Stand By The Mother is a Jungian fundraising lecture series conceived and hosted by training analyst Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi in support of Palestinian mothers, it returns this June with its second event.

The Lecture: Who is Philemon? Who is Ka?

The speaker for this event is George Bright, one of the more distinctive voices in British analytical psychology. His lecture takes up a pair of figures that Jung encountered in the inner work that would eventually become the Red Book: Philemon and Ka. Jung describes Philemon as ancient beyond measure, a figure who sheds light and knowledge, yet whose wisdom proves curiously ineffective. Ka, by contrast, is dark and unknowable, yet strangely effective. It is an unlikely pairing, and Bright will explore why it is also an essential one for understanding the Red Book, and for grasping the deeper logic of Jung’s psychology and his worldview. He will also trace how this pairing resurfaces thirty years later in Jung’s thinking on synchronicity.

The Cause

The series was conceived by Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi as a way of bringing the Jungian community together around a shared humanitarian commitment. Voluntary donations support the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, an organisation that has operated in Gaza for over three decades, providing essential mental health services to women and mothers under conditions of extraordinary difficulty. The money raised goes exclusively to GCMHP’s work on the ground, via its UK partner Beyond Conflict.

The first event in the series, featuring John Beebe on the Creatura, established both the intellectual seriousness and the humanitarian spirit that define this series. Beebe explored the Gnostic concept that Jung reintroduced in the Seven Sermons to the Dead — and later, through Philemon, in the Red Book — arguing for its renewed relevance to depth psychology’s capacity to respond to world suffering. The thread connecting Beebe’s lecture to Bright’s is not accidental: both turn on the figures of Philemon and the deeper questions of what Jungian psychology can offer a world in crisis.

There are no registration fees. The event is on Sunday 7 June from 5pm to 7pm BS. Registration and donation links are available here.