Featured Posts - Blogs - Depth Psychology Alliance2024-03-29T12:34:33Zhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/feed/featuredDepth Psychology in Daily Life: Making the Unconscious Conscious in Work, Money, and Relationshipshttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/depth-psychology-in-daily-life-making-the-unconscious-conscious-i2023-04-30T02:40:47.000Z2023-04-30T02:40:47.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p style="font-weight:400;text-align:center;">Blog Post by Dr. Bonnie Bright and Dr. James Newell</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:center;"> </p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuq4W9G1NcY" target="_blank">VIEW THE REPLAY of the event </a><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">"Depth Psychology in Daily Life: A Community Conversation" with Dr. Bonnie Bright and Dr. James Newell</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuq4W9G1NcY" target="_blank"><br /><br /></a><a href="http://depthinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Depth-Psychology-in-Daily-Life_A-Community-Conversation-DrBonnieBright-DrJamesNewell-052023.mp3" target="_blank">GET THE AUDIO<br /></a><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><br /></a><a href="http://depthinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Transcript_Depth-Psychology-in-Daily-Life-with-DrBonnieBright-and-DrJamesNewell-052023-1.pdf" target="_blank">READ THE TRANSCRIPT</a></p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:left;"> ___</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:left;"><a href="https://youtu.be/1XhJbAA_pkM" target="_blank">Listen to this blog in audio format instead</a></p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:left;"><a href="https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/depth-psychology-in-daily-life-unconscious-projection-in-work-mon" target="_blank"><strong>READ PART 2 of this blog series:</strong> Unconscious Projection in Work, Money, and Relationships</a></p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:center;"> </p>
<p style="font-weight:400;"><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11128336095,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="11128336095?profile=RESIZE_584x" width="450" /></a>Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) is widely known as a pioneer and founder of the field of depth psychology, which is based on his theories about archetypes, the unconscious, and the process of individuation.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">Depth psychology offers a rich and nuanced perspective on the human psyche and provides an effective framework for understanding how our beliefs and behaviors are driven by what is unconscious within us. When we learn how our daily difficulties can be transformed by shining a light into that unconscious, we receive valuable insights and tools for personal growth and transformation.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">Because Jung believed that the psyche has a natural tendency towards self-regulation and adaptation in order to overcome challenges and to experience wholeness, he found it quite natural that human beings develop <strong>unconscious coping mechanisms</strong> to help protect us from the overwhelming emotions or psychological distress that most of us typically encountered in early life when we didn’t have enough agency, power, or capacity for rational thought to confront those disturbing challenges head on.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">Jung identified several psychological coping mechanisms, including <strong>repression</strong>, <strong>projection</strong>, <strong>rationalization</strong>, and <strong>compensation</strong>. <em>Repression</em> involves pushing unwanted thoughts, memories, or emotions into the unconscious mind, while <em>projection</em> involves attributing our own expectations stemming from our lived experiences onto others. <em>Rationalization</em> involves creating justifications or excuses for one's actions, while <em>compensation</em> involves making up for perceived weaknesses or shortcomings in one area of life by excelling in another.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">The key to effective coping, Jung believed, is to bring the unconscious processes we have developed as a response to our environment into conscious awareness, so we can understand our own values, perceptions, and patterns of behavior and take steps toward change if we so desire.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">Thus, using a soul-centered perspective which evolved as a way for Jung to work with his own biographical and transpersonal challenges, Jung established depth psychological techniques that can help us uncover unconscious coping mechanisms and process deep-seated emotions, beliefs, and patterns of behavior that may be holding us back in life. These techniques can also help us tap into new and fertile resources for our understanding and transformation.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11037952473,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11037955868,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="11037955868?profile=RESIZE_400x" width="400" /></a>Contemplate the image of an iceberg,</strong> which has often been used as a metaphor to illustrate how the part of the iceberg that is visible above the surface of the water, is a tiny fraction of the entire iceberg. Similarly, our conscious awareness encompasses only a minute fraction of what is potentially available to us in relation to the collective unconscious, a realm which Jung identified contains the entirety of existence, past, present, and future. Jung argued that the collective unconscious is made up of archetypal patterns—universal patterns which are the building blocks of the psyche. When we recognize that our conscious experience is only a small part of our overall psyche, we can start to explore and integrate the unconscious aspects of our being in everyday situations such as work, money, and love.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">So how do we make the unconscious conscious? Deciphering our dreams can play a powerful role, as Jung believed. Jung also developed a process he called <em>active imagination,</em> which allows us to explore and integrate unconscious material. Active imagination involves intentionally engaging with the unconscious through imagination and visualization in order to bring forth unconscious contents into conscious awareness. By working with the contents of the unconscious, individuals can gain greater insight into their own psyche, and potentially resolve inner conflicts and move towards greater wholeness.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">The process of active imagination is often described as a form of creative play, where individuals allow their imagination to unfold spontaneously and explore the images, symbols and stories that emerge. By engaging with these unconscious materials in a conscious and intentional way, individuals can gain a greater understanding of themselves and their inner world.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">In everyday life, our coping mechanisms can quickly compromise an experience when we get triggered and fall into old unconscious patterns. However, the challenges we face in relationships, health, finances, and career can all be addressed when we are willing to engage in what Jung referred to as “living the symbolic life.” It is up to each of us to implement techniques that allow us to decipher what the unconscious has to say, whether it’s showing us unwanted patterns that no longer serve, or whether it’s providing insights and resources that can help us let go of suffering and live into more freedom, creativity, and joy.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;">Working with unconscious somatic sensations and exploring symbols that hold latent psychological meaning, just as Jung proposed through the processes of dreamwork and active imagination, can allow us to identify the underlying beliefs and values that drive our relationships with our work life, with money, and with other individuals—not to mention ourselves. By bringing the unconscious into awareness, we can gain a greater understanding of ourselves and our motivations, and work towards a more integrated and fulfilling life.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;"><strong><br /> JOIN US TO EXPLORE MORE ABOUT THESE CONCEPTS IN COMMUNITY</strong>! <br /> You’re invited to attend an online <a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">Community Conversation on Depth Psychology in Daily Life</a>, with Dr. Bonnie Bright, Founder of Depth Psychology Alliance, and Dr. James Newell, Director. The conversation will be opened up to the community in the second half of the event after Bonnie and James‘s opening remarks. This event is free and open to the public via Zoom, though <a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">registration is required.</a> A recording will be made available for all who register.</p>
<p style="font-weight:400;"><strong>When: </strong>Saturday, May 20, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuq4W9G1NcY" target="_blank">VIEW THE REPLAY of the event </a><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">"Depth Psychology in Daily Life: A Community Conversation" <br /> with Dr. Bonnie Bright and Dr. James Newell</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuq4W9G1NcY" target="_blank"><br /><br /></a><a href="http://depthinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Depth-Psychology-in-Daily-Life_A-Community-Conversation-DrBonnieBright-DrJamesNewell-052023.mp3" target="_blank">GET THE AUDIO<br /></a><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><br /></a><a href="http://depthinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Transcript_Depth-Psychology-in-Daily-Life-with-DrBonnieBright-and-DrJamesNewell-052023-1.pdf" target="_blank">READ THE TRANSCRIPT</a></p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:right;"><a href="https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/depth-psychology-in-daily-life-unconscious-projection-in-work-mon" target="_blank"><strong>READ PART 2 of this blog series:</strong> Unconscious Projection in Work, Money, and Relationships</a></p>
<p style="font-weight:400;text-align:right;"><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejrk6h2823173f93&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11128380478,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="11128380478?profile=RESIZE_584x" width="500" /></a></p></div>Jung and the Archetype of the Wounded Healerhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/jung-and-the-wounded-healer2021-09-22T17:00:30.000Z2021-09-22T17:00:30.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/9596744257?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=384"></div><div><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong><span style="font-size:14pt;">Jung and the Archetype of the Wounded Healer</span></strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“We could say, without too much exaggeration, that a good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply consists in the doctor’s examining himself, for only what he can put right in himself can he hope to put right in the patient. It is no loss, either, if he feels that the patient is hitting him, or even scoring off him: it is his own hurt that gives the measure of his power to heal. This, and nothing else, is the meaning of the Greek myth of the wounded physician”</em> (Jung, 1982, par. 239).</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;"> When viewed through the lens of Jungian psychology, the figure of the wounded healer takes on profound significance for those in the helping professions. As an archetype of the collective unconscious, the wounded healer represents patterns of initiation and healing that become constellated (activated) whenever helper and client come together for the purpose of healing. These patterns rest on the ancient bedrock of evolutionary psychological development, creating an expectation in both helper and client that there is a way forward, and that the potential for healing lies within the wound itself. As Christine Downing (1990) has observed, “In the religious healing tradition of ancient Greece it was assumed that the god who can heal is the one responsible for the wounding in the first place,” and that “...ritual healing was based on homeopathic assumptions: the agent of wounding and healing are one. The Greeks also believed that the deities had themselves suffered whatever they might impose on others” (p. 555). </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">When Carl Jung spoke of his interest in the ancient patterns found in myth and legend, he was not simply regressing back to an older, obsolete way of thinking. He understood the gods of legend to represent the psychological patterns through which healing energies may flow, if they are treated with same respect that the ancients once accorded to the gods themselves. Of equal importance to Jung was how these patterns come into play in terms of what both he, and Freud before him, called the transference and countertransference. Transference may be understood as a type of projection that the client experiences through any individual who they expect will help them to heal. Often, this very projection on the part of the client constellates a similar type of projection (countertransference) which the helper may experience through their helping role with the client.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;"> Jung was deeply concerned with his own psychological wounds, not simply for the purpose of his own well-being, but also for the well-being of his patients. As he has said, </span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">“The therapist must at all times keep watch over himself, over the way he is reacting to his patient. For we do not react only with our consciousness. Also we must always be asking ourselves: How is our unconscious experiencing this situation? We must therefore observe our dreams, pay the closest attention and study ourselves just as carefully as we do the patient. Otherwise the entire treatment may go off the rails” (Jung, 2011, p. 133).</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Jung’s concern was that the complexes of the therapist may unconsciously intrude themselves into the helping relationship, in the same way that the complexes of the client must also become activated by the relationship. The deeper the relationship delves into working with the client’s complexes, the more the archetypal realm of the psyche is constellated – in both the helper and the client. Having a knowledge of the ancient, archetypal patterns of healing and wounding can be of enormous help when navigating the healing and wounding energies that emerge in the helping relationship. </span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;"> The history of humankind is rich with traditions of healing stories, from the shamans of indigenous peoples, to Chiron and Asclepius of the Greek traditions, Apis of the Egyptians, Ishtar and Marduk of the Babylonians, Airyaman of the Persians, and Diancecht of the Celts (Jayne, 1962). Not all of these figures were ‘wounded’ healers, some were themselves ‘wounding’ figures. However, each one contributes to our knowledge of how ancient humans – and the contemporary, unconscious psyche – understand wounding and healing. </span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;"> Join us for a <strong><em>free class</em></strong> on the importance of <strong><em>Jung and the Archetype of the Wounded Healer</em></strong> on Saturday, October 9th, 2021 at 1pm PT (4pm ET) as we discuss more of the archetypal aspects of these myths and stories, as well as practical aspects of understanding transference/countertransference phenomena. This free class will also serve as an introduction to our eight week, college-level course on <strong><em>Jung and the Archetype of the Wounded Healer</em></strong> which begins the following week, on Saturday, October 16th, 2021 at 1pm PT (4pm ET). <br /> <br /> </span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ei5y47w7d74529d9&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">Click here to register for the free class</a></strong></span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong> <a href="https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/wounded-healer-course" target="_blank">Click here for more information</a></strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ei5y6egh2f51de41&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">Click here to register for the full, 8 week college-level course</a></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">______________________________________________________________________________________</span><br /> <br /> <span style="text-decoration:underline;font-size:12pt;"><strong>Works Cited</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Downing, C. (1990). Only the Wounded Healer Heals: The Testimony of Greek Mythology. <em>Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal</em>, <em>73</em>(4), 551–573.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Jayne, W. A. (1962). <em>The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations</em>. University Books.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Jung, C. G. (1982). <em>Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 16: Practice of Psychotherapy</em>. Princeton University Press.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Jung, C. G. (2011). <em>Memories, Dreams, Reflections</em>. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.</span> </p>
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<p> </p></div>Jung, Christianity, and the Evolution of the Western God-Imagehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/jung-christianity-and-the-evolution-of-the-western-god-image2020-09-16T22:00:00.000Z2020-09-16T22:00:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-christianity" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142473281,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="566" height="310" alt="9142473281?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>Jung, Christianity,</strong></span> <span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>and the</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>Evolution of the Western God-Image<br /></strong></span></p>
<p><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">According to C. G. Jung, symbols emerging from the dreams and fantasies of his patients indicated that the Western God-image – the <em>imago dei</em> – was evolving in a way that contemporary Christian institutions could no longer contain and mediate. Jung felt that, if Western culture is to survive, we must engage these emerging symbols so that they may once again help us to mediate the dynamic, instinctual energies of the psyche in life-affirming ways. If we fail to do this, we run the risk of becoming possessed and driven by these unconscious instincts in chaotic and destructive ways.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Often, people fail to recognize the effect of the human psyche on culture. One reason for this is the difficulty of fully grasping the scope of Jung’s vision, which must include an appreciation of the role of mythology in his work, and of the function of mythology in human culture. According to Jung, mythology provides healing and balancing energies from the deep unconscious psyche. It provides access to these energies both for individuals, and for culture at large through its mediating function. For Jung, all religions are essentially mythological systems, and the over-riding mythological system that has dominated Western culture for centuries is the Christian myth.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Without these essential insights, it is impossible to understand Jung’s constant preoccupation with the artifacts of Christianity, especially during the last twenty years of his life. For Jung, Christianity was and is a mythological system which had long since ceased to provide its adherents access to the healing and balancing energies of the deep psyche. He saw this in the clients who populated his consulting room on a daily basis. Day after day, he saw people who were psychologically adrift, people who were alienated from, and had no connection to, their own instinctual energies.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">With these concerns in mind, Jung initiated a detailed social history of Christianity in the same way he might embark on a study of an individual client’s social history when they began consulting with him. He paid particular attention to those Western cultural artifacts which had been explicitly repressed by Christian institutions, including but not limited to Gnosticism, astrology, alchemy, magic, and essentially all ‘pagan’ mythologies. Beginning with studies of Gnosticism, and culminating in his remarkable small book ‘Answer to Job’, Jung documents what he came to understand as the emergence of an evolving <em>imago dei</em> – a new Western God-Image, something Joseph Campbell referred to as a new myth.</span> <br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Join us on Saturday, October 10th for a free introductory class on Jung’s study of Christianity and how it informed his understanding of the emerging and evolving Western God-Image. Our journey will take us through a close examination of his basic psychotherapeutic methods, how he applied these methods to his study of Christian institutions, and how they informed his understanding of the healing symbols of astrology, alchemy, and a variety of Western mythologies.</span> <br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">This free class will also serve as an introduction to our upcoming eight-week, college-level course on Jung, Christianity, and the evolving Western God-Image, beginning on Saturday, October 17th.<br /> <br /></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eh5naipj04ac14b5&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">Click here to register for the free class!</a></strong></span><strong><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eh5naipj04ac14b5&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"></a></strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eh5naj1m71334fa9&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><strong><br /> <span style="font-size:14pt;">Click Here to Register for Jung and Christianity, 8-week course!</span></strong></a></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-christianity" target="_blank"><strong>Click here for more information</strong></a></span></p></div>The Souls of White Folk Pt. 2: A Community Discussion on the Archetypal Roots of the Trauma of Racism in Americahttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk-pt-22015-11-09T17:00:00.000Z2015-11-09T17:00:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p align="center"><b><br /> The Souls of White Folk Pt. 2: A Community Discussion on the Archetypal Roots of the Trauma of Racism in America<br /></b> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142452853,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="474" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142452853,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9142452853?profile=original" /></a><strong>Savage and Civilized: Which is Which?</strong></p>
<p>CIVILIZATION, <i>n</i>. The act of civilizing, or the state of being civilized; the state of being refined in manners, from the grossness of savage life, and improved in arts and learning.<br /> <br /> SAVAGISM, <i>n</i>. The state of rude uncivilized men; the state of men in their native wildness and rudeness. – Noah Webster, <i>An American Dictionary of the English Language,</i> 1828 (Pearce, 1988).</p>
<p><b>What can we safely say are the archetypal roots of the trauma of racism in America?</b> For that matter, what are archetypes, and why should they matter in a discussion of the trauma of racism in America? As mentioned in the first post in this series (<a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Click here for part one</a>), in the traditional idea of American Exceptionalism, juxtaposed with the historical facts of the genocide of native people and the enslavement of kidnapped Africans, one can discern what a Jungian might call a cultural shadow complex. Depth psychologist Carl Jung claimed that at the root of a complex one would, as a rule, find an archetype. Generally speaking, an archetype is a basic, unconscious pattern in the psyche, or the tendency to form representations of such basic, unconscious patterns (Jung, 1964, p.67).<br /> <br /> To say that there is a cultural shadow complex at the root of the trauma of racism in America is to combine the idea of a cultural complex (Kimbles, 2000) with Jung’s idea of the shadow (Jung, 1959), or to combine that idea with the idea that there is a significant portion of one’s own personal history that one is reluctant to face, the part of one’s history which one pushes into the personal unconscious, or represses. For Jung,</p>
<p>"The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real" (p. 8).</p>
<p>Likewise, the resolution of the cultural shadow complex that has for centuries manifested as the trauma of racism is also a moral problem, one that has long since reached the state of a spiritual crisis in our culture. Becoming conscious of this cultural shadow complex likewise involves “…recognizing the dark aspects of [our culture] as present and real.”<br /> <br /> One characteristic of archetypes that Jung has noted is that they always appear in dual aspects: positive and negative, good and evil, black and white. Anthropologists and historians have long pointed out that a similar binary pair can be found at the root of the trauma of racism in America, that of ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ (Pearce, 1988; Jennings, 1975; Baker, 1998). Anthropologist Lee Baker claims that this binary pairing of ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ is a later formulation of the earlier binary pairing of the ideas of ‘saved’ and ‘damned’. The earlier formulation claimed religious authority, the latter – appearing at the dawning of the enlightenment – claims ‘scientific’ authority.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142452678,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142452678,original{{/staticFileLink}}" height="296" width="460" alt="9142452678?profile=original" /></a>Early explorers (beginning with Columbus) and early immigrants to the Americas justified their treatment of the Native peoples that they encountered by claiming that the natives were ‘savages’ and that they were being ‘civilized’ by their encounters with white Europeans. Slave traders and those who built their early American labor forces with kidnapped Africans likewise justified their treatment of those in their charge by claiming that the Africans were ‘savages’ and were being benefited by their exposure to civilization and Christianity. One report has it that some early Native Americans were skeptical about the moral superiority of the ‘Christians’ they encountered when they observed the treatment of slaves in the newly formed European colonies in the New World. When a group of missionaries tried to convince a group of natives of the Delaware Nation to join them and convert to European ways, the natives were reluctant, due to the way they saw Americans treating people with dark skin. It was reported that:</p>
<p>"They [the Delaware Native Americans] therefore had determined to wait, to see whether all the black people amongst us were thus made happy and joyful before they would put confidence in our promises; for they thought a people who had suffered so much and so long by our means, should be entitled to our first attention; and therefore they sent back the two missionaries, with many thanks, promising that when they saw the black people among us restored to freedom and happiness, they would gladly receive our missionaries” (quoted in Katz, 1986).</p>
<p>It becomes clear on closer examination that the claims of those who wished to see themselves as ‘civilized’ and morally superior to the ‘savages’ that they encountered were still struggling with their own ‘savage’ natures and projecting their own repressed barbarism onto the people over whom they claimed superiority. When challenged with how to cope with these encounters, they simply became more barbarous and savage than those whom they had labeled as such. This is classic symptomatology of the shadow complex. As anthropologist and historian Roy Harvey Pearce (1988) puts it, it was important “…for civilized men to believe that in the savage and his destiny there was manifest all they had long grown away from and yet still had to overcome” (p. xvii). This projective identification thrust by so-called ‘civilized men’ onto so-called ‘savages’ inspires one to ask: “Which one here is the savage?”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142452496,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142452496,original{{/staticFileLink}}" height="407" width="303" alt="9142452496?profile=original" /></a>It seems that at the core of this issue there lies a fear of what ‘civilized man’ still has to overcome; a fear of the deeper aspects of human nature that these so-called ‘civilized men’ saw in, that is, projected onto, the native people of Africa and the Americas. The association of these fears with and their projection onto people of color seem to me to be essential elements of the archetypal roots of racism in America. How these fears relate to what Jungian Anthony Stevens (1982) calls our ‘archetypal endowment’ and what Jung (1978) calls “…the 2,000,000-year-old man that is in all of us” (p. 76), will be the topic of our next post. This will be followed by posts on archetypal aspects of cultural trauma and the healing of cultural trauma (<a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk-pt-3" target="_blank">Click here for part three in this series</a> - <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Click here for part one in this series</a>)<br /> <br /> <b>In the coming weeks</b> we will be posting more reflections on some of the specific elements of the <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Archetypal Roots of the Trauma of Racism in America</a>. If you find the topics explored of interest to you, I hope you will join us on Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 12:00 noon PT. The Depth Psychology Alliance is hosting a live community discussion/webcast during which listeners will participate with members of the board of the Depth Psychology Alliance as we discuss Depth Psychology and the <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Archetypal Roots of the Trauma of Racism in America</a> – and please forward this post to your favorite social media outlets and to interested friends!</p>
<p align="center"></p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Click here to register for this event</a></p>
<p align="center"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk-pt-3" target="_blank">Read Part 3 of this Blog: The 2,000,000-Year-Old in Each of Us</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk-pt-3"> </a></p>
<p><b><u>______________________________</u></b><b><br /> James Newell, Ph.D.</b> is an educator, coach/counselor, performing songwriter, and board member of the Depth Psychology Alliance. James teaches mainstream religious studies courses online for Central Michigan University and several other schools. James also holds master’s degree in counseling and theology from Vanderbilt Divinity School. James’ counseling orientation is Jungian, and his goal is to educate and empower others to do their own depth work, individually and collectively. James continues to pursue his own artistic passion through music, having begun his musical career working with such legendary musicians as John Lee Hooker, James Cotton, Jr. Wells, Big Joe Turner, and others.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.SymolsofTransformation.com" target="_blank">www.SymolsofTransformation.com</a><br /> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/</a><br /> <a href="http://www.JamesRNewell.com" target="_blank">www.JamesRNewell.com</a><br /> <br /> <b><u>Works Cited</u></b><br /> <br /> Baker, L. (1998). <i>From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954</i>. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.<br /> <br /> Jennings, F. (1975). <i>The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest</i>. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.<br /> <br /> Jung, Carl (1979/1953). <i>Psychological Reflections. A New Anthology of His Writings 1905-1961</i>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<br /> <br /> Jung, Carl (1979/1959). <i>Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self.</i> Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<br /> <br /> Jung, Carl (1964). <i>Man and His Symbols</i>. New York, NY: Doubleday.</p>
<p>Katz, W. (1986). <i>Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage</i>. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.</p>
<p>Kimbles, S. (2000). The Cultural Complex and the Myth of Invisibility. In Singer, T. Ed. <i>The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics and Psyche in the World</i>. New York, NY: Routledge.<br /> <br /> Pearce, R. (1988). <i>Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind</i>. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.<br /> <br /> Stevens, A. (1982). <i>Archetypes: A Natural History of the Self</i>. New York, NY: Harper Collins.</p></div>The Souls of White Folk Pt. 1: A Community Discussion on the Archetypal Roots of the Trauma of Racism in Americahttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk2015-11-02T00:00:00.000Z2015-11-02T00:00:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank"><img width="514" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142451272,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="9142451272?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-1">The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-1" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> <i>—</i> W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903,</span> <b><span class="font-size-1" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/give-me-liberty4/docs/WEBDuBois-Souls_of_Black_Folk-1903.pdf" target="_blank">The Souls of Black Folk</a></span><br /></b> </p>
<p><b>The topic of race and racism in America</b> has become a hot button issue in popular culture. However, rarely if ever has this topic been discussed from a Depth Psychology perspective. When viewed from this perspective, and on a collective level, it quickly becomes clear that this is one of the most important spiritual challenges we face as a culture today. I stress that this is a spiritual challenge because we have tended historically to look to cultural institutions for answers to such challenges. We seek material, social, and political solutions to help us with what is, at root, a spiritual crisis. <br /> <br /> It is well known that the impact of discrimination based on racist thoughts and beliefs has had devastating consequences upon diverse populations for centuries. However, members of the dominant culture, those who self-identify and who are identified through the lens of cultural norms and institutions as ‘white,’ have not escaped the spiritual consequences of living in a culture built upon centuries of racism. It is my thesis that our most virulent cultural challenges today – gun violence, income inequality, environmental disaster, mass incarceration, unbridled materialism, and more – are rooted, economically and ideologically, in the historical facts of the genocide of native people and the enslavement of kidnapped Africans. In both cases racial considerations were in the forefront and the pursuit of profit marginalized any humanitarian considerations.<br /> <br /> The emphasis of Depth Psychology is to look for networks of patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are not consciously directed. Jungians call these patterns ‘complexes’. Once these patterns, or complexes, are identified consciously, the idea is to begin to heal the root causes and by so doing alter behaviors that do not serve to enhance life. Traditionally, this process is engaged in between two people: the therapist (analyst) and the client. Jungian analyst Samuel Kimbles (2000) has suggested that such unconscious patterns can also be identified in cultural groups, as what he calls ‘cultural complexes.’ <br /> <br /> When one looks closely at the traditional idea of American Exceptionalism, juxtaposed with the historical facts previously mentioned (the genocide of native people and the enslavement of kidnapped Africans), one can discern what a Jungian might call a cultural shadow complex. That is to say, a history of repressed trauma that has never been adequately addressed on a broad cultural level permeates all aspects of American life. The traumatic cultural memory of these horrific crimes against humanity carries with it a moral imperative to heal. Thus, the work of healing these deep cultural wounds is spiritual work. It seems clear to me that recognizing, owning, and grieving the consequences of our cultural shadow complex is the spiritual work of white people in America. The spiritual growth, and the very souls of white people in America, and the future of all Americans, hang in the balance. If approached seriously, and as a spiritual exercise, this process of grieving our history of violence and discrimination might also have a healing impact on contemporary victims of the trauma of racism, especially Native American people and African Americans, and may ultimately provide a basis for uniting us spiritually and ideologically around shared grief and trauma. <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk-pt-2" target="_blank">(Click here for part two in this series)</a><br /> <br /> <b>In the coming weeks</b> we will be posting reflections on some of the specific elements of the <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Archetypal Roots of the Trauma of Racism in America</a>. If you find the topics explored of interest to you, I hope you will join us on <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 12:00 noon PT</a>. The Depth Psychology Alliance is hosting a live community discussion/webcast during which listeners will participate with members of the board of the Depth Psychology Alliance as we discuss Depth Psychology and the <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Archetypal Roots of the Trauma of Racism in America</a> – and please forward this post to your favorite social media outlets and to interested friends!</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">Click here to register for this event</a></p>
<p align="center"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk-pt-2" target="_blank">Read Part 2 of this Blog: Savage and Civilized: Which is Which?</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk-pt-2"> </a></p>
<p><b><u>______________________________</u><br /> James Newell, Ph.D.</b> is an educator, coach/counselor, performing songwriter, and board member of the Depth Psychology Alliance. James teaches mainstream religious studies courses online for Central Michigan University and several other schools. James also holds a master’s degree in counseling and theology from Vanderbilt Divinity School. James’ counseling orientation is Jungian, and his goal is to educate and empower others to do their own depth work, individually and collectively. James continues to pursue his artistic passion through music, having begun his musical career working with such legendary musicians as John Lee Hooker, James Cotton, Jr. Wells, Big Joe Turner, and others.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.SymbolsofTransformation.com" target="_blank">www.SymbolsofTransformation.com</a><br /> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/</a><br /> <a href="http://www.JamesRNewell.com" target="_blank">www.JamesRNewell.com<br /> <br /></a> <b>Works Cited</b><br /> Du Bois, W. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk. Retrieved from: <a href="http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/give-me-liberty4/docs/WEBDuBois-Souls_of_Black_Folk-1903.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/give-me-liberty4/docs/WEBDuBois-Souls_of_Black_Folk-1903.pdf</a></p>
<p>Kimbles, S. (2000). The Cultural Complex and the Myth of Invisibility. In Singer, T. Ed. <i>The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics and Psyche in the World</i>. New York, NY: Routledge.</p></div>Shamanic Initiation, Descent, and Learning through Direct Experience of the Sacredhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/shamanic-initiation-descent-and-learning-through-direct2020-03-17T04:12:13.000Z2020-03-17T04:12:13.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p><a href="https://www.depthinsights.com/blog/shamanic-initiation-and-learning-through-direct-experience/" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142474253,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142474253?profile=original" /></a>A common and compelling component of both shamanism and Jungian or depth psychology is that each seeks to treat soul loss by retrieving and reintegrating vital essence that is missing. This must occur through direct experience; therefore, the underworld journey to retrieve the soul is one of necessity and initiation.</p><p>Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung believed symptoms of soul loss, such as disorientation, lack of focus, or feelings of powerlessness, exist because a portion of psychic energy that is normally available to the ego has vanished into the unconscious; becoming lost to the underworld. However, Jung realized when there is a depletion of libido, that life energy is not irrevocably gone; it continues to exist in the unconscious, awaiting the opportunity to resurface. The energy, equally powerful in the underworld as in our conscious life, continues to be busy as it manifests in images and symbols, the language of soul (Ryan, 2002).</p><p>The solution, Jung insisted, is for us to descend into the unconscious to engage with the missing libido through symbolic thought. This is what the shaman does when he or she journeys to other realms to...</p><p><a href="https://www.depthinsights.com/blog/shamanic-initiation-and-learning-through-direct-experience/" target="_blank">READ THE FULL POST</a></p></div>New Book Releasehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/new-book-release2019-12-18T00:11:07.000Z2019-12-18T00:11:07.000ZLaura Keller-Wolffhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/LauraKellerWolff<div><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Do we feel loved by the images held in a tradition? The essence of soul, hidden in any tradition, can become a source of imaginal strength. James Hillman claims imaginal love is: “this feeling of being loved by the images …”</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In her new memoir, <em>Reimagining Christmas: Discoveries of a Christmas Self</em>, Laura Keller-Wolff extends this quality—harnessed first in working with dreams—into the quality of imaginal love present within the traditions of Christmas. Hillman states that: “…when we love we want to explore, to discriminate more and more widely, to extend the intricacy that intensifies intimacy.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In discovering the intricacies of what Keller-Wolff claims as her “Christmas Self,” the widely and wildly held intimacies in the magic of Christmas are exposed as a kind of imaginal love.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Sometimes, resting in a tradition releases it’s wild and tender soul. In the pages of her new book, Keller-Wolff invites the reader to intensify their own intimacy with heart-felt traditions—especially with the soul of Christmas.</span></p></div>Rituals of Sacrifice: The Archetypal Roots of Multi-Generational Trauma in the Americas, Part IIhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/rituals-of-sacrifice2018-09-04T00:00:00.000Z2018-09-04T00:00:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142473076,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142473076,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="615" height="443" alt="9142473076?profile=original" /></a>Rituals of Sacrifice: The Archetypal Roots of</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Multi-Generational Trauma in the Americas, Part II</strong></span></p>
<p>In our previous blog on the <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/roots-of-cultural-chaos?xg_source=activity" target="_blank">archetypal roots of multi-generational trauma in the Americas</a>, we looked at how we might trace the roots of contemporary issues via a depth psychological lens. We examined the idea of there being links between early genocidal violence in North America and the genocidal violence perpetrated by the Nazi regime in Europe in the mid twentieth century. We also looked at the traumatic impact of such violence on both victim and perpetrator.<br /> <br /> In this installment, I’d like us to consider the connection between the ancient religious practice of human sacrifice and contemporary events of mass violence, including wars, mass gun violence, genocidal “ethnic cleansings,” and the barbarous treatment of the native peoples of the Americas by Europeans. To those unfamiliar with Jungian psychology, such a connection to religious sacrifice might seem bizarre. It might even seem so to those familiar with Jungian psychology. Even so, I think a case can be made for the idea that the archetypal pattern of religious sacrifice can be seen in cases of mass violence against human beings. These patterns, being archetypal, are unconscious to be sure, but they are discernible – and dangerous – nonetheless. <br /> <br /> As Jung himself observed, the fact that religious phenomena are experienced subjectively as <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/numinous" target="_blank">numinous</a> is itself evidence of archetypal phenomena. That sacrifice is at the core of both ancient and modern religion is indisputable. As historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith has famously said, "Any explanation of sacrifice is, in fact, a theory of religion in miniature" (Smith, 1995). If we are willing to make the leap that both Jung and Smith are correct, then it should be easy to accept the idea that there is an archetypal pattern to be found at the heart of sacrificial practice in religion. This being the case, the classical Jungian is left with two key questions: 1. “What is the role of the archetype of sacrifice in the individuation process?”, and 2. “How do these archetypal patterns of sacrifice relate to behaviors of mass violence?”<br /> <br /> <a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eflhq4ope26c068e&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><img width="324" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142473264,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142473264?profile=original" /></a>Scholars have long been baffled by practices of religious sacrifice, especially human sacrifice. However, when religion and religious practices are seen through the lens of Analytical psychology as symbolic methods of regulating archetypal energies, clarity begins to emerge. In his book Ego and Archetype, Edward Edinger (1973) describes how the grandiose (archetypal) energies of the psyche drive humans to vacillate between experiences of inflated self-importance and states of flattened affect resulting from a sense of alienation from these energies. It is no mere coincidence that the practice of sacrifice emerged simultaneously with the rise of sacral kingship during the early Bronze Age. Just as social and economic differentiation moved culture to develop into more and more complex social groups, the need for an organizing center – the king – also emerged. As the sacral king now served as carrier of the sacred energies of the archetypal Self of the group, the average ‘commoner’ now abdicated (i.e. sacrificed) responsibility for the care of their own archetypal energies to the care of the idealized figure of the priestly king. The practice of religious sacrifice developed as a symbolic representation of this need to regulate the now publicly free-floating grandiose archetypal energies. <a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eflhq4ope26c068e&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><img width="400" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142474078,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-right" alt="9142474078?profile=original" /></a><br /> <br /> The above is a simplified description of a process that evolved over thousands of years. I hope it will serve as a tentative answer to our first question, “What is the role of the archetype of sacrifice in the individuation process?” I also hope it will help to lead us towards an answer to our second question: “How do these archetypal patterns of sacrifice relate to behaviors of mass violence?” First, in regard to the process of individuation, as we move between the two poles of inflation and alienation from archetypal energies, we must learn to sacrifice our claims to godhood (inflation) and develop a working relationship with our own personal deity: i.e. the archetype of the Self. Through this recognition of our limitations we gain access, through our connection to the archetypal Self, to adequate life energies to help us achieve our own highest personal destinies. This is a healthy, conscious, life-affirming relationship, through the archetype of sacrifice, to the archetype of the Self. <br /> <br /> <a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eflhq4ope26c068e&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><img width="500" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142474458,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="9142474458?profile=original" /></a>But what about our second question: “How do these archetypal patterns of sacrifice relate to behaviors of mass violence?” In the case of mass violence, we are dealing the opposite: an unhealthy, unconscious state in which the grandiose archetypal energies of the psyche have become so repressed and alienated from consciousness that they suddenly rise up from within, unbidden, to overwhelm and possess consciousness. Such unconscious energies can and do grip both groups and individuals with a compelling need to perform a sacrificial offering. Horrifying examples of this can be found not only in the archeological record of early Bronze-age and Mezo-American civilizations, but also in the 19th century Americas, as well as 20th century Europe, Africa, and Asia. <br /> <br /> If this topic interests you, please join us for another community conversation on <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/the-archetypal-roots-of-multi-generational-trauma-pt-ii" target="_blank">The Archetypal Roots of Multi-Generational Trauma in the Americas</a>. We'll consider questions such as: How can we best address issues of cultural chaos from the perspective of depth psychology? How can those of us who feel that the perspectives of depth psychology can have a positive cultural influence begin to implement positive change in the world? Please join us on Saturday, September 8th at 1:00 PM PT for our FREE community event.</p>
<p><strong>Join Alliance director James Newell and a panel of Alliance board members and others for a community conversation on multi-generational trauma.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eflhq4ope26c068e&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">CLICK HERE TO REGISTER</a></strong></p>
<p>In the past we’ve held community discussions on such topics as racism, Islamophobia, and gun violence. On Saturday September 8, 2018 the Depth Psychology Alliance is hosting another live community discussion/webcast during which time listeners will participate with a panel of interested persons as we discuss Depth Psychology and the Archetypal Roots of Multi-Generational Trauma in the Americas: Part II. This current initiative will attempt to address the traumatic and ongoing decimation of the native peoples of the Americas from a depth psychology perspective. Please forward this post to your favorite social media outlets and to interested friends!</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eflhq4ope26c068e&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">Click here to register for this FREE event!</a></strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/cultural-trauma">Click here to learn more about this initiative!<br /></a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.naha-inc.org" target="_blank"><img width="334" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142474495,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="9142474495?profile=original" /></a><br /> Works Cited</strong></p>
<p>Edinger, E. (1973). <em>Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche</em>. New York, NY: Penguin Publishing Group.<br /> <br /> Smith, J. (1995). Sacrifice. In Smith, J.Z. et al. (eds), <em>The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion</em>, p. 948, San Francisco: Harper Collins.<br /> <br /> <br /> <a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eflhq4ope26c068e&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><img width="344" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142474272,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="9142474272?profile=original" /></a></p></div>The Archetypal Roots of Multi-Generational Trauma in the Americashttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/roots-of-cultural-chaos2018-05-14T03:00:00.000Z2018-05-14T03:00:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://www.naha-inc.org/" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142465884,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="9142465884?profile=original" /></a><br /> <span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>The Archetypal Roots of Multi-Generational</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Trauma in the Americas<br /></strong></span></p>
<p>In the face of cultural crisis, modern people tend to seek material, social, and political solutions. Depth psychology approaches cultural issues from a different perspective. Depth psychologists tend to look beneath the surface. On an individual level, we look for complexes, networks of ideas and emotions that may have been forgotten, or simply were too complicated to fully process at earlier stages of development. Yet the energy contained in these complexes will continue to act autonomously, upsetting our best laid plans, regardless of our conscious intentions. Often, the early formation of a complex involves an underlying trauma.</p>
<p>Not individuals alone, but cultures, too, can develop complexes (Kimbles, 2000). If, without entering into contemporary political or partisan debates, we were to look at the history of the current cultural chaos in North America, what might we identify as determining factors? What complexes might we find? People in Europe and Asia routinely live among the artifacts of cultures that are hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old. The <a href="https://globalsocialtheory.org/concepts/settler-colonialism/" target="_blank">settlers of North America</a> rarely look back that far, and perhaps with good reason. Not so very long ago, the land in which we live was inhabited by people who had lived here for literally thousands of years. These were not simply nomadic tribal people, just passing through. Although that is the origin myth that the modern inhabitants of North America have been taught, the reality is much different. The first inhabitants of the Americas had developed their own agriculture – independent of, and nearly simultaneous with, the agricultural centers of China, India, and the mid-East – as well as their own civilizations, towns, roads, and systems of trade.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naha-inc.org" target="_blank"><img width="300" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142465667,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" height="240" alt="9142465667?profile=original" /></a>The Americas were not discovered, they were invaded (Jennings, 1975, Wright, 1992). This invasion was followed by colonization and involved an ongoing process of deliberately deceiving the native people, breaking treaties one after another, slaughtering whole villages, and finally corralling each tribal group into small sections of land that would not support the production of crops (Churchill, 2004; Stannard, 1992; Grenier, 2005). This system was so effective that it eventually inspired Adolf Hitler.</p>
<p>In an oft quoted passage, Pulitzer Prize winning historian John Toland (1976) writes: "Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination -- by starvation and uneven combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity” (p. 702).</p>
<p>Why do I mention this in relation to contemporary chaos in North America? The origin myth that we have been taught is a false narrative. In the words of historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014a):</p>
<p>"Origin narratives form the vital core of a people’s unifying identity and of the values that guide them. In the United States, the founding and development of the Anglo-American settler-state involves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land. That part of the origin story is supported and reinforced by the Columbus myth and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine" target="_blank">'Doctrine of Discovery</a>.'"</p>
<p>The Americas were not a virgin land, free for the taking. They were populated by literally millions of people whose civilizations and cultures, though quite different from European ways, were nonetheless sophisticated and highly developed. Our true origin myth has been, as historian Francis Jennings has said, “buried under an ideology” (p. v). </p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naha-inc.org" target="_blank"><img width="550" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142465688,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="9142465688?profile=original" /></a>Such a deliberate attempt to rewrite our origins is important enough for the historian, but it is even more important for depth psychology. Instead of being a culture founded on freedom and high ideals, as we have long been taught, the truth is slowly emerging. This truth is that we are a culture built upon savagery – not the savagery of those whom we once called ‘savages’, but our own savagery (Churchill, 2004; Stannard, 1992; Grenier, 2005). We are a culture that has been built on greed, <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-souls-of-white-folk" target="_blank">white supremacy</a>, and slavery (Baptist, 2016; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014b; Blackmon, 2009; Davis, 2008; Pearce, 1988). That these very traits should once again be emerging from our cultural shadow should be of no surprise to those with any understanding of depth psychology. They are revealing to us elements of the traumatic core of an autonomous cultural complex. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.naha-inc.org" target="_blank"><img width="320" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142467072,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142467072?profile=original" /></a>Moreover, the atrocities that our antecedents visited upon the native peoples and Africans whom they perceived to be either impediments to the achievement of their goals or a means to achieve them, carried with them trauma of horrific proportions. Although these traumas were no doubt more virulent for those upon whom they were visited, recent studies show that the perpetrators of violence and injustice are not unaffected by their actions. Researcher Rachel MacNair (2010; 2009; 2005) reports a form of post traumatic stress that she identifies as perpetrator-induced traumatic stress (PITS). In studies of combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), those who had killed others or committed atrocities (as opposed to simply having viewed such acts) reported more, and more debilitating symptoms. More research needs to be done in this area, but the evidence remains clear that trauma impacts everyone associated with violence and other morally repugnant behaviors. In the context of our cultural history, it seems that, whether victim or perpetrator, we are all heir to a collective memory of trauma.</p>
<p>In keeping with the <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/mission-vision">mission and vision</a> of the Depth Psychology Alliance (DPA), we are continuing our practice of initiating discussions, conversations, and healing activities around key, non-political issues that appear to be active in the cultural unconscious of the people of the Americas. Our most recent initiative is an attempt to address the traumatic and ongoing decimation of the native peoples of the Americas from a depth psychology perspective. How can we best address such issues from the perspective of depth psychology? How can those of us who feel that the perspectives of depth psychology can have a positive cultural influence begin realize such ideas in a way that actually inspires positive change in the world? How do these historical events impact our current world? How can we respond to historical events in a constructive and healing way?<br /> <br /> If these questions interest you, you may want to watch the video replay of our online community conversation on the topic of Multi Generational Trauma in the Americas.</p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/multigenerational-trauma-a-community-conversation" target="_blank">Click here to watch a video replay of this event!</a></strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>The Depth Psychology Alliance supports</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong><a href="https://www.naha-inc.org" target="_blank">The Native American Heritage Foundation</a></strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>We hope you will, too!</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://www.naha-inc.org" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142467668,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="470" alt="9142467668?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p><strong>Works Cited</strong></p>
<p>Baptist, E. (2016). <em>The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism</em>. New York: Basic Books.</p>
<p>Blackmon, D. (2009). <em>Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II</em>. New York: Anchor.</p>
<p>Churchill, W. (2004). <em>A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present</em>. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.</p>
<p>Davis, D. (2008). <em>Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World</em>. New York: Oxford University Press.</p>
<p>Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014a). Jacobin. <em>America’s Founding Myths</em>. Retrieved from: <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/americas-founding-myths/">https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/americas-founding-myths/</a></p>
<p>Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014b). <a href="https://www.docdroid.net/m1XQ5dG/an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states-dunbar-ortiz.pdf"><em>An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States</em></a>. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.</p>
<p>Grenier, J. (2005). <em>The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814</em>. New York: Cambridge University Press.</p>
<p>Jennings, F. (1975). <em>The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest</em>. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.</p>
<p>Kimbles, S. (2000). The Cultural Complex and the Myth of Invisibility. In Singer, T. Ed. <em>The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics and Psyche in the World</em>. New York, NY: Routledge.</p>
<p><span>MacNair, R.</span> <span>(2010)</span> <span>Psychological reverberations for the killers: Preliminary historical evidence for perpetration-induced traumatic stress,</span> <span>Journal of Genocide Research,</span> <span>3:2,</span> <span>273-282.</span></p>
<p><span>MacNair, R.</span> <span>(2009)</span> <span><em>Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress in Combat Veterans,</em></span> <em><span>Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology</span></em><span>,</span> <span>8:1,</span> <span>63-72.</span></p>
<p>MacNair, R. (2005). <em>Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing</em>. Bloomington, IN: Authors Choice.</p>
<p>Pearce, R. (1988). <em>Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind</em>. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.</p>
<p>Stannard, D. (1992). <em>American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World</em>. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.</p>
<p><em>Toland, J (1992). Adolf Hitler. New York: Anchor.</em></p>
<p>Wright, R. (1992). <em>Stolen Continents: The Americas Through Indian Eyes since 1492</em>. New York: Houghton Mifflin.</p>
<p></p></div>Carl Jung, Mythology, and Scientific Revolutionshttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/carl-jung-mythology2018-02-17T01:30:00.000Z2018-02-17T01:30:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank"><img width="292" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142468897,original{{/staticFileLink}}" style="padding:3px;" class="align-right" alt="9142468897?profile=original" /></a></strong></span></span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Carl Jung’s body of work has set into motion a scientific revolution on the order of Copernicus. While many mainstream academic psychologists and mainstream intellectuals dismiss Jung and his work as regressive and unscientific, little by little his ideas have been seeping into major academic disciplines, although incognito. Many anthropologists (including the celebrated Levi-Strauss) have been influenced by and have capitalized on Jung’s ideas with not a single reference to him. Many of Jung’s ideas and methods, once considered heretical, are now employed by several</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">major psychological schools – again, with no credit given to Jung. One key academic discipline most historically resistant to Jung’s ideas has been the field of folklore and mythology. In this field, again, slowly, his ideas are beginning to be integrated by some brave academic scholars.<br /> <br /></span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Of course, Jung is not alone in scientific history in being ignored or dismissed by his peers. Many great minds have been ignored, dismissed, or otherwise disparaged despite the revolutionary brilliance of their ideas. What great idea is the herald of Carl Jung’s alleged scientific revolution? The claim that the ego is not the center of the psyche. Rather, Jung (1959) contends, an unconscious ordering principle that he calls the ‘archetype of the Self’ is the object around which the healthy ego revolves.</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">This is the new paradigm that Jung’s work is slowly bringing to birth in contemporary culture.<br /> <br /> In his classic study <em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</em>, historian and philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn (1970), popularized the idea of scientific paradigms. According to Kuhn, the idea of a scientific paradigm</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank"><img width="174" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142470062,original{{/staticFileLink}}" style="padding:5px;" class="align-right" alt="9142470062?profile=original" /></a></span><span style="font-size:12pt;">s</span><span style="font-size:12pt;">uggests specific examples of scientific practice that “…provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research” (p. 10). An example that Kuhn uses is that of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), who challenged the Ptolemaic paradigm of his day. The Ptolemaic paradigm saw the earth as the center of the universe, and asserted that the sun revolve</span><span style="font-size:12pt;">d around the earth. This was also the biblical paradigm (though Kuhn ignores this, since by definition the biblical paradigm is not scientific). Copernicus asserted that the earth revolved around the sun, and he was roundly criticized for this outrageous claim. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) later supported the Copernican heliocentric theory, and was tried and arrested by the Catholic church. Galileo spent nine years under house arrest (until his death) for supporting this heretical Copernican theory.<br /></span> <br /> <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142470277,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" height="332" alt="9142470277?profile=original" /></a><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">What was Galileo’s crime? Aside from violating certain theological decrees, Galileo proposed to dispose of the geocentric (earth-centered) paradigm and replace it with the heliocentric (sun-centered) paradigm that today every school-child takes for granted. Carl Jung is guilty of a similar crime: claiming that the ego is not the center of a healthy personality. Jung asserts rather that a healthy personality features an ego which listens to, and is in touch with the organizing principle of the archetypal Self, by way of what Erich Neumann (1973) has called an ego-self axis (p. 59). Though these metaphoric ideas are today as widely rejected as Copernican ideas were in times past, I am confident this new paradigm will one day be as commonly accepted as Galileo’s is today.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank"><img width="450" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142470874,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" height="436" alt="9142470874?profile=original" /></a></span><span style="font-size:12pt;">It would appear that what most academics find distasteful about Jung’s work is not so much the ideas themselves, but their implications. Jung’s ideas imply that there is not only value in what rises from the unconscious, but there are also clear implications for those scholarly disciplines which continue to remain unconscious of the affect of the unconscious psyche on their own academic work. Jung’s work also implies that so-called primitive humans, those historian of religion Mircea Eliade (1959) called <em>homo-religiosus</em>, were actually engaging in healthy, community strengthening activities when they prayed to their gods, danced and sang out ritual re-enactments of their tribal histories, and treated their mythological canons as their most valuable possessions. Moreover, Jung claims that these same types of activities are sadly lacking in the contemporary world and that this lack of connection to the mythic realm has led to enormous psychological distress.<br /> <br /> Were the academic world at large to rightly understand and accept these novel claims of Jung, they, each and everyone, would be required to completely rethink the premises upon which their disciplines rest. For now they would have to accept and incorporate into their work the psychic fact that before they ever put pen to paper, or conduct a single experiment, their unconscious psyche is manipulating their activities in ways of which they are completely and blissfully unaware. All science is based upon assumptions, but just because a large group of people believe these assumptions to be true does not therefore mean that those assumptions align with objective reality.<br /> <br /></span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Jung’s work encourages us to enter into this new paradigm with him. To enter as into a mythic realm what he called the reality of the psyche, without losing sight of the importance of our rational, discriminating consciousness. Jung's work allows us to enter the symbolic, mythic realm of the psyche and bring back lost parts of ourselves to examine them in the light of a healthy, discerning consciousness. The ultimate goal being to integrate these contents into consciousness and make their attendant creative energies available to us. This is a Copernican revolution that completely re-writes not only our understanding of psychology and the human psyche, but also our understandings of myth, religion, and culture. Jung's work invites us to learn a new, higher-order thinking style that integrates intuition, feeling, and sensation into a new, more comprehensive way of knowing ourselves, and our world.<br /> <br /></span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Join us for an exploration of the scientific revolution of our day in the upcoming course <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank">Jung and Mythology</a>. A free introductory class will be offered on Saturday, February 24th at 1pm PT. The following week on Saturday, March 3rd, at 1pm PT, we will begin the first module of the eight week, college level course, <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank">Jung and Mythology</a>.<br /> <br /></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142471465,original{{/staticFileLink}}" style="padding:4px;" class="align-center" height="159" alt="9142471465?profile=original" /></a></span><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/jung-and-mythology-an-8-week-college-level-class" target="_blank"><strong>Click here for more information</strong></a></span><br /> <br /> <a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ef0hebd496bf4f50&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>Click here to register for the free introductory class.</strong></span></a><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:14pt;"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong><a href="https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ef0hhyyrb014450b&oseq=&c=&ch=" target="_blank">Click here to register for the eight week course.</a></strong></span><br /> <br /></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Eliade, M. (1959). <em>The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion</em>. New York, NY: Harcourt, Inc.<br /> <br /> Jung, C. (1959). <em>Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self</em>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<br /> <br /> Kuhn, T. (1970). <em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</em>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Neumann, E. (1973). <em>The Child.</em> New York, NY: Harper.<br /> <br /> <br /></span></p></div>Now Available to the Public: 12 Interviews for "Earth, Climate, Dreams: Depth Psychological Reflections in the Age of the Anthropocene"https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/now-available-to-the-public-12-interviews-for-earth-climate-dream2018-01-10T14:00:00.000Z2018-01-10T14:00:00.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Dear Depth community. Warm greetings for a happy new year. </span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">At this time last year many of us were preparing to launch the Earth, Climate, Dreams online symposium, which was a program consisting of 12 recorded interviews with some of the expert scientists, psychologists, Jungian analysts, and educators who are providing some of the most critical thinking about the topics.</span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Now, in honor of the anniversary of that symposium, I'm pleased to let you know that all 12 of the depth dialogues are being released to the community. Those of you who attended the original symposium had the benefit of meeting together each week for six weeks online, along with many of the presenters, to discuss each week's featured interviews and to sit together in contemplation of some of the challenges we are facing in our current culture--a culture which seems to be changing drastically by the day.</span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Thank you to each of you who make space each day for the transition we are going through, and for the opportunity to engage with something much larger than ourselves--a sense of soul that is so greatly needed by all.</span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Following are links to each of the 12 interviews on YouTube.If you feel inclined to make a small donation in exchange for the interviews, please do so. Either way, enjoy the depth and breath of these wonderful thinkers in the field.</span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">In soul,</span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Bonnie Bright, Ph.D.</span></p><p class="p1"></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong><a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9R7E926JZDY6U" target="_blank">DONATE ANY AMOUNT</a></strong></span></p><p class="p1"><a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9R7E926JZDY6U" target="_blank"><img width="600" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142470881,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142470881?profile=original" /></a></p><p class="p1"></p><p class="p1"><strong><span class="s1">ABOUT THE DEPTH DIALOGUES</span></strong></p><p><strong>Earth, Climate, Dreams: Depth Psychological Reflections in the Age of the Anthropocene</strong><span> </span></p><p><span>Over time, humans in western cultures have undergone a profound restructuring of the psyche resulting in a traumatic sense of separation. In modern day, we face a growing set of challenges on ecological and social fronts. The era of what is now informally called the Anthropocene—a term referring to the significant impact of human activity on the planet— has arrived. The current crisis requires that we reflect on our situation from a depth psychological perspective, contemplating how we might tap into the underlying archetypal themes at work in the culture and begin to articulate them in ways that inspire and move us to personal and collective action.</span></p><p><span>The depth dialogues for this symposium offers the opportunity to engage the topic from a depth psychological perspective, allowing deep reflection and thoughtful response.</span></p><p> </p><p><strong>Video Presenters with the links to view each Dialogue Below:</strong></p><p><span><strong>Bonnie Bright</strong>, Founder, Depth Psychology Alliance, HOST</span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Steven Aizenstat</strong>, Chancellor and Founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/zrdy6Wyz5W0" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/zrdy6Wyz5W0</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Susannah Benson</strong>, Academic, Researcher, Educator, and Counsellor</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/GUY4dz9zgm8" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/GUY4dz9zgm8</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Jerome Bernstein</strong>, Jungian Analyst</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/UtW9avovskc" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/UtW9avovskc</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Michael Conforti</strong>, Jungian Analyst</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/GG9Jw94NrMw" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/GG9Jw94NrMw</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Nancy Swift Furlotti</strong>, Jungian Analyst</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/v80ERblfQgw" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/v80ERblfQgw</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Sally Gillespie</strong>, Jungian Psychotherapist</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/KTP4qem2hAY" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/KTP4qem2hAY</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Veronica Goodchild</strong>, Professor Emerita at Pacifica Graduate Institute</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/WCFKEhFAyiY" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/WCFKEhFAyiY</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Jeffrey Kiehl</strong>, Jungian Analyst and Senior Climate Scientist<br /></span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/ZUSl6xI4K3s" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ZUSl6xI4K3s</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Jonathan Marshall</strong>, Anthropologist and Senior Research Associate at the University of Technology Sydney</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/iGQiVV96bAs" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/iGQiVV96bAs</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Robert Romanyshyn</strong>, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/EJlViNR21Yw" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/EJlViNR21Yw</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Susan Rowland</strong>, Chair of MA Engaged Humanities & the Creative Life at Pacifica Graduate Institute</span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/Lgse7iIcGAc" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Lgse7iIcGAc</a></span></p><p></p><p><span><strong>Erel Shalit</strong>, Jungian Analyst<br /></span></p><p><span><a href="https://youtu.be/ZUSl6xI4K3s" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ZUSl6xI4K3s</a></span></p><p></p><p><strong><a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9R7E926JZDY6U" target="_blank">DONATE ANY AMOUNT</a></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>Ancestral Healing: Insights on Animism & Shamanism—Summary Article of an Interview with Dr. Daniel Foor with Bonnie Bright PhDhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi2017-10-17T10:30:00.000Z2017-10-17T10:30:00.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p class="Text"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi" target="_blank"><img width="300" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142469059,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-right" alt="9142469059?profile=original" /></a><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi" target="_blank"></a></p><p class="Text"><strong><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi" target="_blank">Watch the Video Interview here</a></strong></p><p class="Text"></p><p class="Text"><strong>Daniel Foor, PhD,</strong> is a teacher and practitioner of practical animism who specializes in ancestral and family healing and is helping make humans relate well to the rest of the natural world and in helping humans relate well to the rest of the natural world.</p><p class="Text">As a licensed marriage and family therapist, Foor’s doctoral research in psychology focused on the use of shamanic healing practices like clinical mental health professionals. He has trained and lived in other societies, immersing himself in different lineages of spiritual practice, each of which has informed his kind and non-dogmatic approach to ancestor and earth reverence.</p><p class="Text">A self-described “white guy from Ohio of European ancestral lineages German, English, Irish,” Foor has sought out and trained with many different lineages of practices and teaches ancestry and earth reverence to people in the United States in “an accessible way that helps them to feel connected to their own ancestors and to the land where they live in a way that's also mindful of the history, and social justice.”</p><p><img width="220" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142469494,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-right" alt="9142469494?profile=original" /></p><p class="Text">In our recent conversation, Foor, who is the author of a recent book, <i>Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing</i>, explains the difference between animism and shamanism, tracing some of their historical evolution and key ideas.</p><p class="Text">A mature or well-evolved animist is someone who learns how to relate skillfully, respectfully with other kinds of beings, Foor believes, but that doesn't mean that person necessarily holds any specific role in their community as a healer. It's a way of seeing the world. He prefers to use the term, “earth-honoring spirituality,” to describe a critical part of his worldview and practice, in part because it does not take away from or appropriate specific indigenous traditions, or contribute to the history of genocide and colonialism that has taken place among indigenous peoples around the world.</p><p class="Text">When one is drawn to “shamanism,” or earth-honoring spirituality, it benefits us to get to know our own ancestors, and to come into relationship with both what is beautiful, and also with what needs healing from our own ancestral lineages, Foor insists. That enables us to go about the needed healing in more grounded and more culturally sensible way because it honors our own history.</p><p class="Text">In our conversation, Foor explained how many modern day shamanic practices are taught by western practitioners—including soul retrieval, extraction, de-possession work, energy balancing, and connecting with spirit allies, among them. Most of the mental health practitioners Daniel drew from in his doctoral research were drawing on those types of practices, he acknowledges, and the conclusion of the research is that it <i>is</i> possible to harmonize or bridge some of those practices into a mental health setting.</p><p class="Text"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi" target="_blank"><img width="250" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142469896,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142469896?profile=original" /></a>However, practices from animist cultures or indigenous traditions generally assume that each individual who comes to Earth has our own destiny, our own unique instructions and original medicine and gifts to bring to the world, he notes. These cultures tend to have a profound respect for diversity because the natural world offers tremendous diversity in the form of revelations and manifestations that are highly sacred, in addition to all the things we can't physically perceive.</p><p class="Text">It is important that we each get clear about what our particular destiny is, and then determine which specific or unique teachers, spirits, or practices we need to be working with in order to fulfill that destiny. There's really just one script or one pattern, even within the same tradition of practice.</p><p class="Text">Many of these traditional practices revolve around cultivating relationships and learning to feed and tend a relationship with certain ancestors or spirits through offerings, prayer, invocation; by allowing those beings to speak through dreams, waking intuition, through embodiment or incorporation, possession practices, and also potentially knowing how to also work with different plants and elements of the natural world, which have their own vibration, their own medicine, as Daniel suggests.</p><p class="Text">For me, this is all a very archetypal idea that information is available which we can tap into through the instruction or the teachings of certain spirits, entities, or deities, but Foor quickly reminds me that, while some traditions favor the practice of journeying, for example—of moving one’s consciousness intentionally out of the body in order to gain information from some other “world”, not all traditions expect or require the practitioner to journey to them, and may even see it as a practice that necessarily favorable.</p><p class="Text">Another critical tool that some traditions engage in when relating with ancestors or spirits is through divination. This includes an appreciation for dreams, synchronicity, spontaneous events, and ancestral memory in the form of stories—many of which can be invoked to amplify what elders may be seeing in certain situations.</p><p class="Text">Part of our “predicament” in the West is that people are drawn to spirit, but they don't necessarily have a community to support them, Foor maintains. While working alone can offer a certain modicum of freedom, there can also be loneliness, sadness, or a sense of loss or disconnect from the nourishment that a lineage provides, and also the accountability that comes from a lineage. Ideally, we have elders to whom we can turn for guidance, for analyzing dreams or events, or to help us from getting overwhelmed by archetypal forces. They can also help us deal with inflation, which can potentially be problematic when one feels “called” in a certain way, even if that calling is valid and authentic.</p><p class="Text"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi" target="_blank"><img width="300" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142470700,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-right" alt="9142470700?profile=original" /></a>One critical tenet of healing is to seek clarity about your own unique destiny and what your needs are as a result of that. This requires “getting well with your own ancestors” and healing your ancestral lineages. The process encourages the psychological inner work that everybody needs to do, aids healing in families, and allows us to come a balanced relationship with the land and the earth where we each live.</p><p class="Text">Community protects us from “getting too far into the weeds” when it's functioning in a healthy way, Foor suggests. Counterparts who see us on a spiritual level and can help us course correct when we need it, and grounded spiritual teachers can help us move things along and they also help us establish some psychological resilience so we don’t become disillusioned with our sense of calling.</p><p class="Text">Foor, who has been guiding ancestral trainings around the U.S. over the last decade, believes that everyone has loving and wise ancestors. It's important to expand our understanding of the ancestors to include not only all of our lineage who are remembered by name, but also those who are note, and to know that they can be called upon in the present. “The ancestors live as a spiritual force, or collection of forces, in the present and so we can call on them now,” Foor contends. It’s also important to identify the dead who can help us from those who have passed but are not yet well. That’s another important reason for healing our lineages—not just for our own families and for our psychological well-being, but also for “the cultural healing that we need with respect to racism, sexism, homophobia, all the different cultural poisons that we're trying to metabolize.”</p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462663,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="320" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462663,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142462663?profile=original" /></a></p><p class="Text">Doing the work of healing the inter-generational pain that's been inherited is also very complementary to social justice work and cultural healing work that's needed. In contemporary shamanism, people tend to gravitate toward relating with certain deities, animals, plants, mountains, etc., but often tend to forego relationships with ancestors, partly because there's so much unconscious trauma about family and a desire to avoid that. If family is seen as a source of pain and disconnect rather than spiritual support, is not surprising that we might view our families in a truncated and incomplete way rather than seeing that we have lineages that go back to tribal, pre-Christian, pre-colonialism times, Foor suggests.</p><p class="Text"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi" target="_blank"></a>That psychological motivation to avoid the ancestor part of shamanic practice because of the history can potentially prevent us from engaging in the opportunity for healing through the ancestors. The “ones who lived before the trouble” have the potential to bring healing into our own hearts, relationships, and lives. They want to reconnect with us.</p><p class="Text">As a doctor of psychology and a therapist, Foor sees many individuals struggle with intergenerational pain or ancestral trouble—even sometimes ghost interference—that's been inherited. Our older ancestors have the remedy to shift that, he believes, but these situations involve collective-level medicine. “The older ancestors have the remedy for the poison that we have inherited from recent family,” he asserts. “And they want to help. They're available. But there needs to be a calling on them.” In our conversation, Foor goes on to share some practical and helpful ideas about how to work with ancestors.</p><p class="Text">“There are literally thousands of intact cultures on earth that continue to maintain daily relationship with their ancestors,” he notes. We have a natural human capacity to engage in direct, nourishing, helpful relationship with our own ancestors. Once we make that gesture, we then just need to trust that the universe will actually respond.</p><p class="Text"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462663,original{{/staticFileLink}}"></a><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142471261,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="320" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142471261,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142471261?profile=original" /></a>And sometimes, we have to be a little tenacious about it. If you're serious about it, we have to remember we’re building a relationship, and these are real being—not just a part of your own mind. You can't control them. Foor goes on to note several books, authors, and even YouTube videos that have made a difference in his own life.</p><p class="Text">Foor goes on to profess that one of his” favorite demographics of people” is “white people like him who are ancestrally disconnected from indigenous culture.” It <i>is</i> possible to reclaim animist, earth-honoring, soulful depth level relationship with your own ancestors, practices, community, he affirms, even as he emphasizes that we must be hopeful about it. “It's possible to do it in a way that isn't culturally offensive,” he stresses in closing. “Don't let those things discourage you. We need the reconnection. The others, the not human ones, miss us, and we desperately need to get our framework for how to live and how to relate well with the others back on track”—not just spiritually but politically and culturally, as well.</p><p class="Text"> </p><p class="Text"><b>Visit Daniel Foor’s</b> <b>website</b>, <a href="http://www.ancestralmedicine.org/">www.ancestralmedicine.org</a> to find lots of resources, including a calendar of workshops Foor offers both in-person or online.</p><p class="Text"><b>Learn more about Daniel Foor’s upcoming</b> <b>online series</b>, “Ancestral Lineage Healing”, starting October 29, 2017: <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/ancestral-lineage-healing-online-course">http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/ancestral-lineage-healing-online-course</a></p><p class="Text"><b><br /> Watch the video interview</b>, <b>Ancestral Healing: Insights on Animism & Shamanism—</b>Dr. Daniel Foor with Bonnie Bright PhD (approx. 42 mins) at <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi">http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/video/ancestral-healing-insights-on-animism-shamanism-dr-daniel-foor-wi</a></p><p class="Text"></p><p class="Text"></p></div>Sandplay as a Healing Modality: Interview with Jungian Analyst Jorge de la Ohttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/sandplay-as-a-healing-modality-interview-with-jungian-analyst-jor2017-10-04T03:07:55.000Z2017-10-04T03:07:55.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p><span>For Jungian analyst and professor, Jorge de la O, the desire to become a therapist began in the late 1970s when he saw Violet Oaklander[1] the founder of Gestalt therapy with children and adolescents, at a confluent education conference at USC. Oaklander presented some slides on the process of sandtray (a somewhat different process from Sandplay, the Jungian approach to sandtray which was created by Jungian analyst Dora Kalff)[2]. When Jorge saw the trays and the work Oaklander was doing, he was completely taken by it. "It was magical," he reports. As a kindergarten teacher at the time, he knew he wanted Sandplay in his life, and a seed was planted....</span></p><p>After starting the program at Pacifica Graduate Institute (where he now holds a faculty position), Jorge’s early fascination with Sandplay was renewed. The Counseling program required that each student training to be a therapist undergo their own personal therapy, so Jorge immediately looked for a Sandplay therapist who was also a Jungian analyst. All the tumblers just sort of fell into place right from the beginning, he notes.</p><p><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/sandplay_by_dora_kalff.jpg?t=1507063614125&width=250&name=sandplay_by_dora_kalff.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/sandplay_by_dora_kalff.jpg?t=1507063614125&name=sandplay_by_dora_kalff.jpg&width=200" width="200" class="align-left" alt="sandplay_by_dora_kalff.jpg?t=1507063614125&name=sandplay_by_dora_kalff.jpg&width=200" /></a>I can relate to Jorge’s perception of Sandplay as “magical,” having been completely taken by some of the case studies presented at a recent conference I attended on Sandplay, and how Sandplay works so magnificently in the healing process. The founder of Sandplay (and author of the book by the same name), Dora Kalff, saw Sandplay as a free and open space where individuals create images in the sand using miniatures[3], Jorge informs me. It is a nonverbal form of therapy which allows psyche to come to the surface, much like active imagination. Part of the magic, as Jorge explains it....</p><p><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/sandplay-as-a-healing-modality" target="_blank">Read the full post here</a></p></div>Depth Insights™ Journal, New Issue—Claim Your Copy Todayhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/depth-insights-journal-new-issue-claim-your-copy-today2017-10-07T02:30:00.000Z2017-10-07T02:30:00.000ZDepth Alliancehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/DepthAlliance<div><div><h3 class="_1mf _1mj"><span><a href="http://www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights-scholarly-ezine/" target="_blank"></a><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">We are pleased to announce that the new issue of Depth Insights™ Journal, the official peer-reviewed publication for Depth Psychology Alliance is out!</span></span></h3>
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<div><h4 class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><strong>From the Editor, Bonnie Bright, Ph.D.</strong>:</span></h4>
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<div><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142467670,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="242" class="align-left" alt="9142467670?profile=original" /><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">When the world seems to be falling apart all around us, depth psychology provides perspectives and tools that can help us make some sense of things, even in some small way. Through the study of the unconscious, we can often get a glimpse of </span><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;">patterns at work, or underlying aspects that help us gain a new understanding of how we are truly supported by something </span><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;">larger—how the boundaries and attachments of our ego selves can soften and give way to soul, which sustains us.</span></div>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"> </span></div>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">In this issue of Depth Insights, we encounter a variety of topics which, when we apply a depth psychological lens, we begin to understand at a deeper layer. Several of these seven compelling essays build on the authors’ personal experiences in order to truly explore the many ways soul reveals itself in our lives and in the collective. Others offer a broad academic view that integrate philosophy or systems science with depth psychology to further enrich the lens by which we might perceive soul at </span><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;">work in the world. ...</span></div>
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<div><h4 class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><span> </span><strong style="font-size:1em;"><span>Essays include:</span></strong></span></h4>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">—Stories of Longing: Beaver, Bear, Wolf</span></div>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">—The Space Between Breaths - An Exploration of Grief and Final Threshold Rituals</span></div>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">—The Art of Facing Darkness: A Metal Musician’s Quest for Wholeness</span></div>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">—The Numinosity of Pluralism: Interfaith as Spiritual Path and Practice</span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">—</span></span>On Romanticism in Jung’s Psychology: A Reflection on <em>The Passion of the Western Mind</em> by Richard Tarnas</div>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">—How Jungian Psychology, Brain Research, Quantum Physics, and Systems Science Lead to Pansystemology and Depth Psychology</span></div>
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<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">—A <span>Child’s Edenic Dream: “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” in The Nutcracker Ballet</span></span></div>
<a href="http://www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights-scholarly-ezine/" target="_blank"><img width="160" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142467877,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-right" alt="9142467877?profile=original" /></a></div>
<div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"> </span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><a title="Please consider a small contribution in return for accessing Depth Insights scholarly ezine" href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=H84U4ZQWG2BSN" target="_blank">Each issue takes hundreds of hours of work as we strive to make depth psychology more accessible in the world.<br /></a> <a title="Please consider a small contribution in return for accessing Depth Insights scholarly ezine" href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=H84U4ZQWG2BSN" target="_blank"><strong><span class="font-size-3">The suggested donation is $10 for this issue</span>. </strong>Click here to offer a contribution of your choice in exchange for open access</a></span></div>
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<h2><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights-scholarly-ezine/" target="_blank">CLAIM YOUR COPY of the latest issue HERE</a></span></h2>
</div></div>Touching the Soul of the World: A Mythological and Soulful View of Chaotic Times—Free Audio Downloadhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/touching-the-soul-of-the-world-a-mythological-and-soulful-view-of2017-06-29T05:00:00.000Z2017-06-29T05:00:00.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142465269,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="300" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142464887,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-right" alt="9142464887?profile=original" /></a>When there is wounding in our culture, there is wounding to the of the world. Many may be feeling “world weary” at this moment in our modern world, but this mood of despair has happened before, suggests mythologist . A distortion in the culture, whenever it occurs, weighs on everyone in the culture—but people have survived this before. has been collecting myths about the renewal of the for years, he tells them elegantly jubilantly with the use of a drum, a rare treat to watch or listen to.</p><p>“The dream of the beauty of nature in its diverse dynamic has been disrupted in so many ways. We have fallen out of the dream,” reflects, but “if we will look into darkness, we will find something there which, on the individual level, is the image of the .”</p><p>To sustain ourselves in the chaotic ways of modern life, we need a practice which allows for a re-imagination of the whole our part in it….</p><p> </p><p>Read the full summary article or get the link to listen to <a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/touching-the-soul-of-the-world-a-mythological-and-soulful-view-of-chaotic-times" target="_blank">“Touching the of the World: A Mythological View of Chaotic Times</a>” <i>from ’s Opening Keynote at the “Response at the Radical Edge: Depth Psychology for the 21st Century” Conference at Pacifica Graduate Institute, June 16, 2017</i></p><p> </p></div>Arrival: How the Feminine Saves the Worldhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/arrival-how-the-feminine-saves-the-world2017-05-15T22:07:32.000Z2017-05-15T22:07:32.000ZCarol S. Pearsonhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/CarolSPearson<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142469057,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142469057,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-full" alt="9142469057?profile=original" /></a></p><p>Life in the 21<sup>st</sup> century is challenging for all of us. We are living in a globally interdependent world, where time has accelerated, learning challenges are constant, and it is difficult to keep up with the pace of change and not feel overwhelmed. On top of that, physicists tell us that time and space are relative, which is difficult for any of us to understand when they seem so absolute. At the same time, neuroscientists are finding that our brains filter out much of what we see, organizing what is taken in through pattern recognition, which includes archetypal narratives, but also alerting us that what we, individually, take to be reality might be only partially true or not true at all. How to function when we cannot count on reality being what we thought it was? Even though much knowledge is now available to us about brain plasticity, which provides hope that we can learn to see things differently in addressing new challenges, such changes do not happen overnight.</p><p></p><p>The movie <i>Arrival</i> is an example of the 21<sup>st</sup> century thinking that potentially is available to many of us, at least in small ways. In it, a seemingly mild-mannered heroine, Louise Banks, who by day is a professor of linguistics, responds to a call that seems to require a superwoman: to help save the world. Mysterious spacecraft have landed at 12 sites around the planet. The extraterrestrials in them are heptapods, which look a bit like octopuses—that is, if the latter had one less tentacle and could stand upright. Louise is recruited by the American military to decipher the language of the aliens and enable communication with them. By ordinary standards, a linguist might be a bit player in such a situation, but instead, Louise is the one who facilitates a positive outcome to this encounter, and she does this by utilizing very feminine capacities that have morphed to meet the needs of this new time.</p><p></p><p>The movie has a very dreamlike ambiance. After news of the landings has spread, Louise is awakened by a helicopter in the middle of the night, and a U.S. Army colonel gives her ten minutes to decide whether to go with them and pack her things. As soon as they arrive at the Montana site where an elliptical spaceship hovers vertically above the ground, she is given some preventive injections, suited up to be protected against contamination, and taken to the ship, where she, her companion physicist, Ian, and an Army team ascend into a tunnel (like a birth canal or near death experience with light at the end) where there is no gravity, finally arriving in a setting with the heptapods, surrounded by mist, behind a clear, window-like wall.</p><p> </p><p>Seen symbolically, the heptapods can represent a new archetype arising from the unconscious, ready to take form in the conscious world, as they also provide a stand-in for the contemporary challenge of dealing with others in this new—and confusing—contemporary reality. In such a time, any of us might have new impulses, images, desires, or ways of viewing the world arising from the unconscious. Just as Louise’s task is to translate the primal growls and moans of the aliens, and engage with them to be able to find out their purpose in coming, eventually we also need to be able to articulate what we are sensing.</p><p> </p><p>Even as Louise has accepted the external challenge of communicating with these strange beings, she is visualizing scenes with a daughter that could be memories, future events, or her imagination, but they are undercutting her and the viewer’s sense of time. Similarly, we can learn from the waves of information coming to us from the outside and inside in our thoughts, sensations, feelings, and dream images. The gift of the heptapods for Louise is the ability to move out of linear time, and in doing so to understand the world through different lenses than before. So, too, in the world today, our task is to give voice to what is emerging in us, as we also face unexpected events and relate to people who may initially seem “other” to us.</p><p> </p><p><i>Relating to the Other:</i> It seems to be a human tendency to demonize the ”other,” and we see this now in our own time with the spread of attitudes toward immigrants that regard them as criminal types, as well as the Warrior archetype’s desire to find someone to blame for whatever has gone wrong and/or to divert attention from his own misdeads—and to punish them. In a diverse society and a global community, the ability to move past appearances to assess someone’s actual character and potential for positive collaboration is important to us all if we are not to miss out on how our own minds could be expanded and our lives enriched by learning from their strengths and gifts. Louise and Ian, the primary figures in the film, are able to put their fears aside and respond to the aliens with curiosity and empathy, just as later Louise helps the Chinese general—who had been leading the charge to vanquish the aliens he saw as invaders—to do.</p><p> </p><p><i>The Warrior Archetype Complex as Obstacle</i>: Developing interspecies communication takes time, and Louise constantly has to push back against pressure generated by a panicking population, media incendiaries, and the militaries in 12 countries, all of which assume that the thing to do is to use force against the aliens to drive them away or kill them. The combined impact of countless science fiction movies with Warrior archetype plot structures provides the default explanation for why the aliens would be here: They have come to invade our planet and destroy us, first causing us to fight amongst ourselves (as human invaders do); thus, we should annihilate them. So, in a twist on the stereotypical science fiction film, the potential threat to the success of Louise’s work is not so much the aliens as the clutch of the Warrior archetype on the attitudes and expectations of the time. It is not that the Warrior archetype is unimportant; the problem is that it has become the primary lens through which reality is perceived, creating a kind of Warrior trance that makes it difficult to see things differently—in this case, a more benign reason these strange extraterrestrial visitors have landed on earth.</p><p> </p><p><i>The Lover Archetype at Work</i>: The Lover archetype can break a Warrior trance, which is why it is utilized in peace-building, encouraging antagonists to shed their defenses, stop posturing, and show up authentically, sharing their experiences and feelings. It also assists in any human encounter with difference. In Louise’s second visit with the aliens, she is frustrated by not being able to get much response from them, and realizes that they need to see her to trust her. Her reaction is immediate and reveals how traditional elements of the Lover archetype are morphing to meet new challenges. Louise breaks the rules she has been given by taking off her protective gear, walking to the wall that stands between her and the heptapods, and pressing her hand against it. Her action is reminiscent of scenes in other films where disrobing moves characters to a new level of intimacy or where we see a woman visiting someone she loves in prison, whom she cannot touch directly, who then meets her hand through a glass wall.</p><p> </p><p>The heptapods cannot meet Louise’s hand in quite this way since they do not have hands and are so much larger than her; but a tentacle stretches out to match her gesture and a sense of trust and connection is established. Louise, who seems to have slipped into a trance state for a moment, sighs with relief, saying, “Now, that is an introduction.”</p><p><i> </i></p><p><i>Learning from Interconnectivity:</i> There is so much in our society that separates the private realm from work and public life, but within our minds, thoughts and feelings about all of these, as well as memories of the past and imagined events in our future, are constantly going on. Most of us try to stay present to one or the other by shutting off everything else. Louise is dealing with so much internal turmoil that she cannot do this, even though she continues to work effectively: Her mind is being reprogrammed by learning the alien language, so she can see the future, or at least one of many potential futures. Her experiences demonstrate the power of the Jungian concept of synchronicity (meaningful coincidences). The clues that Louise gains from her visions of her daughter provide her with information she needs to decode what the heptapods are saying. At the same time, she also is feeling overcome with love for this child. All this requires her to take multi-tasking in mental processing to a new level.</p><p> </p><p>Louise embodies the Magician archetype’s ability to transform situations through expanding consciousness, so that everything that is going on simultaneously, aligned through the catalyst of love, turns her into the person who can deal with it all. As also occurs in the recent film <i>Interstellar</i>, a parent’s powerful love for a child energizes the Lover archetype, which, in turn, helps make the unimaginable happen. You may have observed a similar transformation in someone (maybe you) who is fielding a demanding career with an intense learning curve along with some kind of intense personal crisis and is transformed by intense feelings of love, with the result that she or he becomes a more complex and mature human being.</p><p> </p><p><i>Entering the Unknown and the Known with Courage and Openness:</i> The complexities we face in the second decade of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, when everything is influencing everything else, make it nearly impossible to predict the future with any degree of certainty. However, we can recognize some very definite patterns. For example, we know from scientists about the likely progression of climate change. Some people today are so scared by this that they simply have to deny that it could be true. Others of us can break through this denial by tapping into our love of nature and the planet that is our home. That can energize us to get active to do what we can to slow down and perhaps eventually prevent further environmental damage.</p><p> </p><p>In our personal lives, we all know that eventually we will die, and that, when we love someone or something, we may lose them. So, the question is: Do we choose to say yes to love or not? One choice would be to hold back from commitment, while another is to live fully into the time available to us. Spoiler alert: In her personal life, Louise commits wholeheartedly to a “yes” even when she feels sure, based on her visions, that her daughter will die young and that Ian will leave her.</p><p> </p><p>Near the end of the movie, Louise must answer an essential question facing all of us today, in so many areas of our lives: If we could know what is likely to happen in the future, would we take action to change it? And, however complex what confronts us today—known and unknown—might be, can we face it whole-heartedly with love and an openness to transforming and being transformed?</p><p> </p><p>Applications:</p><p> </p><p>Think of anything in your life right now that feels confusing or even scary. Then:</p><ul><li>Note that fear generates adrenaline and the “fight/flight” response, but love can channel this into “tend and befriend.” To trigger this effect, imagine with gratitude who and what you love.</li></ul><ul><li>Use curiosity and empathy to understand the person or situation you are dealing with, and consider what you might do to check the accuracy of what you have imagined.</li></ul><ul><li>Finally, when you have thoughts chaotically moving through your mind, don’t panic. Instead, think of this as a gift. Then breathe deeply and slowly for a bit to allow these thoughts to realign, and notice whether you suddenly have an insight that helps you know what to do next or simply to feel differently about things.</li></ul></div>Dreams, Births, and Ghosts . . .https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/dreams-births-and-ghosts2017-04-13T12:20:56.000Z2017-04-13T12:20:56.000ZPaul DeBlassie IIIhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/PaulDeBlassieIII<div><p><strong>Dream images of having a child, a newborn, are familiar within depth psychotherapy. Also, symbols of haunting spirits, poltergeist, come at a certain point. We either do inner work and birth new developments and potential, or we suffer from haunting in the inner world and outer reality, archetypal energy turned dark and destructive.</strong></p><p><strong>When we hold back, don't permit ourselves to experience new things, we thwart our growth potential. It is best to live in the conscious world with full confidence. Then, at night, our dreams help to keep us in balance. </strong></p><p><strong>"Doctor, I dreamed of a ghost haunting me. Then I got up and swore I saw flickers of the same presence out of the corner of my eye. Going into the bathroom, I noticed the rug along the floor was wrong side up. I went back to my bedroom, and the pillows were tossed on the floor."</strong></p><p><strong>He looked at me wide-eyed and continued, "Strange thing was I dreamt it all. When I got up, saw the flickers in my bedroom, went to the bathroom and then back to my room, shocked at what I saw, I'd been dreaming the whole time. I was haunted in my dream so I wouldn't be haunted in waking life. It's happened before, and I know it could happen again.</strong></p><p><strong>We explored the presence of the ghost in the dream within a dream. He admitted to emotionally "clutching up," holding back out of fear in his professional life. He needed to take a risk, be more expansive. Dreams may have been those of having a newborn to care for, tending to the creative dimension of his psyche. To pull energy inward, without purpose or reason, was dangerous. It became a haunting in his dreams that could have turned into a haunting in his daily life.</strong></p><p><strong>Ghostly dreams and synchronous meetings of inner and outer energy happen when we need to pay attention, and when it comes to spiritual haunting in dreams it's best to listen, so they don't become outward problems, mischief making from the unseen world of creative energy gone south. Ghosts are unseen potentials calling for attention, tending, nurturing so that our life might flourish. </strong></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142450484,original{{/staticFileLink}}">http://www.drpauldeblassieiii.com/soulcare/2017/4/6/dreams-births-and-ghosts-<img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142450484,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="640" class="align-full" alt="9142450484?profile=original" /></a></p></div>"Soul-centered Action: A Call to the Collective Belief in the Possible Human and the Possible World"—An Interview with Dr. Jean Houstonhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/soul-centered-action-a-call-to-the-collective-belief-in-the-possi2017-02-22T23:30:00.000Z2017-02-22T23:30:00.000ZDepth Alliancehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/DepthAlliance<div><p><span style="color:#333399;">In this latest interview from Depth Alliance founder, Bonnie Bright, PhD, Dr. Jean Houston makes a passionate call for us to each "elect ourselves" and to "become party to all our parts." There couldn't be a more compelling and poignant call at this critical time in our world....</span></p>
<p></p>
<p>Jean Houston is almost legendary in popular culture for her passionate engagement, poetic rhetoric, and her poignant appeal for transformation and belief in what she calls “the possible human,” also the title of one her nearly 30 books.</p>
<p>One of her many current projects is the collaboration and production of a play which will be previewed at Pacifica Graduate Institute on March 4. “<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tonight-in-dreamland-tickets-31617462682" target="_blank"><strong>Tonight in Dreamland</strong></a>,” a “serious comedy” as Houston refers to it, was written with Cheri Steinkellner, an award-winning writer and producer of a multitude of plays and TV shows (including the hit series, Cheers), and who is also currently a student in the <a href="http://www.pacifica.edu/degree-programs/ma-engaged-humanities-creative-life?__hstc=202165006.961ccdd51979e49241af7cf44fa9b2f9.1453409437851.1487586688214.1487806739203.43&__hssc=202165006.1.1487806739203&__hsfp=3329636758" target="_blank"><strong>Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life</strong></a> program at Pacifica.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/houston_rally.jpg?t=1487805406511&width=320&name=houston_rally.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/houston_rally.jpg?t=1487805406511&name=houston_rally.jpg&width=320" width="320" class="align-left" alt="houston_rally.jpg?t=1487805406511&name=houston_rally.jpg&width=320" /></a>Having just returned from the “Sister Giant” conference in Washington D.C., where presented alongside Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson, Thom Hartmann, and Robert Thurman (among others), Houston’s passions were clearly stirred when she sat down to speak with me.</p>
<p>That conference, also streamed live around the world, explored the intersection of spirituality and politics—a befitting arena for Houston’s long track record of advocating and fostering leadership and personal and social transformation. We are powerfully connected, she asserts, because we don’t just live in the universe; the universe also lives in us. We are called now, more than ever before, to use the incredible powers that exist in us, tapping into powers that we have rarely collectively been required to use... (<a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/soul-centered-action-jean-houston" target="_blank">Read the full post or access the audio interview</a>)</p></div>"The Power of Metaphor to Unlock Creative Genius" -- Women in Depth Podcasthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-power-of-metaphor-to-unlock-creative-genius-women-in-depth2017-02-19T00:13:27.000Z2017-02-19T00:13:27.000ZKim Hermanson, Ph.D.https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/KimHermansonPhD<div><p>On <strong>Inauguration Day</strong> in the US, I was interviewed on the <a href="http://lourdesviado.com/29-the-power-of-metaphor-to-unlock-creativity-and-inspire-breakthroughs-with-kim-hermanson-phd/"><strong>Women in Depth</strong> <strong>podcast</strong></a>. It was deeply symbolic for me, because intense feminine energies that have been underground for centuries have been showing up in full force in Doorway sessions these past few months. There's a whole other realm that urgently wishes to be known by us. </p><p></p><p><strong>You can listen or download the podcast here: </strong></p><p><strong><a href="http://lourdesviado.com/29-the-power-of-metaphor-to-unlock-creativity-and-inspire-breakthroughs-with-kim-hermanson-phd/">http://lourdesviado.com/29-the-power-of-metaphor-to-unlock-creativity-and-inspire-breakthroughs-with-kim-hermanson-phd/</a></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>I</strong><strong>N·AU·GU·RA·TION (iˌnôɡ(y)əˈrāSH(ə)n) noun</strong></p><p><strong>1. the beginning or introduction of a system, policy, or period.</strong><br /> <strong>2. a ceremony to mark the beginning of something</strong></p><p></p><p>The Feminine has been inaugurated.</p><p></p></div>Following on from the "Depth Psychology & the Digital Age" webinar December 3rdhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/following-on-from-the-depthinsights-event-webinar-december-3rd2016-12-08T00:30:00.000Z2016-12-08T00:30:00.000ZMaree Brogdenhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/MareeBrogden<div><p>“Firstly, thank you to the mediator and the panel guests for providing the event as an open event for new-comers to attend, and as a 'free' event! It was very worthwhile of the time spent to attend this, albeit a Sunday morning in New Zealand.</p><p>For this posting, please accept my response to Panel member, Steve Wood [PhD], who wrote “Going Somewhere: implications of electronically inflated psychological acceleration”.</p><p>For the blog, my notes that followed Steve Wood's conversation, include the following:</p><p>To recap: Our response to the speed of the ‘technological world’ is to recognise that there is an increasingly growing unconsciousness that is related to the sophisticated functions of technology; in human consciousness, this becomes almost as for 'an extension of the body, that is, the computational device is observed as an extension of the body', but it's operation is not always in the awareness of the conscious mind. <br /> What is outside of an individual's awareness, or what is not known by 'the average consumer’ about technology/these systems, appears as a function outside of the conscious existential day-to-day life or what is possible for conscious-life. Consequently there is a blurring of the actuality of the lived and electronic worlds, and the worlds of truth and falsehood.</p><p>My ponder-ful response regards the interface of Self and Technology, and is related to the entity of technology and the human-being complex as separate. Recognition that the complex Body-Mind knows inter-subjectively, is also to know something of collective unconsciousness, as we become increasingly aware that there is self and other, or other entities that are not our self. Knowing this can provide the distance or separation necessary for us to begin to make sense of what we need to understand, and/or know about an other, with more depth.</p><p>The externalised self is a part of the collective being-in-the-world, which appears differently as we integrate newness as change, and acknowledge our ability to make sense of Self and otherness. The role of the implicit mind is signified necessarily, to reiterate events and knowledge with authenticity and truth.</p><p>Consequently, my lifeworld that has also a counterpart virtual lifeworld, questions the following with interest:</p><p>‘How much phantasy do we realise and integrate as a deliberate story-telling?</p><p>How does phantasy contribute to making sense, when learning anew is for the development of knowledge?</p><p>How we can teach/learn other ways/methodologies, to seek and make connections where reference to the implicit-knowing of self, provides explicitly, a sense of the otherness that we need to know as 'an other'.</p><p>How we do this may elucidate further consciousness regarding the process/es required to extend the existing senses, selves, and knowledge of rapidly changing ways-of-being, in a world that exclusively integrates modern technology. </p><p>Please accept my few words as a response to the essay/conversation presented online. I have a response to the others if there is interest, acknowledging that I have only just purchased the book, and look forward to reading this too”.</p><p>Maree Brogden MA, PGcert MindBody Health Sciences <br /> New Zealand</p></div>Depth Psychology and the Digital Age:https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/depth-psychology-and-the-digital-age2016-11-11T00:30:00.000Z2016-11-11T00:30:00.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><a href="http://www.depthinsights.com/books/Depth-Psychology-and-the-Digital-Age.html" target="_blank"><img width="250" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142459701,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" height="332" alt="9142459701?profile=original" /></a></div><div class="_1mf _1mj"></div><div class="_1mf _1mj">For one of the founders of modern depth psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, who was born in 1875 and died in 1961, the “digital age” was not conceivable, but even more than half a century ago, Jung had significant concerns about the challenges of a growing mind/matter split and the excessive focus of western cultures in particular on science, technology, and rational thinking.</div></div><div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span> </span></div></div><div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span>Jung believed this trend toward “modernity” emerged at the expense of more soulful, reflective, poetic ways of being and issued a strong caution against our increasing reliance on machines and technology. He warned of severe consequences that might ultimately propel our civilization toward collapse, unless modernity could be adequately acknowledged and dealt with from a psychological view.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><p>If you Google “the digital age,” you’ll discover it is rather broadly defined as “the present time”—when most information is available in digital form, as compared to the era before the rise of computers in the 1970s. </p><p>Depth psychology is the study of the soul, first and foremost associated with uncovering and exploring the unconscious. The Greek word <span><i>psyche</i></span> means “butterfly,” as one of the key founders of depth psychology, C. G. Jung, pointed out in <span><i>Modern Man in Search of Soul</i></span>. The word is also linked to the Greek <span><i>aiolos</i></span>, meaning “mobile, colored, or iridescent,” and to the Greek <span><i>anemos</i></span>, meaning “wind” or “breath,” as well as “soul” and “spirit”—all concepts that appear distinctly unrelated to technology.</p><p>Your Google search for “the digital age” will return a multitude of opinions on the pros and cons, with some contending the digital age is “good” because browsing the Internet stimulates our minds, and video games are teaching us new skills. However, if you entertain the notion that there are a multitude of detrimental side effects and disorders initiated by the digital age—illustrated by creative new terms such as “cyberchondriacs” (those who self-diagnose medical symptoms online), and “Facebook Addiction Disorder,” —and if you experience moderate concern, as many of us do, that as a digital culture we are becoming hooked on the web; that we are ruder, less empathetic and we procrastinate more; that our memory is deteriorating; and that we are developing increased anxiety about “missing out” because of the rash of information on social media—you might quickly see the benefit of looking at the digital age from a depth psychological perspective to begin to understand the archetypal aspects at work in our individual and collective lives.</p><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142460076,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-full" alt="9142460076?profile=original" /><br /><p>In his seminal work, <span><i>The Discovery of the Unconscious</i></span>, Swiss medical historian, Henri Ellenberger (1905-1993), suggested that an exploration of the unconscious might offer a “renewed knowledge of the conscious mind, with a wider application to the understanding of literature, art, religion and culture.” Ellenberger didn’t make mention of the study of the unconscious to better understand technology specifically, but it is clear from his writings that even C. G. Jung himself believed depth psychology might shed light on a multitude of topics, including modernity and all its challenges.</p><p>The debate about the digital age is every bit as alive in depth psychological discussions as it is in the collective forum today. Technology is the magic of the modern world and plays a key role in our relationship to earth, writes depth psychologist Robert Romanyshyn in his timeless book, <span><i>Technology as Symptom and Dream</i></span>. Romanyshyn refers to technology in conjunction with the <span><i>imagination</i></span> of earth. In a still, quiet place like an African Sahara, he asserts, one “can still imagine technology as a vocation as the earth’s call to become its agent and instrument of awakening.” But technology can be both a danger and an opportunity, becoming a threat when it is too literal—when imagination falters.</p></div></div><div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span>The authors in the new anthology, <em>Depth Psychology and the Digital Age</em>, proffer a chance to redeem ourselves, to re-invent our relationship to the digital age and re-infuse these sacred tools with meaning and soul.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj"></div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><span> </span></div></div></div></div><div><div class="_1mf _1mj"><strong><span><a href="http://www.depthinsights.com/books/Depth-Psychology-and-the-Digital-Age.html" target="_blank">Learn more/Download the Editor's Introduction to "Depth Psychology and the Digital Age</a> free.</span></strong></div></div></div>Working with the Ancestors: A Jungian Perspective—A Conversation with Sandra Easter, Ph.D.https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/working-with-the-ancestors-a-jungian-perspective-a-conversation-w2016-09-30T07:30:00.000Z2016-09-30T07:30:00.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><div class="section post-header"></div><div class="section post-body"><p><span class="font-size-2" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/family_photos.jpg?t=1475105168568&width=320&name=family_photos.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/family_photos.jpg?t=1475105168568&name=family_photos.jpg&width=320" width="320" class="align-right" alt="family_photos.jpg?t=1475105168568&name=family_photos.jpg&width=320" /></a>For Sandra Easter, author of <a href="https://www.pacificabookstore.com/jung-and-ancestors-beyond-biography-mending-ancestral-web" target="_blank"><strong><em>Jung and the Ancestors: Beyond Biography, Mending the Ancestral Web</em></strong></a>, her journey toward ancestral healing has been filled with synchronicities. Growing up, Sandra always heard from her mother that they were descended from Roger Williams, a man who is credited with founding Providence, Rhode Island, in 1636. Synchronistically, the very same day Sandra’s own daughter decided she wanted to write a school report on this alleged ancestor, Sandra received a document which surprised her by actually confirming direct ancestry on her mother’s side from Roger Williams.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-2" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Easter also discovered a synchronicity related to the date of her own birthday, which coincides with the date Providence was burned to the ground in 1676 by descendants of the Native Americans of the Narragansett tribe from whom Williams originally secured the title for Providence.<sup>1</sup> Ironically, Sandra also learned that Roger Williams had earlier been banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by a man named John Cotton, who was discovered to be the direct ancestor of Sandra’s ex-husband. The synchronicities continued as Sandra realized that Roger Williams and John Cotton had actually met historically on the date on which she and her (now ex-)husband decided to get married.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-2" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/family_tree.jpg?t=1475105168568&width=320&name=family_tree.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.pacificapost.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_post_images/family_tree.jpg?t=1475105168568&name=family_tree.jpg&width=320" width="320" class="align-left" alt="family_tree.jpg?t=1475105168568&name=family_tree.jpg&width=320" /></a>These kinds of synchronicities often show up when people began researching their own ancestry, Easter notes. Anne Schutzenberger, a Freudian analyst, calls it “the anniversary syndrome,”<sup>2</sup> where it often emerges that dates of significant events in an individual’s life, such as births, deaths or other important dates synchronistically coincide with dates of significant ancestral events, often related to trauma or pivotal moments in the life of the ancestor.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-2" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">C. G. Jung offers a strong perspective on working with our ancestors, Easter believes, particularly through his work in the Red Book which suggests “the dead” can have a significant effect on us. Jung himself looked at his life as being a “historical fragment” in a much larger story, Easter affirms, noting that, according to Jung, each of us “adds an infinitesimal amount to what he would consider to be the evolution of consciousness.”</span></p><p><span class="font-size-2" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The story Sandra was lucky enough to uncover about her own ancestor is merely ... (<a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/working-with-the-ancestors-a-jungian-perspective-sandra-easter" target="_blank">READ the full post or listen to the interview here</a>)</span></p></div></div>Resurrecting the Dead: A Reflection on Technologyhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/resurrecting-the-dead-a-reflection-on-technology2016-09-04T21:06:21.000Z2016-09-04T21:06:21.000ZRobert Romanyshynhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/RobertRomanyshyn587<div><p> For many years now I have been intrigued with Mary Shelley’s story, <i>Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.</i> In many ways her story is a prophecy of themes that characterize our technological world-view. In the book that I am now writing, <i>The Frankenstein Prophecies: The Untold Story,</i> I explore seven of those prophecies. The triumph over death, which is the dream of Victor Frankenstein, is the central theme.</p><p></p><p>That theme lingers today in films that are our collective dreams. Jurassic Park is a good example. In that film and its sequels <b>dead creatures are recreated from their genetic codes.</b> But they are destructive monsters. So too is the creature that is made by Victor Frankenstein.</p><p></p><p>Is Mary Shelley’s story a warning about becoming a God who would create life?</p><p></p><p>Does Jurassic Park and it sequels allude to the same warning?</p><p> </p><p>Are the resurrected monsters that were meant to be the attraction in a theme park, a kind of Disneyland run amok, the modern form of Frankenstein’s monster?</p><p> </p><p>In Mary Shelley’s story Victor Frankenstein abandons his creature and refuses to take responsibility for his actions. Abandoned, cursed as demon and devil, the monster is marginalized. Her story lives on as told only from Victor’s point of view</p><p> </p><p>What might be learned if drawing near to the margins we listen to his side of the story?</p><p> </p><p>Might we be faced with the unsettling question; Who is the Monster?</p></div>Archetypal Reflections: Dr. Keiron Le Grice on Jungian and Depth Psychologieshttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/archetypal-reflections-dr-keiron-le-grice-on-jungian-and-depth-ps2016-07-23T00:30:00.000Z2016-07-23T00:30:00.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><h2><span style="font-size:13px;">Archetypal Reflections: Dr. Keiron Le Grice on Jungian and Depth Psychologies</span></h2><p><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/archetypal-reflections-dr.-keiron-le-grice-on-jungian-and-depth-psychologies" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142459673,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-full" alt="9142459673?profile=original" /></a>C.G. Jung contended that our personalities are made up of a multitude of archetypes, Dr. Keiron Le Grice, Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, reminded me when he recently sat down with me to share his insights into the field of depth psychology. Each archetype asserts its own aims, moods, and ideas on our personalities, influencing our lives on a day-to-day basis. Jungian and depth psychologies, by aiming to make what is unconscious conscious, offer an entrance point into recognizing and understanding the various deep forces that move through us from one day to the next, engendering a deep comprehension of the psyche and the motivations, instincts, and impulses that are at work in our lives.</p><p>Individuation, a term coined by Jung, is a way that we can come to terms with this multiplicity of forces, and to attune to a greater organizing force, perhaps looked at as “the god within.” An archetypal view can enable us to find deep meaning in life, Keiron notes. We live in a time when we no longer have a religious, spiritual, or mythological framework to provide orientation in our lives. To be able to turn within, through the study of dreams and synchronicities that occur to us, through direct engagement with the unconscious and through spiritual experiences, we can begin to find our own personal sense of meaning. When we encounter the <em>numinous</em>, (a term coined by Rudolf Otto and adopted by Jung), that tremendous and fascinating mystery that underlies our experience can ground us in our own spiritual and moral autonomies. We need to each find our own individual myth at a time when the collective myths are rendered invalid by the dominant scientific rational perspective in the western worldview.</p><p>Keiron became interested in spirituality in his late teens, particularly dedicating himself to learning astrology (which led him to Jung’s writings), then studying philosophy and psychology at university in England. Disappointed at how mainstream academia bypassed Jungian ideas, Keiron read most of Jung’s <em>Collected Works</em> in his spare time, and pursued the work of Joseph Campbell after seeing him interviewed by Bill Moyers for <em>The Power of Myth</em>. He found himself most impressed with Jung’s <em>Two Essays on Analytical Psychology</em>, written in the 1920s, which focused on the role of archetypes in individuation, and described how these ideas really gripped him. He felt like he was tapping into a deep current in his life, he declares. In his late twenties, his interests in astrology, Jung, and Campbell evolved into a book, <em>The Archetypal Cosmos</em>, which was ultimately published in 2010.</p><p>For people who are predisposed to find their way in this field, there’s a “right time,” Keiron maintains. For him, discovering depth psychology so early in his life was perhaps something of an impediment to participating in the world because when one is powerfully drawn to the depths of the psyche, it can have a tendency to pull us away from the world, a concept even Jung made note of in his many writings. After having some profound spiritual experiences in his late teens and early twenties, Keiron reveals how he made a conscious decision to put some of it aside for a while and “build his ego” in Jungian terms. He believes, however, that his early exposure was helpful, providing a strong foundation as he took time to integrate and really discern which ideas were relevant and valuable to him and which were not.</p><p>Now, years later, as professor and chair of a Jungian and Archetypal studies program, Keiron is keenly aware that the “gifts” of Jungian and depth psychology are that they empower the individual to find a spiritual, mythic, or symbolic mode of being in the world, which, in his words, can counter a sense of existential meaningless which is so prevalent today. It may well be the responsibility of depth psychology practitioners to bring awareness and recognition around the dark side of the unconscious energies that have not been brought into conscious awareness and which manifest in destructive ways, he asserts.</p><p>In the Gospel of Thomas, Keiron points out, it says that if you “bring forth what is deep within you, it will save you, but if you do not bring that forth, what is within you will destroy you.” Some of that unconscious destructive energy seems to be surfacing in our time, so the more we can be aware of it, the more we can engage to mitigate it. We need to be able to channel the forces at work in the world constructively, in service of the deep psyche. The challenge of our time for those in depth psychology is to be able to communicate the tenets to a new audience, Keiron believes, to somehow convey the integrity of the ideas through a new medium in a way that they are not rendered superficial. It’s critical to connect people and bring them into community into a web, akin to the <em>noosphere</em> discussed in the writings of French philosopher and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).<a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/archetypal-reflections-dr.-keiron-le-grice-on-jungian-and-depth-psychologies#_edn1">[i]</a> </p><p><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/archetypal-reflections-dr.-keiron-le-grice-on-jungian-and-depth-psychologies" target="_blank"><strong>READ THE FULL POST</strong> & <strong>LISTEN TO THE AUDIO INTERVIEW</strong> AT PACIFICAPOST.COM HERE</a></p><h2><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/archetypal-reflections-dr.-keiron-le-grice-on-jungian-and-depth-psychologies"> </a></h2></div>Remembering Skyehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/remembering-skye2016-06-23T18:00:00.000Z2016-06-23T18:00:00.000ZRussell Lockhart, Ph.D.https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/RussellLockhartPhD<div>[Note. I often have voice dreams without any accompanying imagery. They can be complex, with multiple voices, or simple and short. The tenor of the voice is often “commanding” and I take these to be “tasks.” Many of my publications have had their origins in such voice dreams. A recent one was: “Remember Skye.” What follows is what stands out in my memory.]In the summer of 1992, I was invited to represent the United States at the 12th Dunvegan Castle Arts Festival in Scotland. The patron of the festival was Yehudi Menuhin, long-time friend of clan chief John MacLeod of MacLeod, the host of the festival held on the Isle of Skye in the 800-year old ancestral home of the MacLeod clan. The festival took place over a two-week period, featuring poets, story tellers, pipers, singers and lecturers.The previous year’s US representative was Helen Vendler, then Keenan Professor of English at Harvard University (the first woman to achieve a senior professorship there) and poetry critic of the New Yorker. Her lectures had been on “The Structure of Poetry” and “Three Shakespeare Sonnets.” Pretty big footsteps to follow! I had been asked, as well, to speak on poetry. I am not a poet, but I have strong feelings about the necessity and value of poetry. The titles of my lectures were “Writing from the Inside of the Inside,” and “The Cost of Poetry and the Price of Its Loss.” It took all the courage I could muster not to prepare formal lectures, but to have faith that I could speak from some deep well in me that values poetry and why it matters. To this day, these two talks remain my personal favorites. Both talks were extemporaneous and no recordings were made, so the lectures exist only as memories now.I wasn’t the only Jungian analyst at the festival. John had also invited his friend Bani Shorter, an American living and working in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is known for her work on the Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis with Andrew Samuels and Alfred Plaut, as well as her book, An Image Darkly Forming: Women and Initiation. Her talk at the festival was titled “The Thread of the Story: The Fairy Flag.” Click here to read the full post:<p><a href="http://ralockhart.com/WP">http://ralockhart.com/WP</a></p></div>Islam and Peacehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/islam-and-peace-a-case-study-of-the-scapegoat-archetype2016-06-16T23:00:00.000Z2016-06-16T23:00:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-5"><b>Islam and Peace</b></span></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462081,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462081,original{{/staticFileLink}}" height="325" width="492" alt="9142462081?profile=original" /></a><i><br /></i> <i>"Even though you are of the earth in form, still, you are the fine<br /> spiritual thread made of the very substance of Certainty. <br /></i></p>
<p><i>You are the trusted guardian of the treasury of the Light of God.<br /> Come, at last, to the Source of the source of your own self! <br /></i></p>
<p><i>Know that when you have bound yourself to selflessness, you will<br /> escape from attachment to self-ness [ego]. <br /></i></p>
<p><i>And then you will leap away from the bonds of a thousand traps.<br /> Come, at last, to the Source of the source of your own self! <br /> ~~ Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (N.D.)<br /> <br /></i></p>
<p><b>These words of the great Islamic Persian poet Rumi are but one of countless examples</b> of the beauty that has sprung from Islamic culture. Unfortunately, we do not often hear Rumi’s words on the evening news, nor the words of Hafiz, Saadi, or other great Islamic poets. We hardly if ever hear of Sufis on the evening news at all, or of the countless Muslim mothers and fathers who worry over the well-being of their children, and of their own fates. We hear often of “Islamic” terrorists, but we seldom hear that by far most of those who die at the hands of terrorists are themselves Muslims. Nor do we hear about the countless threats that Islamophobia and bigotry visit upon innocent American Muslims every day.<br /> <br /> I had planned to post a different, more intellectual blog this week, but the events in Orlando have given me pause. Once again, people who know essentially nothing of substance about Islam or Muslims take to the airwaves and are given a platform upon which to voice their ignorance. Meanwhile friends and families grieve, politicians argue, and the talking heads offer explanations.<br /> <br /> It is certainly not my intention to idealize Islam or Muslims, anymore than I wish to idealize Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, or the members of any other faith group. I do not wish to see any of them demonized, either. Given that I teach courses on Islam and other world religions, I have more background and ready information on a number of related topics than most. For this reason I'm making myself available to answer questions about Islam, Islamophobia, and related issues and for general discussion.<br /> <br /> If you have questions about Islam, or would like to learn more, and are interested in an informed discussion of these topics, I hope you will join me on Saturday, June 18, 2015 at 1:00pm PDT (4:00pm EDT). I will be hosting a free, live community conversation/webcast for the Depth Psychology Alliance during which listeners will participate as we discuss Islam, and <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/islamophobia-in-america" target="_blank">Islamophobia in America</a> and Depth Psychology. If you have questions about Islam or Islamophobia, or would like to join in constructive conversation on these issues, please join us – and please forward this post to your favorite social media outlets and to interested friends!</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/islamophobia-in-america" target="_blank">Click here to register for this free event</a></p>
<p align="center"></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462285,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="500" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462285,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9142462285?profile=original" /></a><b><u>______________________________</u></b><b><br /> James Newell, Ph.D.</b> is an educator, coach/counselor, performing songwriter, and board member of the Depth Psychology Alliance. James earned his doctorate in History of Religions from Vanderbilt University and teaches courses in world religions for Central Michigan University’s Global Campus as well as courses in Islam for Excelsior State College, Thomas Edison State University, and American Public University. James also holds a master’s degree in counseling and theology from the Vanderbilt Divinity School. James’ counseling orientation is Jungian, and his goal is to educate and empower others to do their own depth work, individually and collectively. James continues to pursue his own artistic passion through music, having begun his musical career as a teenager working with such legendary musicians as John Lee Hooker, James Cotton, Jr. Wells, Big Joe Turner, and others.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.SymolsofTransformation.com" target="_blank">www.SymolsofTransformation.com</a><br /> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/</a><br /> <a href="http://www.JamesRNewell.com" target="_blank">www.JamesRNewell.com<br /></a> <br /> <b>Works Cited<br /> <br /></b></p>
<p>Rumi (N.D.) Ghazal 120. Dar-Al-Masnavi. Retrieved from: <a href="http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/gh-0120.html" target="_blank">http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/gh-0120.html</a></p>
<p> <br /> <img width="500" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142462664,original{{/staticFileLink}}" height="323" alt="9142462664?profile=original" /></p>
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<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142456663,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="400" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142456663,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9142456663?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/islamophobia-in-america" target="_blank">GET DETAILS AND ACCESS INFO FOR THIS SPECIAL EVENT 6/18 HERE</a></strong></p>
<p> </p></div>Islamophobia in America: A Case Study of the Scapegoat Archetypehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/islamophobia-in-america-a-case-study-of-the-scapegoat-archetype2016-05-28T21:30:00.000Z2016-05-28T21:30:00.000ZJames R. Newellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/JamesRNewell<div><p align="center"><span class="font-size-5"><b>Islamophobia in America: A Case Study</b></span></p>
<p align="center"><b><span class="font-size-5">of the Scapegoat Archetype </span><br /> <br /></b></p>
<p align="center"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/islamophobia-in-america"><img width="600" class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142456262,original{{/staticFileLink}}" height="300" alt="9142456262?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p><i>"A majority may not impose its religious values on others, nor limit minority religious rights. The fact that a majority of Americans do not share the beliefs of a minority faith does not make those beliefs and practices any less protected. Unless all Americans are assured of religious freedom, the freedom of all Americans is in question...Good citizenship includes the civic duty to uphold religious freedom for all. Religious liberty rights are best guarded when each person and group takes responsibility to guard not only their own rights but the rights of others, including those with whom they deeply disagree. This respect for the rights of others is not indifference to theological or moral disagreement, but rather a civic virtue necessary to maintain peace in a religiously diverse society"</i> <a href="http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/madison/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/FAC_American_Muslims_Q_A.pdf" target="_blank">Interfaith Alliance</a> (2012)</p>
<p><b>The American response to unknown people, religions, and cultures has been sadly predictable over the centuries.</b> Rituals of fear, mistrust, and prejudice have been enacted repeatedly on the American continent since before there was a United States. Catholics, Jews, Irish, Italians, Africans, Native Americans and others have all been on the receiving end of shadow projections and scapegoating at one time or another in our history. The contemporary crisis in the American Muslim community is the most recent appearance of this phenomenon. From a Jungian perspective, scapegoating can be seen as a combination of both an aspect of shadow projection and an expression of the archetype of sacrifice. Scapegoating and shadow projection become particularly problematic when they are politicized and used as techniques for constellating and activating a desired constituency. <br /> <br /> A key tenet of liberty in the United States has always been the right to religious freedom. And yet, in recent times this basic right has been brought into question by those who fear a religion which they do not understand. This climate of fear and prejudice directed towards Muslims has increased alarmingly since the beginning of the US presidential primary season (Haynes, 2016). According to a research report recently published by the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University,</p>
<p>"Since the first candidate announced his bid for the White House in March 2015, there have been approximately <b>180 reported incidents</b> of anti-Muslim violence, including: 12 murders; 34 physical assaults; 49 verbal assaults or threats against persons and institutions; 56 acts of vandalisms or destruction of property; 9 arsons; and 8 shootings or bombings, among other incidents" (Abdelkader, 2016, p. 5).</p>
<p>Such incidents of violence against American Muslims increased in September 2015 during the early stages of the Syrian refugee crisis, which was</p>
<p>"…accompanied by approximately <b>10 reported incidents or threats of violence</b>, including 3 murders. In comparison, there was one (1) such incident in August 2015 representing a <b>significant increase in anti-Muslim violence</b> over the course of one month" (Abdelkader, 2016, p. 6).</p>
<p>Subsequent to the uptick in candidate rhetoric against Muslims in response to the Paris bombings and the San Bernardino shootings, violence against American Muslims once again increased. During December, 2015 there were</p>
<p class="Pa2">"…<b>53 total attacks that month</b>, 17 of which targeted mosques and Islamic schools and 5 of which targeted Muslim homes. By comparison, when the presidential election season began just 9 months earlier, there were only 2 anti-Muslim attacks. Attacks on Muslims during this month <b>constitute approximately 1/3 of all attacks</b> last year. In fact, in December 2015, anti-Muslim attacks occurred almost <b>daily</b> and often <b>multiple times a Day</b>" (Abdelkader, 2016, p. 7).<br /> <br /> It seems that Islam has been so widely misunderstood in popular American culture that, for many, fear and hostility seem to be the only practical response. As a university educator who daily teaches courses in Islam and world religions, I encounter fears and misunderstandings of this type (though only rarely open hostility) on a regular basis. Even interested, well-intentioned individuals often demonstrate an implicit, sometimes unconscious bias against Islam and Muslims. This seems to occur for two main reasons: one, a general lack of accurate knowledge about the religion of Islam, and, two, a consistent tendency on the part of media, political leaders, and others, to inaccurately ascribe religious motivations to violent, terrorist acts. The one (inaccurate knowledge about the religion of Islam) seems to feed the other (a tendency to ascribe religious motivations to acts of terrorism). An accurate understanding of a religion like Islam, a religion that was born and has developed in a culture very different from our own, requires patience and a willingness to learn. Neither of these qualities is typically found in abundance in contemporary American culture. <br /> <br /> Just to clarify, no mainstream Muslim understands terrorist or extremist violence as being religiously justifiable under Islam. Quite the opposite. Terrorists who are motivated by social and political pressures attempt to wrest from Islamic scriptures religious justifications for their hateful acts, but in every case the Quran speaks against such actions. Below are some statements issued by the Fiqh Council of North America (an Islamic juristic body) to clarify the Islamic stand against terrorism:</p>
<p class="Pa2">"Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives. There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism" (<a href="http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/madison/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/FAC_American_Muslims_Q_A.pdf" target="_blank">Interfaith Alliance</a>, 2012, p. 6).</p>
<p>“[1] All acts of terrorism, including those targeting the life and property of civilians, whether perpetrated by suicidal or any other form of attacks, are haram (forbidden) in Islam.</p>
<p>[2] It is haram (forbidden) for a Muslim to cooperate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or prohibited violence.</p>
<p>[3] It is the civic and religious duty of Muslims to undertake full measures to protect the lives of all civilians, and ensure the security and well-being of fellow citizens" (<a href="http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/madison/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/FAC_American_Muslims_Q_A.pdf" target="_blank">Interfaith Alliance</a>, 2012, p. 6).</p>
<p><strong>If you find the topics explored here of interest to you</strong>, I hope you will join me on Saturday, June 18, 2015 at 1:00pm PDT (4:00pm EDT). I will be hosting a free, live community conversation/webcast for the Depth Psychology Alliance during which listeners will participate as we discuss Depth Psychology, Islam, and <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/islamophobia-in-america" target="_blank">Islamophobia in America.</a> If you have questions about Islam or Islamophobia, or would like to join in constructive conversation on these issues, please join us – and please forward this post to your favorite social media outlets and to interested friends!</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/islamophobia-in-america" target="_blank">Click here to register for this free event</a></p>
<p><b><u>______________________________</u></b><b><br /> James Newell, Ph.D.</b> is an educator, coach/counselor, performing songwriter, and board member of the Depth Psychology Alliance. James earned his doctorate in History of Religions from Vanderbilt University and teaches courses in world religions for Central Michigan University’s Global Campus as well as courses in Islam for Excelsior State College, Thomas Edison State University, and American Public University. James also holds a master’s degree in counseling and theology from the Vanderbilt Divinity School. James’ counseling orientation is Jungian, and his goal is to educate and empower others to do their own depth work, individually and collectively. James continues to pursue his own artistic passion through music, having begun his musical career as a teenager working with such legendary musicians as John Lee Hooker, James Cotton, Jr. Wells, Big Joe Turner, and others.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.SymolsofTransformation.com" target="_blank">www.SymolsofTransformation.com</a><br /> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/jamesrnewellphd/</a><br /> <a href="http://www.JamesRNewell.com" target="_blank">www.JamesRNewell.com<br /></a></p>
<p><b>Works Cited</b><br /> <br /> Abdelkader, E. (2016). <i>When Islamophobia Turns Violent: The 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections</i>. Washington, DC: The Bridge Initiative, Georgetown University. Retrieved from: <a href="http://bridge.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/When-Islamophobia-Turns-Violent.pdf">http://bridge.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/When-Islamophobia-Turns-Violent.pdf</a><br /> <br /> Haynes, C. (2016). Make America Safe Again: Reject Islamophobia. NewseumInstitute.org. Retrieved from: <a href="http://www.newseuminstitute.org/2016/05/12/make-america-safe-again-reject-islamophobia/">http://www.newseuminstitute.org/2016/05/12/make-america-safe-again-reject-islamophobia/</a></p>
<p>Interfaith Alliance. (2012). <i>What is the Truth About American Muslims?</i> Washington, DC: Religious Freedom Education Project of the First Amendment Center. Retrieved from: <a href="http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/madison/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/FAC_American_Muslims_Q_A.pdf">http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/madison/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/FAC_American_Muslims_Q_A.pdf</a></p>
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<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/events/islamophobia-in-america"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142456663,original{{/staticFileLink}}" height="511" width="415" alt="9142456663?profile=original" /></a></p></div>The American Trickster & Our National Conversationhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-american-trickster-our-national-conversation2016-06-06T20:05:48.000Z2016-06-06T20:05:48.000ZCarol S. Pearsonhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/CarolSPearson<div><p>When problems seem overwhelming, the Trickster archetype often is called for. I’ve long been fascinated by its potential for liberation or con artistry. In fact, my doctoral dissertation looked at Trickster figures in books like <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nes</i>t, <i>Catch-22</i>, and <i>Invisible Man</i>. Dionysus, in my new book, <i>Persephone Rising</i>, is one also. This blog is triggered by Donald Trump’s candidacy, but it actually is about much more. All the attention on him suggests to me that the Trickster archetype is reemerging in our time, forcing us to make this archetype conscious so that we can gain its gifts and avoid its downsides. Besides its political manifestation, the Trickster in each of us also can be an agent for good or result in a whole lot of trouble for everyone concerned.</p><p> </p><p>Tricksters abound in all cultures. Generally, they achieve their goals through trickery, and in the process undermine traditional rules about how things are done. Often, but not always, they truly enjoy the process.</p><p> </p><p>Trump has spent much of his life as a playboy. Funded initially by his wealthy father, he has had the freedom to do just about whatever he enjoys, and what he loves most is “the deal” and playing to win it as a game. He has defied what he calls “political correctness” and how a presidential campaign generally is conducted. He also is good at manipulating events to get what he wants: from the beginning of his campaign, for example, the press has given him free 24/7 coverage, and he managed to hijack the Republican Party from its traditional leaders and many of its funders. In short, the Trickster appears to be a strong element in his behavior.</p><p> </p><p>The round-the-clock attention Trump is getting invites us to more deeply examine the Trickster archetype, with both its gifts and its dangers.</p><p> </p><p><i>The Trickster in America</i></p><p><i> </i></p><p>The Trickster is a powerful archetype in American culture. Think, for example, of Coyote in Native American lore, the Bre’r Rabbit stories (their racism aside) where the Rabbit outfoxes the fox, Bugs Bunny tricking Elmer Fudd, The Road Runner getting away once again from Wile E. Coyote, Tom Sawyer tricking his friends into painting the fence for him, or Disney’s movie version of Mary Poppins, who tricks the Banks children into behaving and their parents into spending time with them, so that they become a real family. The term “Yankee ingenuity,” which seems to have fallen out of everyday usage, sometimes has been used to describe a trickster element in the way Americans have solved problems. The Trickster also can be transformational, like the shaman Don Juan, in the best-selling series of books by Carlos Castaneda, who tricks his followers into experiencing an evolved consciousness and, in so doing, realizing the higher purpose of the archetype.</p><p> </p><p>The United States won its independence by breaking all the standard rules of war that the British took for granted. And even today, the informal way we dress and the freedom of expression enjoyed by our artists and entertainers shocks some people around world—while others adopt our styles, listen to our music, and watch our movies and TV shows.</p><p> </p><p><i>Tricksters in Politics</i></p><p> </p><p>Martin Luther King, Jr. performed the role of positive trickster in its serious form when he shifted American thinking from us vs. them/White vs. Black to the question of how we stay true to the founding values of our country—the belief that all people have the fundamental right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” President Lyndon B. Johnson demonstrated trickster abilities in using every leverage point he had with members of Congress in order to pass civil rights legislation, just as President Lincoln had done to end slavery.</p><p> </p><p>Because the Trickster is a subtype of the Jester archetype, we also can see it expressed in the preference of many Americans today to get their news from those who can transmute difficult situations into laughter—for example, as Jon Stewart did on <i>The Daily Show</i>. Often, such humor positively tricks people out of taking everything so seriously that they get anxious and depressed. Participants in brainstorming sessions frequently are encouraged to think of outrageous solutions to difficult issues, which can lighten them up enough to escape the obvious answers and consider new possibilities.</p><p> </p><p><i>The Trickster as Con Artist in Popular Media</i></p><p> </p><p>However, when archetypes are emerging or reemerging in consciousness, it is not unusual for them to display their counterproductive sides first. The most negative embodiment of this archetype is the con man—though as a people, we love their entertainment value despite their potential destructiveness. An example would be Harold Hill, the lead character in the musical <i>The Music Man,</i> who, in a scheme to sell instruments, promises the townspeople that their children will be playing together in a wonderful marching band. In truth, he plans to abscond with their money. Only when he falls in love with a local woman does his conscience begin to object.</p><p> </p><p>There can a downward slippery slope for the Trickster archetype when it is ego-driven and does not care for others. This is evident in the portrayal of Francis Underwood, in the Netflix series <i>House of Cards</i>, whose capacity for manipulation has no ethical boundaries. You also can see it in the depiction of Olivia Pope, in the ABC political thriller <i>Scandal</i>, who starts out as a self-proclaimed “fixer.” Because she initially is so lovable, it is difficult not to keep rooting for her, even as she begins to authorize torture, like her demonic father before her. </p><p> </p><p>Caroline Casey<a href="#_ftn1" title="">[1]</a>, an expert on this archetype, argues that the test of whether what we are viewing (or being) is a positive Trickster or a damaging con artist is based on the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To avoid inadvertently going over the Trickster dark side, Casey recommends declining to do to someone else what you would not want to endure yourself.</p><p> </p><p><i>Optimism, Desire, and Being Conned</i></p><p> </p><p>To be successful, a Trickster con artist always needs someone willing to be duped. As Americans, our inherent optimism makes it easy for us not to recognize that what seems too good to be true almost always is. This applies even to very sophisticated people—for example, many of those who were taken in by Bernie Madoff. It can be even more the case for people who are scraping to make a living, hoping for their big break. Before the economic crisis of 2008, millions believed they were realizing their big dream of home ownership, often ignoring the reality of balloon payments or assuming that they would never lose their job or get ill. In the Academy Award-nominated film <i>The Big Short,</i> about the origin of worldwide recession in Wall Street practices, the viewer comes to identify with a few individuals who saw the crash coming before others did and conned the big banks, making a killing when it happened. Only one of these characters seems truly concerned about the millions who lost their homes. Lower-level Tricksters lack empathy for those they trick; higher-level ones use the trick for the healing and ultimate good of others.</p><p> </p><p><i>Trump’s Candidacy and the Need to Cheer Up</i></p><p> </p><p>Many of those who attend Trump rallies laugh when the candidate says outrageous things and chime in with ongoing refrains that propose simple solutions to complicated problems—like chanting "Build the Wall" and answering the question of who will pay for it by shouting “Mexico!” Trump’s popularity is not merely the product of prejudice, or a desire for something radically new, but also reflects a longing by his followers to lighten up and experience the relief that can come from believing in easy answers. Depression, anxiety, fear of the future, addiction, and suicide are rampant today. Many of his supporters believe that Trump would use cunning to make all our problems disappear—tricking others around the world to act in the interest of the United States. They hope he will use his abilities to con the world, as well as others within our own country, so that his constituents get what they want.</p><p> </p><p>At the same time, Trump’s detractors look at his history and fear that the con ultimately would be at the expense of Americans or even the world at large. They cite his history of bankruptcies and shady business practices, where he repeatedly has left others holding the bag when his projects went south. In response to his suggestion that he would be fine with having the U.S. default on its debts, they argue that this could leave our creditors—many of whom are American institutions and individuals—in financial difficulty, perhaps even causing a global depression.</p><p> </p><p>Beyond Trump, however, there is a more general desire among voters to shake things up, to move beyond established ways of doing things, to try something new—a desire manifested strongly in the unexpected success of Bernie Sanders.</p><p><i> </i></p><p><i>What Level of the Trickster is Right for Us Now?</i></p><p> </p><p>The level of attention the Trump campaign is getting from supporters and detractors alike suggests to me some urgency for a national conversation on where we are and where we want to be with the Trickster archetype. In the United States, change tends to trickle up, not down. I see the Trump phenomenon as an invitation for us to embody the answer we want to achieve. Doing so is important not just to create ripple effects in our nation and the world; it also is necessary for us to get out of stuck places in our own lives.</p><p> </p><p>So, irrespective of whom we vote for, we need to consider the archetype itself—and which version of it is needed now in the U.S., in the larger world, and in our personal lives. My request is that you build on what I’ve said in this blog with your comments. Here are some questions to get your thinking going, though you shouldn’t feel hemmed in by them.</p><p> </p><ol><li>What images of positive and negative Tricksters do you see today around you—in real people, in characters in various entertainment media, or in popular ideas and behaviors?</li><li>What images of the Trickster resonate for you, capture your attention, and release positive energy in your own life?</li><li>Where do you see the Trickster expressed in your own behavior or that of others? How would you like to see it?</li><li>Tricksters often undercut some expected behaviors and standards as they also create new ones. If you could perform such a trick, what outcomes would you like to see and what strategies (no matter how seemingly outrageous) might achieve them?</li></ol><div><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div><p><a href="#_ftnref1" title="">[1]</a> <a href="http://www.coyotenetworknews.com/">www.coyotenetworknews.com/</a></p></div></div></div>Ecotherapy: Nature Reconnection as a Powerful, Transformational Healing Practice: A Short Interview with Linda Buzzellhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/ecotherapy-nature-reconnection-as-a-powerful-transformational-hea2016-05-10T02:00:00.000Z2016-05-10T02:00:00.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p align="center"><b>Ecotherapy: Nature Reconnection as a Powerful, Transformational Healing Practice: A Short Interview with Linda Buzzell</b></p><p align="center"><b>by Bonnie Bright</b></p><p><b> </b></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142457476,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="600" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142457476,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-full" alt="9142457476?profile=original" /></a>If the name, Linda Buzzell, sounds familiar to you, it’s no surprise—particularly if you are moved as I am by the growing ecological crisis that is unfolding around us. <b>Linda Buzzell, MA, LMFT, PDC</b> (Permaculture Design Certificate) has been a psychotherapist for more than 30 years and has specialized in ecopsychology and ecotherapy since 2000. She co-edited the 2009 Sierra Club Books anthology, <i>Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind</i>. From my perspective, Linda is a true pioneer in the field, with a wonderful gift for sharing her passion for the planet in a multitude of ways that appeal to a broad audience.</p><p>In addition to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-buzzell/">writing regularly for Huffington Post</a>, Linda generously shares her time to do interviews and events that illustrate the value (and, arguably, the imperative) of reconnecting with the natural world. Linda recently joined me as a panelist for an online event, “Earth, Climate, Dreams” sponsored by Depth Psychology Alliance, and she is leading an upcoming weekend workshop, <b>Ecotherapy: Nature Reconnection as a Powerful, Transformational Healing Practice,</b> at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, May 13-15, 2016.</p><p></p><p>Linda recently sat down with me to answer a few questions about the power of ecotherapy:</p><p> </p><p><b>BB:</b> <b>Why were you first drawn to ecotherapy?</b></p><p><b>LB</b>: I grew up in rural Canada and nature was a powerful healer when my mother died. After years of being an indoor psychotherapist, I rediscovered the amazing power that nature has to heal when I moved to my current home. I was amazed how time spent communing with and tending my garden could raise my mood and calm anxieties. That inspired me to do research about ecopsychology and apply various nature connection practices in my therapy practice. And that in turn led to Craig Chalquist and I editing <i>Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind</i> for Sierra Club Books, where we gathered insights from people like Joanna Macy, Meredith Sabini (<i>The Earth Has a Soul: Jung, Technology and Modern Life</i>), Bill McKibben, Theodore Roszak (<i>The Voice of the Earth)</i>, David Orr, Jungian analyst Mary-Jayne Rust, Andy Fisher (<i>Radical Ecopsychology</i>), Stephen Aizenstat, Richard Louv, Robert Greenway and many others.</p><p> </p><p><b>BB: That book is indeed a remarkable collection of many inspiring individuals who are contributing to this field. It has been on my own bookshelf pretty much since it came out, and I often turn to it for ideas and inspiration. Many of the works in that anthology focus on the power of reconnecting with the natural world. In what ways do you personally see nature reconnection practices are “powerful medicine”?</b></p><p><b>LB:</b> On a purely scientific level, more and more robust research is showing how even a tiny touch of contact with the many aspects of nature (within our own bodies, our consciousness, in our gardens, with animals or in the wilderness) has demonstrable, measurable healing results. And of course the process is much deeper than that! Modern people have been living in cages imposed by our own worldviews and economic/political structures and suffer from what Richard Louv calls "nature deficit disorder." Helping people escape from those cages is exciting work!</p><p> </p><p><b>BB:</b> <b>To give an idea of some of those “cages” you mention: Many people are increasingly experiencing symptoms like eco-anxiety; numbing, apathy, or dissociation; or even environmental illnesses where substances in the environment make us sick. How can ecotherapy offer solutions for those who feel they are suffering due to ecological issues?</b></p><p><b>LB:</b> Ecotherapy addresses the escalating issues arising from our degrading environment. As Jungian analyst and author, Jerome Bernstein, points out, very sensitive people are especially aware of and affected by the earth's pain and the pain of the many species, including humans, who suffer from our mistreatment of the earth. The upcoming workshop I’m leading at Pacifica will include learning about some of the "cultural ecotherapies” that treat conditions specific to our historical moment, such as eco-anxiety, eco-grief, eco-trauma, eco-shame, eco-despair and trauma from forced migration," <i>solastalgia</i> and environmental melancholia, or the "waking up syndrome" that arises as we fully grok the enormity of environmental and social challenges<b>.</b><b> </b>Climate psychology is another important example of an emerging cultural ecotherapy. Ecotherapists may be considered important first responders at any environmental trauma scene, using techniques to facilitate transition and restoration of the community commons, to help build personal and community eco-resilience, and to serve as catalysts in the collective recovery from consumerism.</p><p> </p><p><b>BB: Ecotherapists as first responders—What a powerful image! It’s a metaphor that engenders a visceral or embodied understanding of what is needed to address the urgency of reconnection with the natural world. What are some of the applied ecopsychology methods currently being practiced in consulting rooms and outdoor spaces that appeal to you most?</b></p><p><b>LB:</b> My own favorite is horticultural therapy, because I love plants and gardens. Animal-assisted therapies are also really exciting too, as are the wilderness therapies, which can be highly transformative by facilitating intimate contact with non-human-controlled nature for specific, intense periods of time.</p><p> </p><p><b>BB: In general, why should we, as individuals, really care about this initiative?</b> <b>Who can benefit from learning more about ecotherapy?</b></p><p><b>LB:</b> The research is now driving the field forward to new applications with multiple populations using multiple methods. Teachers, therapists, doctors, coaches, counselors, public health workers, parks and recreation specialists, urban designers and other professionals are all beginning to include nature connection practices in their fields, because they work! Prisons, schools, care farms, violent neighborhoods, outdoor psychotherapy, and Alzheimers facilities are some of the many places that now including nature connection practices in their healing protocols.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><b>DETAILS & REGISTRATION for Linda’s Upcoming Workshop in Santa Barbara, May 13-15, 2016:</b> <a href="http://www.pacifica.edu/current-public/item/ecotherapy-nature-reconnection-as-a-powerful-transformational-healing-practice-2">http://www.pacifica.edu/current-public/item/ecotherapy-nature-reconnection-as-a-powerful-transformational-healing-practice-2</a></p><p> </p><p><b><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142458292,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="200" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142458292,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="9142458292?profile=original" /></a>Linda Buzzell, MA, LMFT, PDC</b> (Permaculture Design Certificate), has been a psychotherapist for more than 30 years and has specialized in ecopsychology and ecotherapy since 2000. She and Craig Chalquist edited the Sierra Club Books anthology <i>Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind</i>, a core text in clinical ecopsychology. She is a member of the Editorial Board of <i>Ecopsychology</i>, the peer reviewed journal of the field, and was a keynote speaker at the 2014 Ecotherapy Symposium at the University of Brighton in the UK. She is Adjunct Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. In 2002 she founded the International Association for Ecotherapy and is co-founder of the Ecopsychology Network of Southern California. She blogs on ecopsychology and ecotherapy at <i>The Huffington Post</i>. She is a member of the Ecopsychology Network for Clinicians, where she taught “The HOW of Ecotherapy.” In 2006 she received her Permaculture Design Certificate and with her husband Larry Saltzman has created a food forest around her home that serves as her ecotherapy office. For further information, <a href="http://www.ecotherapyheals.com/">www.ecotherapyheals.com</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-buzzell">www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-buzzell</a></p><p> </p><p><b>Bonnie Bright, Ph.D</b>., a graduate pf Pacifica’s Depth Psychology program, is the founder of <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/">Depth Psychology Alliance</a>, a free online community for everyone interested in depth psychologies, and of <a href="http://www.depthpsychologylist.com/">DepthList.com</a>, a free-to-search database of Jungian and depth psychology-oriented practitioners. She is also the creator and executive editor of <a href="http://www.depthinsights.com/">Depth Insights</a>, a semi-annual scholarly journal, and regularly produces audio and video interviews on depth psychological topics. Bonnie has completed 2-year certifications in Archetypal Pattern Analysis via the Assisi Institute; in Technologies of the Sacred with West African elder Malidoma Somé, and has been extensively involved in Holotropic Breathwork™ and the Enneagram.</p><p></p><p><strong>NOTE: This interview is also posted on <a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/ecotherapy-nature-reconnection-as-a-powerful-transformational-healing-practice-a-short-interview-with-linda-buzzell" target="_blank">Pacifica Post, the official blog site for Pacifica Graduate Institute</a></strong></p></div>Barry’s Blog # 163: Kind of a Circle, Part Onehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/barry-s-blog-163-kind-of-a-circle-part-one2016-04-28T23:34:04.000Z2016-04-28T23:34:04.000ZBarry Spectorhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BarrySpector<div><p><strong>PART ONE: 1492 to 1942</strong></p><p> </p><p>1492 was the year the Jews were expelled from Spain, after having lived there, according to historical sources, for some 2,000 years. Think about that number: one could argue that they had lived in Spain for nearly as long as they had lived in Palestine. Much of Spain – then called <em>Al-Andalus</em> – had been Muslim for over 700 years. For parts of that time Muslims, Jews and Christians had lived in a “golden age,” brief, shining moments of tolerance and harmony, producing works of vast cultural and scientific significance. The period was known as <em>Convivencia, (“the Coexistence.”)</em></p><p><em><img class="wp-image-1259 aligncenter" src="https://madnessatthegates.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/convivencia-y-tolerancia-civilizacion-del-islam_0-2.jpg?w=485&h=364" alt="CONVIVENCIA Y TOLERANCIA (Civilizacion del Islam)_0-2" height="364" width="485" /></em></p><p>Traditional Islam actually requires tolerance of the <em>Dhimmi,</em> the other Abrahamic faiths. In fact, the Spanish language is an amalgam of Latin and Arabic. For instance, many Spanish-based English words that begin with “al” – <em>alchemy, almanac, algebra, alfalfa, alcohol, albatross, almond,</em> etc, are Arabic in origin.</p><p>You can still see evidence of this cultural harmony in the city of Toledo. Its Synagogue, known as “El Transito,” was built for the Jews in 1360 – by Muslim craftsmen, at the blessing of the Christian King. (This was during the lifetime of Hafiz, and not long after Rumi’s death). In addition to Hebrew lettering, its elaborate carvings include symbols of the Catholic King and verses from the Koran.</p><div id="attachment_1276" style="width:601px;" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="alignnone wp-image-1276" src="https://madnessatthegates.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/toledo-sinag-el-transito-img_8864-sacred-destinations.jpg?w=1182&h=788" alt="Main prayer hall, with the Ark (where the Torah is kept) in the east wall." height="394" width="591" /><p class="wp-caption-text">El Transito</p></div><p>Unfortunately, the peace was destroyed only 30 years later, when anti-Semitic violence broke out all over Spain, and up to 100,000 Jews perished.</p><p>Thousands of Jews chose to convert to Catholicism; they were commonly called <em>conversos</em> or New Christians. At first these conversions seemed an effective solution to the cultural conflict: many <em>converso</em> families met with social and commercial success. But eventually this made the New Christians unpopular with the church and royal hierarchies. These suspicions on the part of Catholics were only heightened by the fact that some of the coerced conversions were undoubtedly insincere. Some, but not all, <em>conversos</em> had understandably chosen to salvage their social and commercial prestige by the only option open to them – baptism and embrace of Christianity – while privately adhering to their Jewish practice and faith. These secret practitioners were commonly referred to as crypto-Jews or <em>marranos</em>.</p><p>In 1480, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella created the Spanish Inquisition; under the authority of this new institution, thousands of marranos were found guilty of false conversions and killed. During this period, Ferdinand and Isabella presided over the final wars with the Muslims, which Christians call the <em>Reconquista.</em></p><p>Granada, the last Muslim-held territory in Spain, succumbed to the Christian armies in January 1492, and the Inquisition quickly moved to stamp out all traces of both Islam and Judaism. One of its first acts was to burn thousands of books, the heritage of Spain’s golden age of tolerance. Then the monarchs gave all Jews four months to convert to Christianity or leave the country. They were supposedly permitted to take their belongings with them – except “gold or silver or minted money.” The punishment for a Jew who did not leave by the deadline was death. The punishment for a non-Jew who sheltered or hid Jews was the confiscation of all belongings and hereditary privileges. Scholars disagree about how many Jews left Spain as a result of the decree; the numbers vary between 130,000 and 800,000.</p><p>The head of Spain’s Jewish community negotiated a slight but symbolic reprieve from the original date of July 31<sup>st</sup> to August 2<sup>nd</sup>. Why? Because that date corresponded to the ninth of Ab in the Jewish calendar, the anniversary of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. He wanted history to understand the depth and breadth of this loss by recalling the date of this second Diaspora when commemorating the first.</p><p>On August 2<sup>nd</sup>, the last Jews left Spain, or as they had called their home for two millennia, <em>Sepharad.</em> As they searched for new homes in the east, they became known as Sephardic Jews, haunted forever by memories of their lost homeland. Many Sephardim still live in Turkey and the Mid-East. Prior to the Holocaust, 50,000 Sephardim lived in Greece but still spoke <em>Ladino,</em> their old Spanish-Hebrew dialect. It is said that as recently as the 20<sup>th</sup> century, some of their descendants still kept the keys to the houses t<em>hey had left behind:</em></p><blockquote><p>The Key of Spain</p><p>Where is the key that was in the drawer?</p><p>My forefathers brought it with great pain.</p><p>From their house in Spain…dreams of Spain.</p><p>Where is the key that was in the drawer?</p><p>My forefathers brought it with great love.</p><p>They told their children, this is the heart of our home in Spain…dreams of Spain.</p><p>Where is the key that was in the drawer?</p><p>My forefathers brought it with great love.</p><p>They gave it to their grandchildren for them to keep in the drawer…dreams of Spain.</p><p>— Flory Jagoda (1964)</p></blockquote><p>In one of history’s great ironies, many Palestinians still possess the keys to houses that the Israeli army forced them out of in 1948. This essay is about just that: the ironic narrative of Jews and Muslims, their shared respect for each other and some astonishingly synchronistic events.</p><p>Students of art have long appreciated Medieval illuminated (adorned with graphics) manuscripts such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne_Gospels">Lindisfarne Gospels</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells">Book of Kells</a>. Few realize that not all of these masterpieces were Christian in origin; Jews created some as well. One Sephardic family took with them such a manuscript, a Passover prayer book that had been produced during that harmonious period in the 1350’s. We now know it as the <em>Sarajevo Haggadah</em>, and it is considered to be one of the most valuable books in the world. <img class="alignnone wp-image-1280" src="https://madnessatthegates.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/sarajevo-haggadahmaror-2-2.jpg?w=1130&h=636" alt="Sarajevo-HaggadahMaror-2 2" height="318" width="565" /></p><p>But let’s get back to 1492 Spain. As I have noted, the last Jews left on that auspicious date of August 2<sup>nd</sup>. <em>The next day</em> – August 3<sup>rd</sup> – three ships left Seville’s port heading west to find the fabled Indies. Christobol Colon took with him a Jewish scholar, Luis de Torres, who knew both Spanish and Arabic. Since Arabic was still the language of high culture in Spain, Columbus naturally assumed that it would be spoken in the Indies, and that he’d need a translator.</p><p>In Portugal, where many Spanish Jews found a very brief refuge before being expelled a second time, ownership of Hebrew books became a capital offense. One man’s account, from Lisbon in 1497, tells how he “dug a grave among the roots of a blossoming olive tree” to hide his books, knowing that it was unlikely he would ever return to unearth them: “Yet, although a tree flourishing with lovely fruit stood there . . . did I call it ‘Tree of Sorrows.”</p><p>A place to settle, but not to call home: Sometime in the following century, the Haggadah found its way to Venice, where a polyglot Jewish community thrived on a tiny island that had previously served as the city’s foundry, or <em>geto.</em> The first Jews, German loan bankers among them, had arrived in 1516. Next came Levantine Jews, whose ties to Egypt and Syria were valuable to the city’s vast trading enterprise. The exiles from the Iberian Peninsula gradually increased the population, and the ghetto’s tight-pressed multistory dwellings became the tallest in the city. If you go to Venice today, you can still see the tiny neighborhood that housed thousands of Jews on only a few acres.</p><p>Venice offered Jews property rights and legal protection unmatched elsewhere in Europe at that time. Still, they had to wear colored caps to identify them when they left the ghetto, and its gates were locked each night. They were banned from most trades, including printing, and any Hebrew books that were not approved by an ecclesiastical censor of the Pope’s Inquisition were destroyed in public burnings.</p><p>Books could be destroyed or defaced for many perceived heresies—such as suggestions that the Messiah was yet to come, or arguments against the use of saints or any other intercessors as mediators between humans and an indivisible God, or any reference to Jews as “holy” or “pious.” A Catholic priest, Giovanni Domenico Vistorini, inspected the Haggadah in 1609. Nothing is known of him beyond the books that bear his signature, but many of the Catholic Hebraists of the time were converted Jews. Vistorini apparently found nothing objectionable in the Haggadah. We can still see his Latin inscription, <em>Revisto per mi</em> (“Surveyed by me”).</p><p>How or when the book left Venice and came to Sarajevo is a mystery, but in 1894, just over 400 years after it left Spain, the National Museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia acquired it from an indigent Jewish family named Kohen.</p><p>As early as1565, the first Jews had settled in what was then an Ottoman market crossroads. The city grew to graceful, cosmopolitan maturity, and became known for its tolerance. The Muslims’ mosques, the churches of the Serbian Orthodox, and the Croatian Catholics occupied the same city blocks as the synagogues, and residential neighborhoods were mostly mixed. It was another “Convivencia.” This story has been fictionalized in Geraldine Brooks’ excellent novel <a href="http://geraldinebrooks.com/people-of-the-book/"><em>People of the Book,</em></a> but the true story and its details are even more amazing.</p><p>Next: What happened to the book in later centuries.</p></div>