The C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles is offering a Certificate Program in Jungian Studies for non-clinicians. This version of the Certificate Program is intended for a public interested in the in-depth study of Jung’s psychology. It is not limited to licensed mental health professionals. The program consists of 16 sessions of 3 hours from September 2023 through June 2024. All the sessions will be on Saturdays from 10:00 am – 1:00 pm [Pacific Time]. Please check our Course Schedule below for exact dates and times.
Certificate: A Certificate in Jungian Studies will be awarded to participants after completion of the program. Participants may miss 3 sessions at most and still receive the certificate.
Course Schedule:
A Saturday Lecture with J. Gary Sparks
Saturday, September 23, 2023
JUNG’S UNIQUE PSYCHOLOGY
The presentation will explore an overview of how Jung’s psychology developed over the course of his lifetime, focusing on his understanding of psychological transformation, beginning with his personal crisis (1913 –1928) through his last mature writing (1951 – 1954). In our discussion, we will address some of the ways in which Jungian psychology can facilitate healing for the individual on a personal as well as a collective level.
Two Saturday Lectures with Robert Moradi
Two Saturday Lectures with Robert MoradiSaturdays, October 7 & 21, 2023
DREAMS: WHY DO WE HAVE THEM AND WHAT DO THEY MEAN?
Dreams are products of the unconscious that emanate from our uniquely individual history, and yet paradoxically and simultaneously, can also serve to remind us of our oneness with everything that has ever existed. Dreams can liberate us from our conscious mind but also require our conscious engagement with them if we are to understand their symbolic language and decipher their meaning. Dreams can tell us how we have been injured, personally and collectively, and sometimes even the reasons for our struggles. More importantly, dreams can show us how to bear the pain of our suffering and make meaning out of a challenging experience. In this seminar we will discuss different types of dreams and ways of understanding our dreams on a personal as well as a collective level.
Two Saturday Lectures with Corey Hooper
Two Saturday Lectures with Corey HooperSaturday, November 4 & 21, 2023
WHY STUDY ARCHETYPES AND COMPLEXES?
On both weekends we will explore two of Jung’s seminal concepts, archetypes and emotionally toned complexes. Archetypes are invisible, inherited, structuring patterns of the psyche shared by all. Archetypes cannot be seen, per se, but can only be experienced through images, symbols, and other outer manifestations, such as myths, fairy tales, dreams, etc. A complex is composed of images and ideas gathered around an archetype, often characterized by emotionally toned behavior. Attention will be given to core archetypes Including, the mother, father, child, rebirth, the trickster, and the Self. We will engage in this material in a manner that will assist participants in identifying complexes and archetypes in personal life as well as when engaging with others.
Two Saturday Lectures with Thomas Singer
Saturdays, December 2 & 16, 2023
THE PSYCHE IN THE WORLD: HOW CULTURAL COMPLEXES CAN TAKE POSSESSION OF OUR SOULS
Differentiating the personal, group, and archetypal levels of cultural complexes is not easy but can be quite rewarding in terms of helping ourselves and the groups to which we belong see more clearly how our lives are deeply influenced by these complexes which operate at many levels of the psyche. Drawing from his research in Australia, Latin America, Europe, and East Asia, Dr. Singer will examine the basic concept of cultural complexes and ways in which they operate—in individuals and in groups—that can be based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and national identity in the emerging global community. Utilizing case material, we will look at a potent cultural complex manifested in the life of an individual. We will study some of the ways in which cultural complexes can live and function both within a group and between groups. In the second session, we will follow how an archetypal energy takes form through history in personal and cultural complexes, as developed in my essay “A Fool’s Guide to Folly.” Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to identify and share their own experiences of cultural complexes—whether it be in personal experience, clinical examples, or in the emerging national and world upheaval.
Two Saturday Lectures with Stephen Kenneally
Two Saturday Lectures with Stephen KenneallySaturday, January 6, 2024
IN SEARCH OF THE SELF
Jung’s concept of the Self seeks to capture the experience of something greater in the psyche than our familiar ego consciousness. This can feel like an inspiring inner guide that facilitates and brings meaning to life, and it can feel like a tormenting fate that keeps us at odds with ourselves. How can we talk about it as a psychological concept on the one hand, and treat it with the reverence of spiritual yearning on the other? This is Jung’s great insight; we have within us dimensions that must be stood up to and understood, as well as dimensions that must be submitted to and served. The task of our consciousness is to learn how to discern the right approach. Too much rationalism cuts us off from our deeper knowing of ourselves. Too much superstitious reverence for the inner/outer Other in our psychic field and we fall into inflations, deflations, and fundamentalism. An ethic for life emerges if we tolerate this complex notion of the Self.
Saturday, January 20, 2024
INDIVIDUATION
Individuation is the process of living into an aspect of the innate potential of one’s personality. If we are true to our individuation, the sense of being related to something greater in the psyche (Self) emerges. While we cannot live all the potentials we are born with, and we must adapt to a demanding world, Jung’s concept of individuation helps us to bear this process of becoming who we are most “meant to be” as consciously as possible. This requires continuous differentiation of the inner and outer influences that want us to simply drift in the direction of the current. Confronting these cultural, collective, and internalized schemas requires bearing guilt and holding the “tension of the opposites”. We will explore the role of the shadow, the animus/anima, the Self, dreams, and active imagination in the process of individuation, and explore some archetypal material that illuminates this process.
Two Saturday Lectures with John Beebe
Two Saturday Lectures with John BeebeIn both seminars, we will analyze clips from the film considered using a Jungian lens. Students are encouraged to watch the entire film on their own in advance of each session.
Saturday, February 3, 2023; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Description TBA
Saturday, February 17, 2023; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Description TBA
Two Saturday Lectures with Jeanne A. Lacourt
Saturday, March 2, 2024
WE THINK WITH OUR HEARTS: READING JUNG THROUGH NATIVE EYES
This presentation will review how some of Jung’s ideas (mis)represented Native cultures. The notion of the “primitive,” participation mystique, dreams, and animals will be explored. Two psychic paradigms, dominion, and reciprocity, will point to important differences between Indigenous and Western cosmologies and may offer a path away from our current trend toward self-destruction.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
INDIGENOUS IDEAS OF SPIRIT AND TRANSFORMATION
This presentation will introduce participants to the Menominee origin story and the important relationship Native people have with spirit beings. Specifically, we will focus how human-animal transformation in story is integral to establishing a reciprocal relationship with land, animals, and all spirit beings.
Two Saturday Lectures with Maggie Gwinn
Saturdays, April 6 & 20, 2024
THE NUMINOUS PATH OF THE TWELVE-STEP EXPERIENCE
“You see, ‘alcohol” in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.” -C. G Jung, Letter to Bill W., 1961.
Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Carl Jung exchanged letters in 1961, and agreed that a religious experience was pivotal to achieving recovery from alcoholism. The first session of this presentation will discuss the importance of developing a relationship to that Higher Power elucidated in Twelve-Step Programs and in Jungian psychology in the form of the God Image or the Self. Discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous and its evolution will be interwoven with, and linked to, Jungian theoretical concepts, and include recordings and film clips of both Bill W. and Carl Jung. The second session will utilize the structure of a Twelve Step meeting to allow participants to experience “How it Works. ” In a stop-start progression through a meeting, attention will be paid to Jungian concepts as a foundational part of the structure of these programs. Again, film clips and recordings will amplify that material. In both sessions, there will be an emphasis on experiential sharing of one’s own encounters with the numinous in one’s Twelve-Step experience as well as one’s encounter with the numinous in other venues, such as Jungian Analysis, dreams, religion, or the arts.
Two Saturday Lectures with Michael Gellert
JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY AS A CONTACT SPORT
Saturdays, May 4 & 18, 2024
WRESTLING WITH BIG DREAMS
Borrowing a notion from the Elgonyi natives of central Africa, Jung designated “big” dreams as those “concerned not only with the more or less personal relations of an individual to his family or to a wider social group, but with his relations to society and to the human community in general.” Having universal significance, such dreams often comment on the human condition, history and the evolution of consciousness, or social problems of great magnitude. As we will explore how to work with big dreams so as to extract their wisdom and integrate their value into our individual, everyday lives, participants are encouraged to bring their dreams.
Saturdays, May 18, 2024
WRESTLING WITH THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
What is evil? Is it a divine force, or a psychic one—or both? Or is it neither, but rather only the absence of good, as St. Augustine believed? In this talk we will explore these questions, as well as what the phenomenon we call “evil” feels like when it emerges in our everyday lives and situations.
A Saturday Lecture with J. Gary Sparks
A Saturday Lecture with J. Gary SparksSaturday, June 1, 2024
MARIE-LOUISE VON FRANZ’A AURORA CONSURGENS
The presentation explores Marie-Louise von Franz’s psychological interpretation of Aurora Consurgens, a medieval text that illustrates feminine divine truth manifesting in individual emotional experience. Originally published in German with Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, von Franz’s rich commentary considers the nature of healing, destiny, and love in psychological and cultural contexts.