Jungian Topics in Psychology 2022-2023
Course time: 8 Weekly meetings by Zoom/ per semester | Tuesdays: 6:30 – 8:00pm | Fall term: September 20 – November 22 2022 (excluding October 4 and November 1)
What is it that compels us? What is a compulsion? Where does it come from and what is it for? This 8-week course will work with both clinical and personal material to re-imagine compulsive actions and ideas from within a Jungian framework. We will tease apart the difference between what is compelling in the sense of inspiring and how that can slide over into the compulsive in the sense of loss of agency and the question of fate. Historically, compulsions have been seen as signs of evil, as the lack of willpower, or as environmentally caused. In none of these explanations is the question of ‘what is it for’ ever asked. Our exploration will be guided by what Jung writes in Mysterium:
Compulsion is the great mystery of human life. It is the thwarting of our conscious will and of our reason by an inflammable sulphuric element within us, appearing sometimes as a consuming fire and at others as life-giving warmth. The efficient and final cause of this lack of freedom lies in the unconscious and forms that part of the personality which still has to be added to the conscious person in order to make them whole (Mysterium Coniunctionis 154).