Hermes is arguably the most fascinating god in Greek mythology. He is at once a trickster, a messenger and a guide. In psychological terms, he is the spirit of the unconscious, Mercurius. In this seminar, we will consider the many aspects of this complex archetypal figure. As a trickster, he breaks rules, crosses boundaries, and creates new combinations of the opposing opposites. As a messenger, he serves the will of his Father, Zeus, the dominant figure in the Greek pantheon, psychologically speaking of “the Self.” As a guide, he accompanies, dream-like, travelers on their journeys through liminal spaces and leads the souls of the dead to the underworld. In all respects, he shows astonishing brilliance, like quicksilver (the metal, mercury). He is the friendliest of the gods, according to Karl Kerenyi, the great mythographer and a close colleague of Carl Jung, and he is the most fluid of the gods. He is the proven god of post-modernity.

Indigenous people have been referred to as “primitive” by Western anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists (including Carl Jung) because they live in a state of participation mystique with their nature world. Jung’s (1970) perspective on “primitive man” was a byproduct of the culture he lived in. Jung believed that projections originating from the archetypal material of the collective unconscious could never be fully assimilated into conscious awareness, or integrated by the ego. However, Jung did believe in the importance of becoming conscious of aspects of the archetypal and psychoidal realm through symbols and images. Jung (1959, par. 620) wrote, “Anyone who overlooks the instincts will be ambuscaded by them.” Jung proposed that emerging out of and separating from an unconscious state of fusion provided us with a vantage point from which to reflect upon the experience of being in it.

The modern world demands that we differentiate, to navigate our way through in the daily situations we encounter. Within the context of modern culture, Jung’s (1969) idea that balance is created by holding a “tension of opposites” between aspects of the unconscious and conscious mind, and through the cultivation of a symbolic process, has utility. In addition to Jung’s (1969) method of achieving balance through differentiation, his notion of individuation - that psychological and spiritual transformation takes place as an individual journey toward wholeness - also has function in the contemporary world.

Having established our sense of ourselves as individuals, we are coming full circle and are experiencing a need to return from where we came. The psychic pendulum always swings back in the opposite direction in compensation – a psychological dynamic that Jung (1956) saw as a fundamental self-regulating function of the psyche. There is a lot we can learn by taking a “primitive” approach to understanding the world. It offers a means of reestablishing a sense of equilibrium in our modern world.

The natural world is struggling to find ways of restoring balance. In a reparatory reaction to the cultural abaissement du niveau mental of our time, the energy of our collective spirit is straining to hear the faint voices of the natural world, currently being drummed out in the noise pollution of industry and commerce. Many of us are struggling to remember the practice of keeping our ear to the ground – and what it feels like to be in our bodies.

We are listening to our dreams, attempting to bring the images back with us to the day world by retrieving them and holding as sacred in our conscious awareness. Some of us are feeling the need for stronger spirit medicine that will penetrate deeper into our somatic psyches, which we can share in our communities. The longing to return to our primordial roots in the natural world that is slowly emerging in the collective psyche, is growing stronger. A new dawn is coming alive in our culture, and we are searching to find the way back an experience of the unus mundus, or oneness of the world.

This lecture and workshop explore the healing potential within the theatrical elements of Dionysian drama. The ancient practice of curing illness in body and soul by participating in dramatic ritual is still active in how we treat many psychological conditions - including but not limited to both individual and cultural trauma. Patterns of breaking apart and coming together and death and rebirth, when viewed through a theatrical lens, can assist in the integration of previously unconscious material.

The first section includes an interactive lecture followed by a group reading of Euripides’ classic play Medea. (No theater experience needed!) The colloquium section explores Dionysian themes in clinical case material through varied psychoanalytic approaches. Jungian Complex Theory, Alchemy, Dream Interpretation, as well as Relational and Developmental perspectives in the treatment of trauma are included.

We will begin by reviewing the basics of complexity theory, developed in the late 20th century with a focus on application to Jungian concepts such as archetypes and synchronicity. The emergence of the notion of synchronicity from Jung’s own self-experiment, documented in The Red Book, will help us see how prescient his thinking was in terms of contemporary understanding. As time permits we will then look at the psychoid layer of archetypal reality. This will be explored from this vantage point of recent research in ecological systems and artistic intuition. In particular we will examine a few examples from the history of culture where artisans or artists were able to represent profound knowledge of highly complex natural phenomena well ahead of any scientific understanding. These will guide us towards the articulation of the psychoid imagination and its possible use in the clinical setting.
Learning Objectives:
1.) To understand the value of reformulating concepts from Analytical Psychology in terms of contemporary complexity theory.
2.) To develop an appreciation of the notion of the psychoid archetype both historically and in modern applications such as ecological systems.
3.) To reevaluate the capacity of some artists to give representation to profound, though hidden aspect of reality through their art.

The absent father effect is a love story, but an unrequited one. Harm is done due to the presence of his absence, affecting a daughter—and a father--in body, mind, and soul. The effect of being trapped in a complex of absence and lack saps energy. The father figure is an essential aspect of the psyche and significant for the daughter’s psychological and physical life expressed personally and culturally. His absence leads to question how a father dreams of his daughter. What does he wish for her? When absent, he has not realized her needs for good attachment, how he can damage and limit growth. The psyche affected by the absent father include the negative father complex, puella archetype and examining the outdated concept of the animus. The focus is on the bleaker side of daughters and fathers’ relationship in order to shed light on the lack, symptoms and problems, as well as the repair and hope. The topic applies to everyone as the aspects of fathers and daughters are internal figures, appearing in dreams and all relationships, including the therapeutic.

With the publication of the Black Books as well as the early seminars Jung gave, we now have a clear window into not only his Red Book “experiment with the Unconscious,” but also how Jung took those experiences and developed what we know today as Analytical Psychology. Participants in this seminar will be granted a front row seat to the epoch-making events that led to the development of Analytical Psychology- exploring carefully topic by topic, from the development of the notion of the complex to the transformational energy of the transcendent function. In this manner, participants will leave with a full and comprehensive understanding of the psyche from the perspective of Analytical Psychology.