In 1936, C. G. Jung traveled to America and gave a ground-breaking series of lectures at Bailey Island on the subject of “Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process” which was based on the dreams of the nuclear physicist Wolfgang Pauli. In 1944, he reworked this material into Psychology and Alchemy, which became Volume 12 of the Collected Works.
Over the intervening 90 years, much has been discovered in the area of early developmental theory and the companion disciplines of attachment theory, affective neuroscience, early infant studies, and body-centered healing methods for early trauma. These new discoveries present us with a dissociative system of defensive powers (as in the Blake image above) that complicates the healing process by resisting the patient’s experience of vulnerable feelings.
The role of these archetypal defenses in early trauma work provides a challenge to conventional Jungian thought, and begs to be integrated into a renewed, and more relevant Analytical Psychology. Exploring these integrative links will be our goal in this intensive day-long seminar. Donald Kalsched will show how discoveries in these new disciplines carry implications for the way we do therapy, for the way we work with dreams, and, in general, for how we understand the symbolic process and its role in what Jung called “individuation.”