“The main interest of my work is not the treatment of neurosis, but rather with the approach to the numinous … But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy … and as you attain to the numinous you are released from the curse of pathology”
(C. G. Jung Letters 1, pg. 37)
In many mysterious ways, Psyche creates opportunities for transcendence and healing while also inhibiting our engagement with a bigger meaningful life. It was Jung’s hunger for this relationship to soul that motivated him to write these words about the ultimate and most important goal of therapy.
From the miraculous birth of a child to the magnificence of great art, each emerges in response to something very personal while orchestrated and guided by unseen, archetypal processes. So too, with those seemingly endless repetitions of pain and disappointments which brought us to our knees in desperation, fear that we are cursed with an unchangeable fate. M.L. von Franz explains how in many fairy tales the hero is in fact cursed and that “Redemption” is the breaking of the archetypal possession and being released from the curse.
The profundity of these discoveries informs our clinical work, in seeing that these innate, self-organizing processes literally structure the interactions actions occurring between client and therapist. These archetypal, formative dynamics are most active in the beginning of treatment, when the client and therapist “agree” on the therapeutic ground rules. Working outside of the conscious awareness of both, the Self creates conditions of treatment which provide the ground upon which the client’s personal and archetypal issues are made manifest and present as a living reality within the treatment. While this re-creation of the client’s archetypal field within the temenos is potentially redemptive, without an understanding of these dynamics, these archetypal possessions gain an even greater hold on the client’s life.
As we see how these archetypal dynamics are made manifest as a living, breathing reality within the therapeutic container we understand what moved De Chardin to write; “Matter is Spirit moving slowly enough to be seen” and Ervin Laszlo to realize that; “Field precedes form.
Mystics, sages, and dreamers hunger to understand something about these emergent energies that move matter and life, have brought us into domains as diverse as mysticism and science. D’Arcy Thompson, a renowned philosopher and scientist, took on this quest and writes; “The form of … matter, and the changes of form … apparent in its movement … are due to the action of force … the form of an object is a diagram of forces” (1947, Pg 16).
The “forces” driving these therapeutic, interactional dynamics are a portrait of the movement of Psyche and archetypes, now creating form within the therapeutic relationship. This opportunity to literally see the contours and workings of archetypes in matter as manifested in these therapeutic dynamics, offers a promise of healing, and freedom from the shackles of such pain, and ultimately, a profound experience of the numinous
Weekly, Thursdays 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM US Eastern Time
January 9, 16, 23, 30
February 6, 13, 20, 27
March 6, 13, 20, 27
April 3, 10, 17, 24
Two Saturday Intensives 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM US Eastern Time
February 8, April 12