On Sunday, April 19, 2026, the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association presents “The Matters of Mind – Mind in Matter,” a hybrid conference examining how dreams and synchronicities emerge from conjunctions of psyche and world. The conference addresses a compelling question: can the dreaming mind penetrate matter as well as deal with what matters? Through presentations examining historical and contemporary cases where cognition and emotion, memory and imagination move toward empirical laboratory results, attendees will encounter the mind-matter continuum where scientific discovery and psychological insight converge. The event brings together physicists, philosophers, and Jungian analysts to explore how internal images produce material results in sciences, languages, and arts.
Morning Program: Theoretical Foundations and Historical Cases
Dr. Harald Atmanspacher, emeritus member of the Turing Center at ETH Zurich and President of the Society for Mind-Matter Research, delivers the keynote address on The Neutral Field. Atmanspacher, a principal architect of dual-aspect monism, explores the philosophical framework proposed by Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli relating archetypes and synchronicity. He examines how mental and physical phenomena are grounded archetypal activity. The presentation includes analysis of a young mathematically gifted student’s dream illustrating the archetypal dimension of mathematical symbols.
Beverley Zabriskie, LCSW, founding faculty member and former President of JPA, presents Breaking Symmetry: A Physicist’s Dreams of a Chinese Woman, examining Wolfgang Pauli’s dreams and their relationship to his concept of symmetry in physics. Zabriskie, a past Vice-President of the Philemon Foundation and associate editor of multiple analytical psychology journals, explores how Pauli’s dream imagery functioned as both metaphor and reality, addressing transitions in scientific theory, internal transformation, and passage through psycho-physical states.
Afternoon Program: Dreams as Empirical Data
The afternoon sessions examine specific historical instances where dreams contributed directly to scientific advancement. Matthias Leutrum, MFA, LP, JPA Director of Training, presents Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s dream diary, the father of modern neuroscience and 1906 Nobel Prize recipient, held imaginal conversations with Freud while developing the synaptic theory of memory. Leutrum’s previous work has appeared in the Journal of Analytical Psychology and at multiple IAAP congresses.
Dr. Farzad Mahootian, Clinical Associate Professor at NYU with interdisciplinary background in philosophy and chemistry, examines Dreams of Alchemists, Magicians, and Occult Sciences in Eurasian Context, exploring how premodern practitioners considered dreams as empirical data. Nilton Maltz, MSc., LP, presents Dmitri Mendeleyev’s 1869 dream of the periodic table, tracing the fantasy of seeing order in matter from ancient Egypt through alchemy to modern chemistry. The conference concludes with a roundtable discussion allowing audience engagement with all presenters, followed by a closing panel synthesising insights across presentations.
Running from 9:30am to 4:30pm at the NYC Seminar and Conference Center, with simultaneous Zoom access, the conference offers 6 CE units. You can find additional information and register here.