C. G. Jung Foundation of Ontario

“Borderland consciousness,” a term originated by Jungian analyst Jerome Bernstein, describes the psychic space where the “overly rational western ego is in the process of re-connecting with its split-off roots in nature.”  When we dream, or have fantasies of wild animals, plants or unleashed elemental forces such as water or fire, we are stepping into that realm of the psyche. More and more frequently images from the “Borderland” are coming into the consulting room to address that space between the modern technological ego and the natural world that contains and nurtures us.  The talk will include stories and myths from the Inuit people, as well as clinical material.  It will be illustrated with excerpts from John Houston’s Inuit documentaries: Nuliajuk (Sedna) and A Diet of Souls.

$20 in advance; $25 at the door; Sustaining Members free - call office for ticket

Each of us has a special gift for attunement with nature.  These gifts may come through a dream, some creative work, or an experience in wilderness. They may take the form of animals, plants, stones, waters, etc. The workshop is designed to discover our place between the rational mind and nature so that we may become more adept at practicing “Borderland consciousness.”  Bring something to the workshop that embodies a special experience of nature.  Also, bring a drum, a cushion, and comfortable clothing. (Extra drums will be provided.)

Please come by the Foundation office for refreshments and to get to know other available members, staff and OAJA analysts. You can, if you wish, obtain a membership for the year. Feel free to browse the Fraser Boa Library and, if you're a member, to borrow from the collection. Browse the Word & Image Bookstore. Get the inside scoop on some of this year's events. This social event will increase your acquaintance with the friendly faces attending future Foundation events. All are most welcome to come – particularly new and prospective members – and there is no charge, although donations are always welcome! Registration is not required, but if you could let the office know you're coming, that would help us for catering purposes.

The poet translates the archetypal image into language that touches us in the present moment and thereby “makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life” (CW15, par. 130). In The Poetry Corner, we will ponder the riches contained in various poems that speak to our hearts.

The Jesus face at the bottom of the well of history was a liberal Protestant theologian for Harnack and an aged hippie for the Jesus Seminar.  Where numinosity is at play, withdrawing the projections is no easy task.

The day starts with a long list of things to accomplish; we have barely time to write down a dream, let alone explore it, then we are out of the door ready to perform our tasks in the outside world. In a life of doing rather than being, how can we be present to our inner life and honor its needs? How can we learn to breathe through life rather than “catch our breath” before moving on to the next thing to do? How can we learn to remain in our body?

This seminar will explore the body-mind-spirit connection. It will offer restorative yoga (gentle stretches that can be done sitting or lying down on a mat), breathing exercises as well as short meditation sessions. These exercises will be interspersed with moments of self-reflection and self-discovery. The seminar will also present some of C.G. Jung’s writings on the body-mind-spirit connection.

Please wear loose, comfortable clothing.

Elisabeth Pomès is a certified yoga instructor (Kripalu Center, Massachussetts) as well as a Jungian Analyst.

This season we will continue reading Jung's "The Symbolic Life" (CW18). For more details, please contact Schuyler Brown at 416-241-5002.
New members are most welcome.

Literature offers a wealth of opportunities to investigate divisive gender issues, paternalism, and religious doctrine. We will examine the medieval idea of women as an “idealized object” through Dante’s influences on Italian poets and writers, and the liberalizing Muslim influences of the Spanish court of 1360. These literary motifs and affects are aligned to our own biased sex/gender/social assumptions, typed attitudes, and an essentialist reasoning that must integrate a differentiating Jungian consciousness. Although contributing to the shifting currents of modern day contrasexual/eros psychology, the numinous autonomy of these charged narratives often resist real change.

A series examining fundamentals of Jungian psychology through the medium of film.

Nov. 6: Individuation (Pomès)
In Central Station a cynical, joyless woman crosses paths with a lonely boy who is looking for his father. Together, they go on a long journey into places geographically and psychologically unknown to them. Themes found in the movie relating to the individuation process include meeting with the shadow, answering the call, dealing with crisis, the manifestation of the transcendent, the renewal through the child archetype and the theme of sacrifice: finding the treasure and letting it go.

Nov. 26: Shadow & Anima (Jackson)
A look at Bernardo Bertolucci’s stunning 1970 film, The Conformist, set in fascist Italy. A bourgeois man, terrified of his own shadow, adopts a heartless persona modelled on the masculine ideal promulgated by Mussolini, which falters only as he falls under the sway of a beautiful, charismatic woman.

Jan. 15: Animus (Pomès)
In Notorious, Alice Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, is recruited by government agent T. R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to infiltrate a group of Germans who have relocated to Brazil. The animus figures that Alice meets range from loving to utterly dangerous. A discussion will follow on the theme of the animus and its manifestations both in the movie and in real life.  Limit: 15-20 participants.

An exploration of the cross-cultural imagery and symbolism of the Devil, and its psychological import.

This season we will continue reading Jung's "The Symbolic Life" (CW18). For more details, please contact Schuyler Brown at 416-241-5002.
New members are most welcome.

The pain of mourning and heartbreak is neurologically similar to being subjected to torture. There seems to be only one way to end that agony, and to limit somatic damage: neurobiology calls it an "evolutionary jump" and Jungians call it the process of individuation. The good news is this: if you love, your heart should be broken at some point or other in your life. If not, your love may remain the innocent love of a child. 
Ginette Paris will discuss how the process of individuation includes heartbreak, and propels one beyond limbic attachments. She will also discuss how the basic ideas of Jungian psychology are supported by recent findings in neuroscience.
Dr. Paris is a psychologist, therapist and author of many books, among which is: Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience (Routledge 2007).  Her books have been translated into many languages.  She is core faculty at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, and Research Consultant in the Somatics Program.

In the film The Mother, May, a woman in her 60’s, is catapulted into a painful crisis of individuation when her husband dies. Unable to go on, she is faced with the challenge of transcending her sense of herself – and the life she has built around it – in order to “live forward.” In this seminar we will consider The Mother, written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Roger Michel, in segments, pausing to reflect on May’s experiences as her process unfolds. We will explore the conflicts – both inner and outer – that manifest as the transgressive stirrings of new life begin to disturb the habitual order of her world and she encounters previously split off aspects of her own psyche. In the particulars of this woman’s journey toward greater vitality and wholeness, we will discern some of the archetypal patterns and motifs common to the individuation process in the second half of life, including the issue of sacrifice with no guarantees of how the future will unfold.

“It’s a lot like work,” they say.  Drudgery, toil, and ‘slogging it out’ all depict grueling aspects of labour where no love is lost. But is it a precondition that it really isn’t work unless you would rather be doing something else? What is it about the idea of work that makes us pine for vacation and retirement or find ourselves stuck in self-defeating cycles of procrastination and avoidance? How is it that some people love what they do, while others work themselves to death, and yet others become freeloaders or gold diggers?

Exploring various Jungian concepts—the psychological ‘opus,’ alchemical work and creative work among others—this lecture will sweat out the inner workings of work, which after the day is done is a psychological notion. Perhaps somewhere between all work and all play we can discover a psychological work that offers more than the same old grind.

This work-shop continues the explorations of the Friday night lecture by turning the focus on individual experience. Participants will be encouraged to bring images and stories that relate to their own personal encounters with work, livelihood, procrastination … or any other love-hate encounters with the daily grind.

Along with group exercises this workshop will delve into other expressions of work that include film clips and stories that will add to our understanding and relationship to the psychological ‘opus.’

This season we will continue reading Jung's "The Symbolic Life" (CW18). For more details, please contact Schuyler Brown at 416-241-5002.
New members are most welcome.

This season we will continue reading Jung's "The Symbolic Life" (CW18). For more details, please contact Schuyler Brown at 416-241-5002.
New members are most welcome.

More often than not, we experience dreams or fantasies of pigs, severed heads or menstrual blood as repugnant – even threatening.  But if we excavate the roots of these images in ancient Celtic mythology, we encounter Cerridwen, the lunar White Sow Goddess, the rituals around kingship and the “ensouled” land, and the mead which – when imbibed – bestowed gifts of prophecy and poetic inspiration.  The lecture will delve into these three motifs by way of Celtic myth, dreams from modern case material and visual art.’

This workshop is open to all those interested in exploring the language of the body-mind. Participants will be guided through breath awareness and body sensing into a potent experience of themselves.  There will be time to express the impulses and images that arise both through movement as well as drawing or painting. Please bring a mat or blanket.

Janice Skinner has been leading people through explorations in breath, sound, movement and yoga for 25 years.  Her company Move into Balance creates practices for those seeking a greater relationship to themselves and daily life.

This season we will continue reading Jung's "The Symbolic Life" (CW18). For more details, please contact Schuyler Brown at 416-241-5002.
New members are most welcome.

Participants will have an opportunity to work closely with dreams to see how they are put together and what they have to tell us in terms of how we live our day-to-day lives. Please bring questions.

Pilgrimage – a sacred journey in pursuit of wisdom, healing, guidance and inspiration – is evident in all world religions and was also important in the pagan religions of ancient Greece and Rome. While pilgrims traditionally seek a specific place sanctified by association with a divinity or other holy personage, the increasing popularity of the Camino of Santiago de Compostela (150,000 pilgrims completed the 500 mile walk in 2010 as compared with only 2,500 in 1985) is marked by a growing emphasis on transformations in the self.  This presentation will explore the “camino experience” from a Jungian perspective, noting parallels between the pilgrimage experience – a kinetic ritual carried out in liminal space and time – and the journey of individuation.

This season we will continue reading Jung's "The Symbolic Life" (CW18). For more details, please contact Schuyler Brown at 416-241-5002.
New members are most welcome.

Laurens van der Post (1906-1996) was born into a distinguished Dutch family in Southern Africa. While growing up, he digested a vast amount of local native folk-tales and traditions, which became the prima materia of his many books and novels about South Africa. By the age of 20 he had left South Africa for England and a journalistic career. His life and achievements are archetypal in importance: a long career in the British Army, attaining the rank of Colonel; three years captivity in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, memorialised in the book and film, Merry Xmas, Mister Laurence; champion of the rights of the aboriginal inhabitants of Southern Africa, the Kalahari Bushmen; knighted by the Queen; confidant of Prince Charles; and he was married to a Jungian analyst! In addition Laurens van der Post met Jung rather memorably in Zurich in 1948 and they remained very close friends until Jung's death in 1961. Laurens van der Post had a uniquely articulate understanding of Jung, the urgency of his message for our times, and the continuing relevance of his spiritual legacy. In 1978 Laurens van der Post was interviewed by Suzanne Wagner of the Los Angeles Jung Institute for the Remembering Jung series, and it is this film that will form the basis of tonight's lecture.

This season we will continue reading Jung's "The Symbolic Life" (CW18). For more details, please contact Schuyler Brown at 416-241-5002.
New members are most welcome.

An illustrated lecture followed by discussion on the symbolism of the bear. Part V of the animal-as-symbol series.

This presentation is inspired by Jung’s significant observation on the seriousness of nonsense: “People sometimes think that analysis will take the place of life; they protect themselves in that way against much nonsense that might be lived. But mind you, if you don’t live your nonsense you will never have lived at all, and the meaning of life is surely that it is lived, not avoided.” There will be time for questions and answers.

This seminar will explore the half-man, half-goat/horse figure found in Western myth.  Both the symbolism of the figure and specific characters will be discussed through both text and images to better understand what they might represent in the psyche.

In this lecture Stephen Foster will expand on the core themes from his book Risky Business.  For thousands of years humanity lived in harmony with nature, using its resources and living within the yearly solar cycle.  With the advent of the industrial revolution and our ability to live independently of nature, and to manufacture goods and infrastructure on a mass scale, our relationship with the environment has changed.  We can now generate wastes that will potentially impact us for thousands of years into the future, and this has also fundamentally changed how our psyche considers and relates to nature. Using myths and modern case histories, this lecture will show where Analytical Psychology can inform and guide this important relationship and offer opportunities for transformation.

In Jung’s archetypal theory, the Nature archetype presents in the psyche on two poles: an instinctual pole and a spiritual pole.  The instinctual pole drives our human needs for sexuality, food and safety.  The spiritual pole allows for a deeper connection to nature, creating numinous experiences that connect us to the Self.  While working on environmental issues over the past 25 years, we have witnessed a full range of human experiences concerning nature.  The psyche’s capacity to connect with environmental damage is suppressed by powerful protective influences, especially where our own shadow, and personal harmful effects on nature are concerned. This workshop will involve creating images and engaging with the unconscious in order to find a voice, image, or personal story that can inspire small but essential sparks of transformation that we may carry forward into our lives.

Our third annual analyst-presentations followed by discussion on a current topic. This event is designed to be a fun and relaxed opportunity to encourage the lively exchange of good ideas and generate camaraderie between our members. The two previous events have proven enjoyable for all but each was unique, so we won't try to predict what may happen. We hope to welcome those Foundation members who want a chance to spend time with their Jungian friends and enjoy engaging with provocative ideas. The topic and presenters will be announced on the website and in the Spring 2012 issue of our newsletter Chiron.