2024 Jung SA Program of talks:
Our Next Talk:
Dr Susan Pollard presents Calling to the Deep
Date 1st November, 7:30pm Adelaide time.
This is a face-to-face at Sophia and online via zoom.
To purchase a zoom link or to pre-pay for attendance at Sophia please go to: http://www.jungsa.net/zoom-link.html
Talk details:
Dr Susan Pollard presents Calling to the Deep
"Deep calls to Deep in the Roar of Your Waters! (Psalm 42)
An Exploration of Depth Psychology where “Deep Need’ calls for dialogue and response.
We will consider what CG Jung’ described as his ‘confrontation with the unconscious’ and what might assist us in our Individuation journeys. I will refer to myth, dream and reflections especially from Jung’s Red Book and from clinical work.
Dr. Susan Pollard, is a Jungian analyst, psychotherapist & clinical psychologist. She has a theological, teaching and educational administration background and has lived in Australia, Africa and Europe. From 1991 to 2000, Susan Pollard was a training candidate at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, and from where she graduated in July 2000. Susan Pollard is in private practice as a Jungian analyst and a training analyst with the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts.
|
How to get to Sophia Spiritual Centre: Monthly talks are held on the first Friday of each month from March to December each year. VENUE: At the Sophia Spirituality Centre. Next to Cabra College. 225 Cross Rd SA Cumberland Park 5041 Turn left into Sophia immediately after the pedestrian crossing heading West on Cross Rd - watch for Jung Soc sign. Park on left, then walk up roadway following signs to Sophia. |
|
Upcoming Talks:
Dates TBA
Working with Trauma and Young People: A Jungian Perspective
By Dr Matthew Doherty
Trauma, particularly relational trauma, is common in the child and adolescent population and presents a unique set of challenges within psychotherapeutic work. Working with young people to address these experiences presents both a wonderful challenge and reward, and the Jungian approach can play a pivotal role in this process. Jungian therapy promotes psychical healing of trauma by emphasizing the salience of the positive therapeutic dyad and encouraging the emergence of the self-healing archetype that is embedded within children’s and adolescent's psyches. In this talk I will discuss some of the ways in which I apply the Jungian approach to facilitate young people's inner healing by working through complexes focusing on internal struggles, which may include the dichotomies of good and evil, shame and pride, and condemnation and redemption.
Dr Matthew Doherty is a Jungian oriented child and adolescent therapist who has been working with young people in the clinical and community settings for over twenty years. He is a lecturer in the Graduate Program of Counselling & Psychotherapy at the University of Adelaide, and the Clinical Manager at Northern Area Community & Youth Services [NACYS] a not for profit, non-government organisation working with at risk and vulnerable youth in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. He has degrees in nursing and psychology; a Masters in Applied Social Science-Psychotherapy; a Doctorate in Counselling & Psychotherapy, and a Graduate Diploma in Jungian Studies.
Development of the Personality Part II
by Dr Robert Matthews
Details TBA
About the speaker:
Robert Matthews is a Swiss trained Jungian Analyst in private practice in Adelaide. Is the current President of the CG Jung SA Society. And is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and the application of neuroscience in education. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and has recently published the book:
The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics:
Reflections on the Unification of Psyche and Matter
For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Paradoxical-Meeting-of-Depth-Psychology-and-Physics-Reflections-on/Matthews/p/book/9781032120638
Past Talks:
11th October 7:30pm (GMT +8.30) Online via zoom ONLY.
Speaker: Jungian analyst Paul Venables
The Green Man
The Green Man is a carved male head, surrounded by or disgorging leaves. His image embodies the beautiful and the sinister, and can be seen as both a life and death force: he offers the possibility of a reconnection with our intuitive sense of nature. Despite his primordial roots, this figure continues to regenerate and has recently resurfaced as a contemporary image that challenges our attitude to identity and our place in the world. Coming at a time of crisis – when attitudes to our natural environment are seriously challenged – this talk will examine the positive and negative aspects of growth and how we might engage with this re-emerging image of the Green Man as a symbol to mediate and counterbalance our attitude towards nature, both inner and outer.
PAUL VENABLES is a Jungian Analyst with the Guild of Analytical Psychologists. He previously trained as an Integrative Psychotherapist at the Minster Centre in London and then as a supervisor at the Metanoia Institute. He has practiced both privately and in the public sector for twenty years. Originally an actor he worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End, appearing regularly in television and film for over twenty years.
6th September
Speaker: Robert Matthews
Talk: In the Time of Chaos Part II: Holding the Opposites
We continue our discussion on what to do in this current time when so much seems to be in growing turmoil.
We will hear from several of those who worked closely with Jung, including Marie-Louise von Franz for their wisdom on how to be in the face of difficulties. Do we protest to the streets? Or go within? Is all not impotent in the face of something so great as a pandemic or war?
Let us head a little bit further into understanding Jung's words in response to such questions all those years ago:
In 1954, during a talk Jung was giving at the Psychology Club in Zurich, he was asked to speak to the likelihood of atomic war—note this was at the time of heightened tensions between the Soviet Union/China and the West.
Here is his reply:
“I think it depends on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in themselves. If enough can do so, I think the situation will just hold, and we shall be able to creep around innumerable threats and thus avoid the worst catastrophe of all: the final clash of opposites in an atomic war. But if there are not enough and such a war should break out, I am afraid it would inevitably mean the end of our civilization as so many civilizations have ended in the past but on a smaller scale.”
This is a difficult topic to cover, but perhaps it is the difficult one’s that are the most important to discuss.
About the speaker:
Robert Matthews is a Swiss trained Jungian Analyst in private practice in Adelaide. Is the current President of the CG Jung SA Society. And is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and the application of neuroscience in education. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and has recently published the book:
The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics:
Reflections on the Unification of Psyche and Matter
For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Paradoxical-Meeting-of-Depth-Psychology-and-Physics-Reflections-on/Matthews/p/book/9781032120638
2nd August 7:30pm (GMT +8.30) Online via zoom AND face-to-face at Sophia (next to Cabra College - see below for map details).
To purchase a zoom link go to: http://www.jungsa.net/zoom-link.html
Speaker: Robert Matthews
Talk: In the Time of Chaos Part I:
There has been a surge in disturbing events in recent years. Covid, high cost of living, the rise in populist leaders, and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have together left us with anxious feelings of a growing chaos. I’m seeing numerous dreams of catastrophic destruction in people’s dreams recently. Even the threat of a nuclear exchange has once again arisen in our fearful minds. What can we make of all this?
In 1954, during a talk Jung was giving at the Psychology Club in Zurich, he was asked to speak to the likelihood of atomic war—note this was at the time of heightened tensions between the Soviet Union/China and the West.
Here is his reply:
“I think it depends on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in themselves. If enough can do so, I think the situation will just hold, and we shall be able to creep around innumerable threats and thus avoid the worst catastrophe of all: the final clash of opposites in an atomic war. But if there are not enough and such a war should break out, I am afraid it would inevitably mean the end of our civilization as so many civilizations have ended in the past but on a smaller scale.”
This is a difficult topic to cover, but perhaps it is the difficult one’s that are the most important to discuss.
About the speaker:
Robert Matthews is a Swiss trained Jungian Analyst in private practice in Adelaide. Is the current President of the CG Jung SA Society. And is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and the application of neuroscience in education. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and has recently published the book:
The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics:
Reflections on the Unification of Psyche and Matter
For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Paradoxical-Meeting-of-Depth-Psychology-and-Physics-Reflections-on/Matthews/p/book/9781032120638
5th July 7:30pm (GMT+8:30) (online via zoom only)
Speaker: Claire Binnion
Talk entitled: The Word Association Experiment
To purchase a zoom link ($12/$6):
http://www.jungsa.net/store/p3/Purchase_Zoom_Link_for_Meeting_5th_July_2024.html
Or to purchase membership 2024 for free zoom access for the remainder of the year, go to:
http://www.jungsa.net/membership.html
Talk description:
Title: The Word Association Experiment: (as used by C G Jung)
Jung initially use the word association experiment as a tool for Psychiatric diagnosis. However, he soon discovered that some of the errors made by participants occurred as a result of disturbances due to what he termed unconscious complexes. He then explored its use in normal populations, and found it to be a valuable tool for identifying these complexes, and so it became a useful aid in therapy. This talk will provide a brief historical background of the word association experiment and how it was used by Jung, followed by a look at the nature of complexes and how one can live with them. Then, we will go step by step through the process of how to conduct the experiment, identifying the complex indicators, and how to measure the results. Examples from Jung’s literature, as well as examples from the word association assignment completed recently by the speaker, as part of their analytical psychology training course at the Zentrum in Switzerland, will be included.
About the speaker:
Claire Binnion, a regular to our meetings, is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Adelaide. She has commenced training at the Centre for Depth Psychology according CG Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz.
7th June
Professor David Tacy
Title: Spirituality and the Stages of Life
This talk follows on from the previous talk I gave to the Society last year. It was about individuation as a spiritual journey. Jung believed that in the first half of life the ego needs to stabilize and adjust itself to family and society. Then, according to his theory, the ego is displaced at the middle of life, to allow for the greater Self to emerge. This idea has become popularised as the midlife crisis. Jung famously employs the metaphor of the rise and descent of the sun. The daily rise and fall of the sun occurred to him as a likely metaphor for the course of the ego. The ego must rise but then it must falter and fall, else the Self does not appear, or is inhibited in its appearance.
Individuation is similar to the ‘way of the Cross’ in Christianity, or the path of suffering. The paradoxical feature of this theory is that the ego needs the Self for its fulfilment, but the Self needs the ego for its expression and incarnation in the world. Without the ego, the Self has no purchase on life, no entry into time and space. But the ego can block the emergence of the Self unless it is relativised and reduced in importance. Nevertheless, the Self does not wish to crush the ego because without it the Self cannot begin its work of incarnation.
About the speaker:
David Tacey works across the fields of spirituality, religion, analytical psychology, literature and philosophy. He is a specialist in Jungian studies and is the author of How to Read Jung; Jung and the New Age; Remaking Men: Jung, Spirituality and Social Change; Gods and Diseases; and The Darkening Spirit: Jung, Spirituality, Religion. His most recent book is The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change. His books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Portuguese and French. He taught courses at the summer school of the Jung Institute in Zürich from 2001 to 2010. He is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at La Trobe University, where he taught Jung’s Cultural Psychology.
3rd May 7:30pm (GMT+8:30) (online via zoom only)
Speaker: Jungian Analyst Annette Lowe.
To purchase a zoom link ($12/$6):
http://www.jungsa.net/store/p3/Purchase_Zoom_Link_for_Meeting_3rd_May_2024.html
Or to purchase membership 2024 for free zoom access for the remainder of the year, go to:
http://www.jungsa.net/membership.html
Title: 'Jung's Mid-life Crisis and Beyond'.
Annette will follow themes in the development and outcome of Jung's mid-life crisis. These include religion, imagination and his profound inward focus. We will look at the huge flowering of these themes, especially spirituality, in Jung's later life, and the fresh perspectives that they offer us. Annette will also mention some findings from neuroscience and sociology which affirm the value of exploring our spirituality.
About the speaker:
Annette Lowe is a Jungian analyst who has been in private practice in St Kilda for over 25 years. She is a training analyst with the C G Jung Institute in Zurich and a PACFA accredited supervisor. Annette is a Life Member and a former President of the C. G. Jung Society of Melbourne. She is the editor of “Jung Talks” and “Jung in Effect” publications, and has given many talks in the Melbourne Jung Society's monthly lecture program.
5th April 2024
Talk: The Autonomous Complex
Presenter: Robert Matthews PhD
In last months talk, I introduced a 15th century woodcut, that unites music with the planets as a path of transformation of the soul figure Thalia (one of the nine muses).
We continue looking at this woodcut, but now from the psychodynamic view that the planets represent autonomous complexes - such as a power complex (Mars) or a money complex (Jupiter). These complexes are quite capable of 'running the show', in Jung's words - we do not have complexes, but they have us!
Seen in this light, we ask the question what it might mean to redeem Thalia as she ascends up the back of the serpent to find her place next to the God Apollo. And she then becomes an image of the individuation story.
(from last month)
The music of the spheres is an old view, that our soul entered this world by journeying through the series of planetary spheres above. Through this descent, a certain quality and fate was visited upon each of our souls, a quality characteristic of each planetary deity.
These spheres continue to speak with our soul as we live out our lives. This is their music. And together they form an endless harmony in motion around the earth.
In this talk we will look at a famous wood-cut (see figure) by the musician Franchino Gaffurio (1452-1522).
This wood-cut describes the redemption of Thalia - a soul figure, who must ascend along the back of a triple-headed serpent through the planetary spheres to take her place to the right of Apollo. As one of the nine muses she becomes the middle of the three Graces. It is a story of transformation where each deity of the spheres, and their accompanying musical mode and muse must be met with. For us, this cosmic journey taken on a personal level, becomes an individuation story.
About the speaker:
Robert Matthews is a Swiss trained Jungian Analyst in private practice in Adelaide. Is the current President of the CG Jung SA Society. And is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and the application of neuroscience in education. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and has recently published the book:
The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics:
Reflections on the Unification of Psyche and Matter
For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Paradoxical-Meeting-of-Depth-Psychology-and-Physics-Reflections-on/Matthews/p/book/9781032120638
1st March 2024
Talk: Music of the Spheres
Presenter: Robert Matthews PhD
A legend from the East relates how one day,
God made a statue of clay in His own image,
and asked the soul to enter into it.
But the soul refused to enter into this prison,
for its nature is to fly about freely,
and not be limited and bound to any sort of captivity.
The soul did not wish in the least to enter this prison.
Then God asked the angels to play their music and,
as the angels played, the soul was moved to ecstasy.
Through that ecstasy - in order to make this music
more clear to itself - it entered this body.
(Old Sufi story)
It is an old view, that our soul entered this world by journeying through the series of planetary spheres above. Through this descent, a certain quality and fate was visited upon each of our souls, a quality characteristic of each planetary deity.
These spheres continue to speak with our soul as we live out our lives. This is their music. And together they form an endless harmony in motion around the earth.
In this talk we will look at a famous wood-cut (see figure) by the musician Franchino Gaffurio (1452-1522).
This wood-cut describes the redemption of Thalia - a soul figure, who must ascend along the back of a triple-headed serpent through the planetary spheres to take her place to the right of Apollo. As one of the nine muses she becomes the middle of the three Graces. It is a story of transformation where each deity of the spheres, and their accompanying musical mode and muse must be met with. For us, this cosmic journey taken on a personal level, becomes an individuation story.
About the speaker:
Robert Matthews is a Swiss trained Jungian Analyst in private practice in Adelaide. Is the current President of the CG Jung SA Society. And is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and the application of neuroscience in education. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and has recently published the book:
The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics:
Reflections on the Unification of Psyche and Matter
For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Paradoxical-Meeting-of-Depth-Psychology-and-Physics-Reflections-on/Matthews/p/book/9781032120638
1st December 2023
Exploring a Jungian psychology of accompaniment in the “Coming and the Goings” of these times.
by Dr Susan Pollard.
This is a face-to-face at Sophia Cross Road and on-line via zoom.
To pre-purchase or to receive a zoom link go to:
http://www.jungsa.net/store/p3/Purchase_Zoom_Link_for_Meeting_1st_December_2023.html
Exploring a Jungian psychology of accompaniment in the “Coming and the Goings” of these times. We will consider Jung’s vision of a transpersonal/cosmic dimension, the relevance of myth and dreams as current paradigms shift and as we live in transitional space that looks towards personal and collective healing and reconciliation.
“All the time, a myth is playing out in the unconscious…a stream of archetypal ideas that goes on through the centuries through an individual…It is like a continuous stream and comes to light in the great movements…and great change (p.300, C.G. Jung Speaking, Interviews & Encounters)
C.G. Jung’s Monument in Stone, Bollingen, on his 75th Birthday (1950)
This is Telesphorus,
who roams through the dark regions of this cosmos
and glows like a star out of the depths.
He points the way to the gates of the sun and to the land of dreams.
(Inscription from Heraclitus)
Dr. Susan Pollard, is a Jungian analyst, psychotherapist & clinical psychologist. She has a theological, teaching and educational administration background and has lived in Australia, Africa and Europe. From 1991 to 2000, Susan Pollard was a training candidate at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, and from where she graduated in July 2000. Susan Pollard is in private practice as a Jungian analyst in Adelaide.
3rd November 2023 7:30pm
Carl Jung’s Symbolic Path by Dr. Robert Matthews
Jung’s life and consequently his psychology, can be understood in many ways, one of which is the making conscious of the eternal in this mortal life of ours. I intend this talk as something of an overview of Jung’s findings into the religious life of his clients and himself and thus his psychology.
Historically the search for the eternal has been the role of religion. But for Jung this path was not possible. Although he respected the Church greatly, indeed his ancestry was from a long line of Pastors, he could not follow this path in good conscience and instead set out to investigate human nature as a psychiatrist. But the religious would not leave him alone and gradually his psychology emerged as an investigation of the eternal within oneself.
Some, such as Edward Edinger, a profound American Jungian analyst, suggest that Jung’s great discovery of the collective unconscious, has penetrated to the source of all religion, at least as far as the experience of the human psyche is concerned. That a door has now been opened where by all religion may be seen empirically as various streams of the one fountain. This opens to the future possibility of the gradual embracing of all religious life across the world into facets of the one experience.
About the speaker:
Robert Matthews is a Swiss trained Jungian Analyst in private practice in Adelaide. Is the current President of the CG Jung SA Society. And is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching psychological theories in education and the application of neuroscience in education. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and has recently published the book:
The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics: Reflections on the Unification of Psyche and Matter. For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Paradoxical-Meeting-of-Depth-Psychology-and-Physics-Reflections-on/Matthews/p/book/9781032120638
6th October 2023 7:30pm
http://www.jungsa.net/store/p3/Purchase_Zoom_Link_for_Meeting_6th_October_2023.html
Title: Individuation as a Spiritual Journey
Speaker: Prof. David Tacey
In this talk I want to explore the notion that what we refer to today as ‘spirituality’ is close to what Jung meant by the term ‘individuation’. This is debatable, of course, but I believe such an investigation has merit. Clinicians would likely question whether spirituality and individuation have much in common. They would probably say individuation is a wider and broader concept. They would emphasise the psychological work of individuation and point out that spirituality can be an escape from the psychological domain. This was perhaps true in the past, but I believe spirituality has changed its character, and is no longer what many imagine.
Biog: David Tacey works across the fields of spirituality, religion, analytical psychology, literature and philosophy. He is a specialist in Jungian studies and is the author of How to Read Jung; Jung and the New Age; Remaking Men: Jung, Spirituality and Social Change; Gods and Diseases; and The Darkening Spirit: Jung, Spirituality, Religion. His most recent book is The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change. His books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Portuguese and French. He taught courses at the summer school of the Jung Institute in Zürich from 2001 to 2010. He is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at La Trobe University, where he taught Jung’s Cultural Psychology.
1st September 2023 7:30pm
The Theosophical Approach
by Colin Darcey
The structure of the talk will be on the history of the Theosophical Society, the society’s position on the nature of consciousness, and some comparisons with Jung’s ideas on consciousness. The society was started at an interesting time in European history (1875) when ‘The Church’ was being challenged from a number directions. The society provided some answers to a growing need in society and quickly expanded. Its influence included a number of social changes, events, organisations and individuals. The Theosophical Society’s view of consciousness was radical at this time, proposing cyclic universes, consciousness as the ultimate cause and humanity’s relative insignificance in the scheme of it all. With respect to what Jung proposed as the nature of consciousness, as it related to the human psyche and the Theosophical Society’s cosmic view, there are both similarities and differences. Some of these will be explored, with a qualification that this will be from the perspective of someone that is not a Jungian scholar and has acquired a limited knowledge from reading and being inspired by Jung for much of his adult life.
Colin is the current president of the Adelaide Theosophical Society and practices as a psychotherapist in Adelaide (now part time), informed by a Transpersonal approach. He completed four years of study in psychology, a Masters in Cognitive Science, a Masters in Counselling Practice, and under graduates diplomas in Transpersonal Counselling, Clinical Hypnotherapy.
4th August 2023 7:30pm - At Sophia and on zoom
Celestial Harmony - Music of the Soul?
By Andrew Baker
This is a face-to-face at Sophia and online talk via zoom.
To purchase a zoom link or pay in advance for Sophia please go to:
http://www.jungsa.net/store/p3/Purchase_Zoom_Link_for_Meeting_4th_August_2023.html
This talk will look at the origins of the idea of the Music of the Spheres in harmony and number rather than astronomy, and how those harmonies can also be archetypal qualities which became associated with planets and mythological symbols. Andrew Baker will suggest that these qualities, which might be found in the soul or imagination, also lie within all reality, and ask whether they have some relationship with Jung’s concept of archetypes.
Andrew Baker is a retired librarian, composer and historical researcher from Stafford, England. In recent years he has been particularly interested in the ideas behind 18thc gardens and forgotten English Platonists, giving talks to the Temenos Academy and Fintry Trust. Has written string quartets and symphonies and made films with marionettes.
July 7th 2023 7:30pm
Land, Sea and Sky: Aboriginal Seasonal Resource Calendars and Landscape Astronomy
By Trevor Leaman
In this two-part presentation, I will firstly describe how Aboriginal peoples used culturally-important calendrical stars and constellations to predict the lifecycles of the terrestrial animals they represent. Next, I will introduce the topic of landscape astronomy: how the landscape can be used as an ‘observatory’, or a place to witness the rising and setting of the Sun, Moon and important cultural stars. This topic will be expanded to include how landscapes can also be used to represent extensive ‘sky maps’ on the ground. Although I will focus specifically on Wiradjuri traditional sky knowledge, this topic is relevant to other Aboriginal language groups throughout Australia.
Trevor Leaman is a cultural astronomy PhD researcher in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He is researching the astronomical traditions of the Wiradjuri people of central NSW under the supervision of Associate Professor Duane Hamacher (University of Melbourne) and Professor Daniel Robinson (UNSW). He earned diplomas in Civil and Mechanical Engineering, degrees in Biology and Forest Ecology, and an MSc in astronomy.
Trevor has published papers in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage and Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, and a chapter in the book The Harmony Debates (Sophia Centre Press, University of Wales, 2020) titled “Harmonising the Land and Sky in Aboriginal Dreamings”. He has worked as an astronomy guide and educator at Ayres Rock Resort, the Launceston Planetarium, and Sydney Observatory. He also tutors the unit PHYS1160 “Introduction to Astronomy and Search for Life Elsewhere” at UNSW, and runs his own Astronomy Outreach business “Dark Skies Downunder” where he presents the cultural night sky to clubs, schools, communities and private functions. He has also co-written Indigenous Astronomy units for the Australian National Curriculum.
To download his chapter please go to:
http://www.aboriginalastronomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Leaman-2020-Harmony-Debates-Chapter.pdf
June 2nd 2023 7:30pm
By Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar
Witchcraft and Emotion in Early Modern Europe
Accounts of witchcraft were common in early modern Europe. Witches were portrayed in popular print, in woodcuts and in plays. They were legislated against and those accused of witchcraft were liable to face pillory, jail or death. In England approximately 500 men and women were executed for witchcraft between 1563 and 1736 – just a small percentage of the 50,000 executed for witchcraft across Europe during this same period.
In this paper, I want to explore the importance of emotions as fundamental drivers of witchcraft acts and accusations. English witches were believed to form deep emotional bonds with the Devil – who most commonly appeared to them as a small domestic animal such as a dog, cat or chicken. Witches were then believed to use their ties with the Devil to hurt or murder their neighbours, to lame or kill cattle, to make men impotent, or to destroy children. Witches were often viewed as men and women who had lost control of their emotions and given into their evil desires. Performing witchcraft was not viewed as a rational act. Rather, it was believed to be motivated and sustained by strong emotions such as anger, rage, greed, envy, hatred
– and even love.
Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar is a Lecturer (Teaching Specialist) in History at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Witchcraft, the Devil and Emotions in Early Modern England (Routledge, 2017) and is currently working on a new, book-length project on ghosts in early modern England, as well as editing volume three of Bloomsbury’s six volume series ‘A Cultural History of Magic’.
7:30 pm May 5th 2023
Humanities Future part II
Dr Robert Matthews
Unfortunately our scheduled meeting by Dr Matthew Doherty needs to be postponed due to personal reasons.
Instead I'll continue the talk I gave last month on Humanities Future and we will see Dr Doherty later in the year. This will be a FREE ZOOM ONLY meeting. And not face to face at Sophia - so spread the word to anyone who doesn't receive these emails but might attend. There were several points that called for more discussion at our last meeting that I wish to pick up. One is the "continuing incarnation" as Jung's insight in to what might be part of the new religion that is to come. This speaks to the question of individuation as a broader practice. A second point is the one of action in the world versus the introversion of the spiritual life. There is more to say here so please join us this Friday.
About the speaker:
Robert Matthews is a Swiss trained Jungian Analyst in private practice in Adelaide. Is the current President of the CG Jung SA Society. And is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and the application of neuroscience in education. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and has recently published the book:
The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics:
Reflections on the Unification of Psyche and Matter
For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Paradoxical-Meeting-of-Depth-Psychology-and-Physics-Reflections-on/Matthews/p/book/9781032120638
7:30 pm April 14th 2023
Humanities Future
There seem to be an ever increasing number of difficulties confronting humanity at this time. We had believed ourselves in control of nature, and yet nature reminds us, almost daily, what hubris that was. The economy gets the most attention in politics, and yet here things seem to be on shakier ground than we had thought. Many believe it is to the innovation of novel technologies that our rescue will come. Others maintain we should give up on life on this planet and leave for distant shores to start anew. Others take to the streets and protest. And still others look to a saviour to latch onto, childishly hoping for someone to overcome their ills.
No-one knows what our future really is to be, but historically such times as ours have been associated with renewal.
In this talk I will present a series of dreams that I suggest bring some comfort that there are currents moving in the depths bringing forth a renewal of life. And that though there will be numerous birthing pains along the way, we should not be without hope for our future.
Around the three dreams offered, I intend this talk to be in part a discussion as I think we will all have something to say on the topic.
March 3rd 2023
Development of the Personality Part I
by Dr Robert Matthews
There is a Self within us, a living guiding hand that can bring about an ever broadening of our personality. Indeed the Self is also known as the greater personality.
We know that finding a connection to this greater part within us, is a key step in personality development.
The alchemists talk of a fish, the Echeneis. This fish, so small and unfindable in the great ocean. It is located in the centre of the spirit of the world. This suggests an image of the elusive Self.
In history this fish, attached itself to the rudder of Caligula’s boat forcing him to return to shore where he was murdered by his soldiers. A similar fate befell Marc Antony’s vessel before his final battle. The historian Pliny concludes of the miraculous powers of the Echeneis, that it can portend such events.
Jung’s alchemical understanding of this fish is fascinating:
“The symbol of the self appears here as an “extremely small” fish in the vast ocean of the unconscious, like a man alone on the sea of the world. Its symbolization as a fish characterizes the self, in this state, as an unconscious content. There would be no hope whatever of catching this insignificant creature if a “magnet of the wise” did not exist in the conscious subject. This “magnet” is obviously something a master can teach to his pupil; it is the “theoria,” the one solid possession from which the adept can proceed.” CW9 ii para 219.
In this talk we will see if a little more light can be shed on this “magnet of the wise” that the alchemists sought to attract the Echeneis.
December 2022
In to the Heart of Jungian Psychology:
A consideration of the essentials of Jung’s Analytical Psychotherapy that prompts us to go further on our Inner Journey.
By Dr Susan Pollard
“ Individual self-reflection, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to (their) own deepest being with their individual and social destiny – here is the beginning of a cure for the blindness which reigns in the present hour.” (C.G. Jung, Collected Works 7, par.8)
Dr Susan Pollard is a Zurich trained Jungian analyst and Clinical psychologist practicing in Adelaide.
November 4th 2022 7.30pm
MYSTERIOUS JOURNEYS
William Blake and C.G. Jung Part Two
By Carol Leader
(a training and supervising Jungian analyst and senior psychoanalytic psychotherapist with the British Psychotherapy Foundation).
CG Jung Society of South Australia, November 4th 2022
In 2009 the publication of C G Jung’s Red Book confirmed his links with the English poet, artist and visionary William Blake, who is mentioned a number of times in Jung’s Collective Works. Jung had discovered that, in order not to be destroyed by the unconscious processes erupting through him after his separation from Freud, he needed to follow his inner emotional states. He recorded his mythological experience in images and writing. 100 years before this, Blake had written, I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s. He went on to produce many startling images, accompanied by a mythology that proved to be so complicated and obscure that its perceptions of the inner world were largely ignored during his lifetime. Blake, like Jung, was ahead of his era, but today both men’s journeys reveal a profound knowledge of unconscious process that has become increasingly relevant for the challenges of modern times.
This fully illustrated talk will use a Jungian lens to explore Blake’s mythology and the major characters that stand behind his prophetic works. It will also pave the way for a second talk in November 2022 that will explore in detail the sublime etchings of Blake’s final completed work, Illustrations of the Book of Job. Here Blake re-transcribes, according to his own interpretation, the Old Testament story. What emerges is his vibrant experience of moments of truth in confronting unconscious process. This Jung did later, in his own way, in The Red Book and in Answer to Job.
Carol Leader is a training and supervising Jungian analyst and senior psychoanalytic psychotherapist with the British Psychotherapy Foundation. She worked extensively in theatre, TV and radio before re-training as a therapist nearly thirty years ago. She is in full-time private practice, consults in business and for projects in the arts, as well as lecturing, writing and leading workshops and seminars for a number of professional trainings. Her paper Evil, Imagination and the Unrepressed Unconscious: the Value of William Blake’s Satanic ‘Error’ for Clinical Practice. won the 2014 British Journal of Psychotherapy’s Rozsika Parker Prize. (www.carolleader.com)
October 7th 2022
THE ARCHETYPE OF THE HEART: A Symbol of Transformation.
By Jungian Analyst, Linda Margaret Teer.
Description of Talk:
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.” So the fox says in Saint-Exupéry’s ‘Le Petit Prince.’ But what do we understand by the word ‘heart’? The answer to this question will emerge as we follow the archetype of the heart across religions and cultures in Part One of this talk.
The profound truth of the fox’s words has long been recognised by the ancient mystical traditions and philosophies of the East. In Part Two, as we explore the Eastern Christian monastic tradition of Hesychasm, which emphasised praying with the mind in the heart, we will discover the connection between this ancient path of spiritual and psychological awakening and the Jungian journey of individuation, and learn of its relevance for today.
Biography:
Linda Margaret Teer is a graduate of the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS), University of London, where she studied Anthropology and Comparative Religion, and obtained an MA in Indian Philosophy. She is a graduate of the Guild of Analytical Psychologists, a member of the IAAP, and has a private practice based in South West London where she lives. Her main interests are the interspiritual dialogue between Advaita Vedanta and Catholic Christianity, and the interface between Jungian analytical psychology and spirituality.
September 2nd 2022
THE PRE-SOCRATICS: MYSTICISM – and – MECHANISM
By Maeve Archibald
Mysticism – and – mechanism are two different ways to think. I am interested in the movement between these two different ways that we, human beings, use to explain ourselves and make sense of our world. I am going to refer to the earliest known philosophers, the Pre-Socratics, to explore how western thinking began to develop the way it has. Please note that I do not attempt to find the beginning of western thought, only a beginning. I pick up certain threads that lead from the setting in place of the spiritual foundations of humanity and point us towards a basic aspect of ‘scientific method’ used in quantum physics.
I intend to present an outline of the three Pre-Socratic philosophers; Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, members of The Milesian School. Their ideas about the true nature of the world made revolutionary changes in the way humans thought about the natural world, their relationship to the Divine, and their thoughts about themselves as individual beings.
About Me
I grew up on a sheep farm in The Central Tablelands of NSW, west of Bathurst. I trained as a teacher and spent several years teaching indigenous children in towns along the Darling River. In 1990 I moved to Adelaide with my family and in 2007 I re-enrolled at University, for a degree in Theology and Philosophy, a fascinating combination of subjects. Some might even call it a very balanced timetable while others may say the opposite. I am an avid reader and I love live theatre. I am also a published poet, with Japanese forms being my chief interest.
I am deeply interested in history and why things are the way they are so when I started investigating the Pre-Socratics I found a fascinating area of study. I have not found many answers, but I have found many questions that keep me interested in Jung and his ideas about individuation. So following the threads that connect early Antiquity, the Axial Age, and Jung, in my life has taken me on a journey of investigation into the deep heart of humanity.
5th August 7:30 pm
Lecture: Insights into the Individuation Process Part II
By Dr Robert Matthews
This talk will be part II of insights into the individuation process - from both a practical and clinical perspective. In this talk I will focus more on the play of the opposites and how their union forms the basis of the individuation process. This takes us into Jung's great masterpiece, Mysterium coniunctionis. A very difficult book to grasp. But hugely worth the effort. Essentially it is a handbook on the play of the opposites in forming a relationship with the infinite - the essence of individuation.
Robert Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and application of neuroscience in education. He is the current president of the CG Jung Society of SA, has a PhD in theoretical physics and is a Swiss trained Jungian analyst
1st July 7:30 pm
Individuation – the path to the wholeness of personality.
By Dr Robert Matthews
According to Jung the most important psychological process is the so-called individuation process. It is our path to wholeness, to encounter what is missing in one's life. Often we talk about individuation within the process of analysis, but this is not available or too expensive for many people to undertake. Recently I've become interested to shed light on what might be useful to assist individuation outside of therapy. To me, individuation essentially is done through a certain honesty with oneself and an attitude of openness to what Jung called the symbolic. In this talk I will sketch out some thoughts on how this attitude can be brought into one's life. And I am eager to hear from the audience, how they understand this challenge of individuation outside of analysis.
Robert Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and application of neuroscience in education. He is the current president of the CG Jung Society of SA, has a PhD in theoretical physics and is a Swiss trained Jungian analyst
3rd June 7:30 pm:
The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St Thérèse of Lisieux
by Gloria Oelman
Thérèse Martin was born in Alencon in northern France in 1873, entered the Carmelite convent in Lisieux at 15 and died there from tuberculosis 9 years later. She became known through her memoir, begun 2½ years before her death in obedience to a request from the Mother Superior. When she became ill, it turned into a journal and less than a year before her death she experienced a numinous dream which had a profound effect on her. In the dream, she was visited by a Spanish Carmelite nun, a companion of Teresa of Avila, who confirmed her approaching death. In the afterglow of the dream, her words spilled out onto the page:
Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love .... my vocation, at last I have found it…. MY VOCATION IS LOVE!
Close to her death, she had intimations that the book would be published and become a way for her to carry out her mission ‘…to spend my heaven in doing good on earth.’ It has in fact become a spiritual classic and Thérèse one of the most popular saints of all time.
Jung too had this same sense of purpose and destiny although it would be lived out very differently. In Psychology and Religion: West and East he states:
I am not, however, addressing myself to the happy possessors of faith, but to those many people for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead. To gain an understanding of religious matters, probably all that is left us today is the psychological approach.
And in a letter to PW Martin in 1945 he wrote:
You are quite right, the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character.
My main focus will be on Thérèse’s story but I will view it through the lens of Jung’s concept of individuation and his conviction of the therapeutic value of personal numinous experience which is so amply illustrated in both The Story of a Soul and, incidentally, in Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
This non-Catholic, lukewarm agnostic came to knowledge of St Thérèse through a series of serendipitous incidents over a couple of years that began in 2002, which, as it turned out, was when her relics were on pilgrimage in Australia. I will relate these experiences as an illustration of the kinds of experiences that Jung alludes to.
1st April 7:30 pm:
An Introduction to picture interpretation.
Picture interpretation can form an important role in Jungian therapy.
Done with a receptive attitude, a picture can show a natural expression of our unconscious state.
This is why some pictures can effect us so deeply. They activate our own unconscious energies through their viewing.
In this talk I will take the audience through an analysis of several client pictures. Each showing the way their unconscious worked to express, assist, and transform their life problems.
by Dr Robert Matthews
Dr Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a qualified Swiss trained Jungian Analyst with a clinical practice in Adelaide (and by zoom).
4th March 7:30 pm:
A Ukrainian fairy tale: The Golden Slipper
This is a fairy tale you will recognize. Here told in its Ukrainian version.
It is the story of a girl ill treated by her step-mother, who overcomes her ordeal with much help, ending in marriage to the prince.
The tale will be analyzed for its archetypal and personal meaning (the negative mother complex).
Please read the tale before the zoom meeting. The link is here:
https://fairytalez.com/the-golden-slipper/
by Dr Robert Matthews
Dr Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a Jungian psychotherapist, and a training as a Jungian Analyst with the Zentrum in Switzerland.
3rd December 7:30 pm:
The importance of attunement, attentiveness and deepening consciousness in this time of fracture and healing.
by Dr Susan Pollard
“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given, it is not learned.” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, Canons Book 57)
Dr Susan Pollard is a Zurich trained Jungian analyst and Clinical psychologist practicing in Adelaide.
5th November 7:30 pm: Order and Chaos
by Dr Robert Matthews
We all spend so much of our time trying to keep order and harmony in our lives and keep chaos away.
Covid has shown us just how fragile this order can be. I still don’t understand the panic buying of toilet paper, but there is an experience of sheer chaos.
In this materialistic time, so much effort is put into controlling our material life, but the data shows it doesn’t seem to make us any happier.
Science thankfully tells us what Covid is and develops vaccines to restore order to our lives. However it also tells us of our insignificance in a vast cosmos.
We use to order our lives through spirituality and religion. The transcendent spoke to many, supporting them in life’s ups and downs.
Sacred images dating back a least 8,000 years show their role in offering an ordering light to peoples lives.
Chaos was also explained and so held and contained in sacred images.
Most cultures have stories of a trickster god who intentionally bring confusion. Take the African trickster god who wore a hat red on one side and blue on the other. After walking between two farmers on the road, he turns his hat around and walks back between them. The two farmers got into a fight that evening, one swearing they saw a man with a red hat, the other that it was blue!
For the medieval mind, the voices of order and chaos sat on their shoulders. Chaos when you listen to the little devil on your shoulder and order when you hear the angel. But no-one thinks they have a shadow whispering to them anymore. Chaos is then projected onto each other. The vaccine as a way to install 5G tracking devices is a diabolic fantasy indeed.
Jung found a way to listen to a quiet voice within that for him guided his life through the chaotic rocks. He was ever grateful to that voice. It is the same voice the mystics hear only described in psychological language.
In this talk we’ll look at Jung’s life and how he strove to find order amidst this chaos.
Dr Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a Jungian psychotherapist, and a training as a Jungian Analyst with the Zentrum in Switzerland.
1st October 7:30 pm: Jung as Prophet of a New Dispensation
by Emeritus Professor David Tacey
Throughout his life, Jung denied that he was a prophet or religious leader. But in my view, that is exactly what he was. He wanted to be seen as an empirical scientist, but as early as 1912, Freud sensed that the renewal of religious life was his major concern, and expelled him from the psychoanalytic community. Jung suffered from this banishment, but it forced him to discover his calling as a prophet of a new dispensation. Jung was not interested in reviving traditional religious forms, but in renewing the spiritual quest from its archetypal core.
Biog: David Tacey works across the fields of spirituality, religion, analytical psychology, literature and philosophy. He is a specialist in Jungian studies and is the author of How to Read Jung; Jung and the New Age; Remaking Men: Jung, Spirituality and Social Change; Gods and Diseases; and The Darkening Spirit: Jung, Spirituality, Religion. His most recent book is The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change. His books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Portuguese and French. He taught courses at the summer school of the Jung Institute in Zürich from 2001 to 2010. He is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at La Trobe University, where he taught Jung’s Cultural Psychology.
3rd September 7:30pm: Asklepios and the Ancient Practice of Dream Healing.
by Michele Langman
For around a thousand years Asklepios was prayed to as the Divine Physician who brought healing through dreams. Many reports of the healings were left at the sanctuaries where this occurred, and where supplicants were prepared by priests to undergo incubation and receive a visitation from Asklepios. From the reports of healing much information was gathered which fostered the beginnings of medicine. In the twentieth century a number of Jungian psychotherapists investigated the practices and results of dream healing. I will draw on two of these and on my own experience of Epidaurus and subsequent research. Because of the number of writings from ancient times we can trace the evolution of the god image of Asklepios and wonder at the mystery of his personal intervention in the suffering of the sick person.
Michele Langman (BA Hons(Drama), Masters Soc Sc (Counselling)) is author of the book "Drama, Myth and Psyche", the result of many years as a drama teacher, informed and guided by Jungian thought. Her Masters project researched the use of dreams in the clinical treatment of anxiety. This included recent discoveries in the neurological activity during sleep which contributed to understanding differences between the waking mind and the sleeping/dreaming mind. In 2008 she visited Epidaurus which inspired further personal research into the nature of dream healing.
6th August: From Goddess, to Mother, to Woman: representation and the symbolic.
by Dr Kathleen Connellan
Against a background of seeing the unseen, I will juxtapose some stereotypical representations of ‘woman’ in the canon of western art history. Therefore in many ways, this talk is a critique of the western canon; however in addition to providing a philosophical feminist re-reading of representations of woman, I will also draw upon mythologies, religious studies and, Jung’s Red Book. I focus upon theories of representation and interpretations of symbols as a means of drawing together the Goddess, Mother and Woman into a tentative understanding of androgyny in collective consciousness.
Short updated bio:
Dr Kathleen Connellan lectured art, art history and interior architecture over a span of 30+ years both here and overseas; in the later years she combined an additional qualification of art therapy into her approach to both the creating, and analysis of art and architecture. She is now retired and has published two books in the past two years:
- Dreaming, Healing and Imaginative Arts Practice. https://www.routledge.com/Dreaming-Healing-and-Imaginative-Arts-Practice/Connellan/p/book/9781138713192
- Home and Away, Mothers and Babies in Institutional Spaces. https://www.amazon.com.au/Home-Away-Mothers-Babies-Institutional/dp/1498592910
2nd July talk: Was Jung a Mystic?
By Helen Phillips
This question was the title of a book by Aniela Jaffe, a close associate of Jung who collaborated with him on numerous of his works.
“Only in Meister Eckhart did I feel the breath of life.” (Jung)
" The art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself, as taught by Meister Eckhart has become for me the key opening the door to the way." (Jung)
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) was one of the greatest mystic/prophets of Western culture. Although centuries apart from each other we will look at some interesting
and surprising parallels in the works of Eckhart and Jung, including Jung's concepts of the unconscious, shadow, synchronicity, and mysticism.
Are we entering mystical times?
Helen Phillips is a ‘semi-retired’ Jungian analyst, who trained in London, is a member of IAAP, lives in the Barossa Valley, and since COVID consults mainly by Phone or FaceTime.
4th June talk: A Fairy Tale Interpretation
By Robert Matthews
In this talk we will interpret a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.
Along the way we will look to explain the unique approach of Jung to fairy tales. This is a little difficult as we have been so educated to think of them as children's stories that maybe are enchanting but without any deeper meaning. On the contrary, fairy tales are the clearest expression of our archetypal depths.
To understand their interpretation gives insight into the way the archetypal energies move within us. They often speak to the collective problems in a community or country and what may heal this problem.
So .... Once upon a time, there was a sorrowful disbanded soldier ....
Robert Matthews (PhD physics) is President of the Jung SA society. An academic in Education at the University of Adelaide. A psychotherapist in practice and an analyst in training in Switzerland.
7th May Talk: starting 7:30pm Friday
Talk is by Dr Kirstin Robertson-Gillam
Lecture: Music psychotherapy and consciousness: A Jungian perspective
Music, with its own special vocabulary of rhythm, harmony, pitch and tone, speaks directly to the unconscious. By its very nature, music expresses archetypal symbolisms buried deep within the human psyche. It makes the connection with deeply held feelings and emotions by reaching through to the layers of the psyche that are cut off from normal states of consciousness.
Carl Jung believed that our psyche yearns to evolve and transcend. He wrote in his letters that ‘music expresses the movement of feelings that cling to unconscious processes’ (Jung letters V.1. p.542). Rudolph Steiner went on to elaborate on these ideas by explaining the evolutionary trajectory of musical intervals and how they can applied for the growth and education of young children to the educational life of older adults. Everybody experiences these intervals differently but, overall, the feelings that arise do so within the archetypes identified by Jung and which can be found and expressed in the symbology of music. Kirstin will illustrate these phenomena with case studies and musical examples.
In terms of psychotherapy, music and the analysis of the feelings it induces, adds a new dimension to verbal psychotherapy.
Biographic details
Kirstin completed a psychology major in her BA degree along with ethnomusicology and musicology majors at the University of New England. She studied Guided Imagery & Music – a Jungian-based psychotherapy method using music, imagery and altered states of consciousness. She then did a number of higher degrees at Western Sydney University: A Master Counselling, a Master of Arts (Hons), and a PhD. Her Masters Research degree was focused on studying depression in severe dementia using a choir compared to a reminiscence group and both compared to a control group. Her PhD focused on reducing depression in mid to later life by participating in a community choir therapy program to reduce depression in mid-later life. The choir therapy program was compared to a control group of community dwelling middle aged adults.
This talk will be projected into Sophia over zoom from Canberra.
9th April talk:
By: Dr Angeliki Yiassemides
Lecture:
UNORTHODOX TEMPORALITY IN ACTION:
TEMPORAL DIRECTIONALITY AND PROSPECTIVE DREAMS IN THE THEORY OF CARL JUNG
The temporal directionality and dimensionality of the psyche as presented in the psychoanalytic theory of Jung. [prophetic dreams, timelessness, relative time]
Even though time was introduced by both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in connection to the unconscious, the wider context of their respective approaches differs dramatically. According to Freud, timelessness governs the unconscious whereas consciousness functions in, and is aware of, time. However, for Jung the emergence of consciousness did not create an opposing ‘kind’ of time: time in the psyche is relative at large. Contrary to Freud’s emphasis on the past, for Jung, the past and the future are of equal importance. The past is vital since it anchors us to our inherited origins; at the same time, movement towards the future is what he aspired to. The temporally linear reality of consciousness which presupposes a beginning and an end is unavoidable. Consciousness imposes a past, conceived as the beginning, and a future which is assumed to be the end-point. However, the actual underlying world process is beyond linearity. The linear time’s demarcations all coexist in a relative state: everything is simultaneous and contemporaneous. According to the psyche’s relative time, the future, like the past, is within our reach not by accepting para-scientific explanations, but rather, by widening our scope to include an unorthodox temporal reality. To illustrate this argument I compare Freud’s and Jung’s writings on prophetic dreams and related clinical vignettes.
Angeliki Yiassemides is a certified Jungian analyst with the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP), and a member of the Malta Developing Group.
She is a Developmental Psychologist (MA, MPhil, Columbia University) and holds a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies with a focus on Analytical Psychology (Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex). Dr. Yiassemides is a published Jungian scholar and researcher.
Besides her psychoanalytic work, Angeliki is the co-director and founder of Morningside Montessori Elementary (www.morningsidemontessori.com.cy) the first elementary school in Cyprus that promotes sustainable changes through innovative, non-mainstream educational philosophy and practices.
She currently lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus.
5th March Talk 2021
by Dr Robert Matthews
LECTURE: Where psyche and matter meet - or how to make your pots and pans happy
Members $5; non-members $10
Where psyche and matter meet:
Near the end of his life, Carl Jung handed to Marie Louise von Franz a “slip of paper” upon which he had gathered notes to explore what he suspected to be an answer to a question tasked to us by history. It is the question of how our psyche is connected to the physical world of matter. For all your conscious awareness, tell me what is happening in your body? We know when something hurts, but little else. And what of the physical world around you, what do you really know of this? We know our experience of the world can have a deep impact upon us. We might cry or sigh at a beautiful work of art or what of the serenity of a sunset? You have been educated in so many ways, to make a certain sense of this world. Does that really give you connection to this world?
Synchronicity is Jung’s great discovery shedding much light on this problem. But what would it mean to live with a synchronistic not a causal or magical mindset?
One day Jung arrived at Bollingen after a long time away. He was cooking in the kitchen with pots and pans banging, spills galore, nothing was going smoothly. He stopped and bowing deeply, apologized to the kitchen for his neglect through absence. From then on it all went easily.
The sword of the samurai was believed to have a soul that must be honoured and respected. Any disrespect risked defeat in battle - what if it broke!
And how is it computers all over the world pick up major mass events like 9/11 or the Soccer World cup final? (this will be explained, and yes some people believe the World Cup final is a major event)
We will look at these and other stories, and try to get a little closer to this mystery.
Dr Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a Jungian psychotherapist, and a training as an Analyst with the Zentrum in Switzerland.
4th December Talk: 2020
by Dr Susan Pollard
LECTURE: “THE GREENING POWER OF THE SPIRIT” (CG. JUNG)
Members $5; non-members $10
According to the Cambridge dictionary, ‘paranormal describes all those things that are impossible to explain by natural forces.' Are paranormal happenings simply tricky mind creations to regain control when one feels out of control? Or, are experiences of the paranormal an invitation to open to another attitude? Namely, of recognising and opening to what Jung called “the greening power of the Spirit” and that dreams help us glimpse? "The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens into that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before here was a conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach." CG Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934)
Dr Susan Pollard is a Zurich trained Jungian analyst and Clinical psychologist practicing in Adelaide.
6th NOVEMBER TALK:
The Mandala and Individuation
By Dr Robert Matthews
When: 7:30pm Sophia Friday November 6th Members $5; non-members $10
This talk is an overview of the mandala symbol in relation to individuation. The mandala is one of the most recurring symbols across time and culture. The word itself is Sanskrit for circle.
When a mandala comes to us in our dreams or as an outer fascination, it may bring an experience of the wholeness that we are. In this sense Jung saw the mandala symbol as a Self-image, depicting our outer and inner life in a unified image.
A mandala will often appear when we are in a state of chaos. Here it acts to hold and calm us as a compensation to threatening turmoil. When a mandala image rotates, it indicates that a person may be experiencing a living relationship to the centre of the personality Jung called the Self. This marks a stage in the individuation process where, through introspection, one no longer acts out one’s shadow in the world, but through reflection, turns within looking to listen to that ‘hard to hear’ voice of the centre within us, where light and dark are one.
What this means psychologically is that the focus of one's life is no longer outward bound, chasing the ambitions and desires of everyday life, but has become concentrated on a centre within.
Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a Jungian psychotherapist, and a training as an Analyst with the Zentrum in Switzerland.
The mandala symbolizes, by its central point, the ultimate unity of all archetypes as well as the multiplicity of the phenomenal world, and is therefore the empirical equivalent of the metaphysical concept of a unus mundus. The alchemical equivalent is the lapis and its synonyms, in particular the Microcosm. ~Carl Jung; Mysterium Coniunctionis; Page 463; Para 661.
LECTURE: OCTOBER 2nd
The object and its crisis: Locating pain and pleasure
by Dr Kathleen Anne Connellan
When: 7:30pm Sophia Friday October 2nd Members $5 non-members $10
This talk uses some of the theories put forward by the art movement that is central to dream-work and imaginative arts practice, i.e. Surrealism. The unwanted or unsolicited object ((l’object insolité) is the term used in Surrealism; and in Jungian language it is the “object-imago”. My aim is to use the object-imago as a bridge between levels of consciousness. The object-imago is a dream object, which carries memories and desires and it can be simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. What the talk also addresses are actual objects in the real world such as an ornament or another item in the home. This tangible object may have been obtained either from the desire to possess it or because it found its place with you and became imbued with memory. The dream object and the object of desire or memory share meaning because they both have significance in your life. Therefore the dream object and the tangible object are dealt with together in this talk because there are psychic overlaps. The dream object lives in the unconscious and the tangible object presides in the conscious; the dream object needs to be actualised into material reality and brought into the conscious realm to be fully comprehended.
- This talk, and the book chapter it is based upon owes its title to the published PhD thesis of Finkelstein, H N 1979, Surrealism and the Crisis of the Object, UMI Press, Michigan.
- Jung, CG 2002, Dreams, trans. RFC Hull, Routledge, London.
Kathleen Anne Connellan (PhD) retired early from academia and now focuses on art, music and writing. She has a creative therapy practice that situates creativity at the centre of healing. Her publications cover many aspects of human struggle. For two decades she used her qualifications in art, art history and interior architecture to probe the injustices of marginalised groups to publish in the fields of design and mental health. It is her joy and privilege to devote more time to the practices of care through the arts. kathleenanneconnellan.com.au
LECTURE: SEPTEMBER 4th
Words Heard in Silence: Hearing Voices as Religious Experience
By Dr Keith Smith
When: 7:30pm Sophia Friday September 4th Members $5; non-members $10
Inside his soul he finds inspired words too,
Although those sitting near him have no clue.
Questions and answers at a rapid pace
Enter your heart from realms beyond all space;
Though you can hear them, others cannot hear,
Even if they should bring their own ears near.
Rumi (1207-73)
Written narratives of communicating with angels, demons, spirits, and deities date back several millennia. Such interactions play a significant role in the epic literature, sacred scriptures, and mystical poetry of ancient societies, as well as in the biographies of major religious figures, monastic ascetics, and devoted lay people. In fact, the first known autobiography written in English was not only composed in the Middle Ages by a woman, Margery Kempe, but concerned her spiritual experiences, including detailed accounts of intimate conversations with her beloved Lord. Equally, more recent accounts have described ‘divine communications’ that defy ordinary sensory perception and are less inspirational than shattering in their impact.
Last year, I outlined how our current understanding of ‘hearing voices’ as a pathological symptom of a psychiatric disorder is largely the legacy of changes in social and cultural attitudes that have often seen hearers victimised by religious and medical institutions. My forthcoming talk will consider accounts in which people have described their experiences of voices in relation to their religious beliefs. I will draw on examples from history together with those of contemporary hearers to discuss how these shared narratives often express an intense need for existential meaning and personal relationship while transgressing the accepted norms of religious experience.
Keith Smith researched the Jungian psychotherapeutic practice of ‘active imagination’ for his Master of Applied Linguistics’ dissertation at Macquarie University, and holds a PhD in Medicine (Psychiatry) from the University of Adelaide for his study of the role of language in the experience of ‘hearing voices’. He presented last year on his research at the 17th International Conference on Communication, Medicine, and Ethics (COMET) in Adelaide.
Talk: 7th August 7:30pm at Sophia Cost: $5 (members) $10 (non-members)
Why was Jung so interested in Alchemy?
by Robert Matthews
Much of Jung's later works drew heavily from his reading of alchemy. Indeed his masterpiece, Mysterium Coniunctionis, was a condensation of alchemical themes.
Our culture is steeped in Christian thought after 2000 years and it appears our Aion of the fishes (see footnote 1 below) is in transition to a new age (it certainly feels like it this year). For Jung alchemy was a compensation to Christianity. It holds a broader view and thus could vitalise us and be a guide into this new age. The empirical evidence for this is overwhelming in the dream symbolism that Jung published (notably in Psychology and Alchemy amongst other places). This means that the unconscious is prompting us to develop here.
Now many of you might be screwing up your face. I've never seen alchemy in my dreams.
We will take it slowly and unpack this. Almost all of my clients have shown alchemical imagery, it is just difficult to recognize without knowing what to look for. And isn’t this strange, our unconscious produces imagery that is outside our conscious knowing – ponder on that one for a minute.
Alchemy is more complete in several ways, most notably in its obvious value of matter, but also of the feminine. And what are two of the great concerns this past hundred years? Global warming and the environment (our relation to matter) and feminism (our relation to the feminine).
Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a Jungian psychotherapist, and in training as an Analyst with the Zentrum in Switzerland.
Why was Jung so interested in Alchemy?
by Robert Matthews
Much of Jung's later works drew heavily from his reading of alchemy. Indeed his masterpiece, Mysterium Coniunctionis, was a condensation of alchemical themes.
Our culture is steeped in Christian thought after 2000 years and it appears our Aion of the fishes (see footnote 1 below) is in transition to a new age (it certainly feels like it this year). For Jung alchemy was a compensation to Christianity. It holds a broader view and thus could vitalise us and be a guide into this new age. The empirical evidence for this is overwhelming in the dream symbolism that Jung published (notably in Psychology and Alchemy amongst other places). This means that the unconscious is prompting us to develop here.
Now many of you might be screwing up your face. I've never seen alchemy in my dreams.
We will take it slowly and unpack this. Almost all of my clients have shown alchemical imagery, it is just difficult to recognize without knowing what to look for. And isn’t this strange, our unconscious produces imagery that is outside our conscious knowing – ponder on that one for a minute.
Alchemy is more complete in several ways, most notably in its obvious value of matter, but also of the feminine. And what are two of the great concerns this past hundred years? Global warming and the environment (our relation to matter) and feminism (our relation to the feminine).
Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a Jungian psychotherapist, and in training as an Analyst with the Zentrum in Switzerland.
- Astronomically we are moving from the age of Pieces into the age of Aquarius (precession of the equinox). Christ was the fish and this age of 2000 years may now be transitioning into something new.