“Organ inferiority [i.e. disability] is the human condition, our liability to be bruised at the heel, our mortality. The ego is weak because it is mortal, with its specific lacuna or privations, deprived of ideal and abstract good by its complexes. These complexes keep us continually wounded, that is continually limited to our inferiority, our mortal condition. Every wound is a mortal wound, the realization of mortality. The crippling is indispensable for the puer, who, had he the gift without the wound, would be all together inhuman. His handicap compensates his omnipotence, making his archetypal structure viable for human existence. His viability lies just in his vulnerability. The wound brings the Senex virtue of limitation to an unlimited reach.”
The Salome Institute is deeply honored to host Charles Hall and Jenny Montgomery to explore “Disability as the Human Experience” in this installment of our Socially Relevant Salon Series.
Longtime Salome community members, Charles and Jenny, are two people for whom disability has been a lived, personal experience, as well as an area of rich academic study and creativity, influenced by mythology, dreams, symbols, the unconscious, and Jungian psychology.
Charles Hall was born in 1960 in Dallas, Texas, with multiple congenital disabilities. He has no arms below the elbows, facial anomalies (80% paralysis), and speech issues classified as Moebius Syndrome. His parents insisted that he be mainstreamed during the 1960s, giving him a much more normal childhood before it was the standard for disabled children. His life has been filled with remarkable encounters, synchronicities, deep relationships, and transformative insights into the human experience through the lens of a disabled person in an able-bodied society. Charles’s stories and wisdom hold tremendous space for learning and self-reflection for people from all backgrounds.
A journalist, classicist, and astrologer by training, Jenny Montgomery is also mother to a middle school aged son, Heath, who is a wheelchair user. She and Heath are active with advocacy groups supporting the independence and civil rights of people with disabilities, and she is currently at work on a graphic memoir about parenting and disability titled The Outlaws, informed by an early disability community that used fairy tale, myth, and depth psychology in their work.
In this salon, Charles and Jenny will be in dialogue with one another about their experiences and will present some of their independent creative work, as well as share insights on various mythic and archetypal themes related to disability as a lens to understanding the whole of the human experience.
As always, we will hold space at the end of their presentation for community Q&A and conversation.
Recording: If you are unable to join us live or would like to watch this on your own time, a recording will be sent to all registrants within 24 hours of the live event.
