Lionell Corbett’s passion is exploring depth psychology, in particular the analytical psychology of C.G. Jung, as an emerging spiritual path. He finds some sources of that idea in Jung’s Red Book.
Corbett’s vast knowledge of psychology, history and mythology, as well as his many compelling personal stories makes for a lively, full-blooded discussion of many life-changing ideas.
The first two lectures delve into Carl Jung’s Red Book and non-traditional channels of direct religious experience. In the third lecture Corbett analyzes the personal psychology of Job as well as Jung’s “Answer to Job”. In the fourth lecture Corbett discusses how myth, memory and history interweave.
This course is for people familiar with the basics of Jungian psychology who want to explore some of its deeper issues.
Course Overview:
Lecture 1: Is Analytical Psychology a New Religion? Part One
In his Red Book, Carl Jung gave voice and compelling visual form to his dark night of the soul and numinous revelations. In this lecture Corbett shares excerpts from the Red Book that show Jung’s ordeal as he confronted an old God-Image, digested frightening material and was finally brought tidings of a new God-image.
Corbett deftly leads the discussion through several crucial questions: Was Jung was inflated or individuating during the years of the Red Book process? How is the God-image different from the Divine itself? How did Jung himself view analytical psychology as a new religion or as an alternative to traditional religions?
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Lecture 2: Is Analytical Psychology a New Religion Part Two
In this lecture Lionel Corbett continues his clear and fluid discussion of analytical psychology as a spiritual practice. He dedicates this lecture to sharing many moving examples of a wide variety of numinous experiences that transformed peoples’ lives. This direct contact with some kind of numinous presence can happen via many channels; in dreams, in waking visions, experiences in nature, things that happen in the body, through the use of entheogens, in synchronicities and in psychopathology. As Corbett relates these events we can sense the impact they had on each person’s life who experienced them as a mysterium tremendum, that is to say authentic, awesome, fascinating and terrifying.
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Lecture 3. An analysis of Job and Jung’s Answer to Job
In this riveting lecture Dr. Corbett brings the biblical character of Job into the consulting room. He analyzes the text of the Book of Job from the perspective of Job’s personal psychology, looking closely at Job’s behavior, inner conflicts, symptomology and family dynamics. Corbett views the Book of Job not as a portrait of Divinity, but as a story about how Job had to encounter the personal God-image he’d been living with unconsciously.
Corbett considers how Job’s God-image could have been darkly colored by his relationship with his personal father, who was probably vengeful and required constant pleasing. Corbett also discusses Carl Jung’s emotionally charged work “Answer to Job”.
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Lecture 4: Mythic Memory
In this lecture Lionel Corbett artfully explores the relationship between memory, history and myth. He brings in Jung, Freud, Campbell, Dante, Plato, Socrates and other luminaries to help him hold the light to how memory, history and myth slip into and out of each other.
Corbett views memories as imaginative experiences, the result of what actually happened mixed with our beliefs, hopes and need to avoid shame. History is our cultural memory. The line between history and myth blurs when facts become less important than the way that people feel about an event.