The Book Of Dreaming and Living the Dream and co-author of The Knot Of Time. Sally has been in private practice in Sydney for over 25 years and facilitates professional development courses in dreamwork and sandplay, She was the President of the CG Jung Society of Sydney between 2006 and 2010.

 

 

*** Further edifying expositions will be announced in due course ***

  Archive:

orothea Wojnar: SSee our  Archive of previous events

 

 

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.

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