Tomorrow, one of the most rigorous and uncompromising thinkers in the post-Jungian world takes up a question that sits at the very foundation of analytical psychology: what does it mean that Jung insisted on a psychology with soul? On June 20, from 10am to 1pm Bucharest time, Wolfgang Giegerich brings this inquiry to an online seminar hosted by the Romanian Society of Analytical Psychology
The title for this lecture comes from a phrase Jung cited from an alchemist maior autem animae pars extra corpus est, which means “the greater part of the soul is outside the body”. It takes as its starting point Karl Kerényi’s remarkable observation that Jung was the only psychologist among his non-confessional peers who genuinely believed in the existence of the soul. For Giegerich, this is not a peripheral quirk of Jung’s personality but the defining characteristic of his entire psychological project.
The seminar will explore precisely what this shift to soul means: how soul differs from psyche, why the distinction matters, and what its implications are for psychological theory and clinical practice. Giegerich will also turn to the myth of Actaeon and Artemis (a myth he has written on at length) as an imaginal illustration of the logic of entering into what he calls veritable psychology.
Wolfgang Giegerich is one of the most significant and contested voices in post-Jungian thought. Born in 1942, he trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and has been publishing on depth psychology since the mid-1970s, accumulating a body of work that now exceeds 170 publications across several languages. His eight volumes of Collected English Papers, published by Routledge, represent the most sustained attempt in contemporary analytical psychology to think through the philosophical foundations of Jung’s project with rigour.
For those interested in reading more, visit our catalogue of books on, and written by Giegerich.
For a taste of Giegerich’s thinking before the seminar, a 1985 lecture to the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, “The Nuclear Bomb and the Fate of God” is available on YouTube. A conversation between Dr. Philip Kime and Stefano Carpani on Jung, Hegel, and Giegerich is also worth an hour of anyone’s time for those wanting a more accessible introduction to his philosophical framework. Those interested in his clinical dimension will find a book discussion of What Are the Factors That Heal? a useful companion to the seminar’s themes. And for German speakers, a 2017 lecture on spirit and soul, Geist und Seele: C.G. Jung und die psychologische Differenz, delivered at a trilateral DGAP conference in Berlin.
The seminar takes place on June 20, 10am–1pm Bucharest time, online. It will be conducted in English without translation. Registration is available via the link.