Sarah Jackson: Regarding Images: What Visual Art Can Teach Us

The premise of this lecture is that visual art can teach us how to work with, appreciate, and better understand our dreams, as well as all manner of images that arise and are presented to us by the psyche. Using contemporary and ancient visual art, we will explore ways to expand our ability to “stick with the image” (Pat Berry). We will also discuss symbol and image, and visually amplify Jung’s pivotal statement that “psyche is image”.

Sarah Jackson, M.F.A., M.A., Jungian Analyst (IAAP) is a visual artist who has exhibited widely. She is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York and lives in Great Barrington, MA where she is in private practice.

Che bella luna! It’s the power of the moon, which intoxicates, inspires, and sends us spiraling into unexplainable moods. This moonlight is often the perfect backdrop for that romantic evening in front of the fireplace, for the tribe to gather in front of the campfire to hear stories of their past, and then there are the times of lunacy-when the spirit of the moon drives us into some other world. Moonstruck tells the story of lunar influences- the power of the feminine in an extended Italian family. With the high drama, charm and utter madness we have all come to expect from the Italians, we find Cher, playing Loretta, being pulled by many unconscious and lunar influences visiting Ronny, played by Nicolas Cage. Here, in one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history, Loretta has entered the inferno- the bakery where Ronny toils away day after day in front of the burning ovens. Its Ronny’s relationship to the bread-symbolic of the Goddess Demeter and his ongoing vigil with the baking ovens, Hestia’s domain which allows him to receive Loretta’s great love. Like the rising of bread, the passions between Ronny and Loretta burn and she is now thrown into the alchemical fire. In this presentation, Dr Conforti will discuss the archetypal underpinnings for this film, and the symbolic meaning of Loretta’s relationship to family, to Ronny, to Sicily and ultimately, to her own emancipation. In viewing a number of scenes from this movie, we will begin to understand how this is a story of masculine and feminine healing and redemption. We will examine and discuss the archetypal processes allowing for this to occur.

Michael Conforti, Ph.D., is a member of the New England Association of Jungian Analysts and founder of the Assisi Institute now located in Stonington, CT. He has more than 30 years of working in Jungian Psychology and his own ethnic heritage as a Sicilian and Southern Italian, positions him well to discuss this wonderful film.

Erotic love and spirituality are generally recognized as polar opposites in the world’s great religions, and Buddhism as it is usually known and taught is no exception. That desire is to be confronted and overcome is taught as the Second Noble Truth as the cause of human suffering, along with ignorance and hatred. Yet it is erotic love which makes “the world go round” as has been said.

Analytical Psychology also has deeply cautioned us about romantic and erotic love. From Jung onwards, Jungian writers have called this love a projection to be handled with care and suspicion. In this lecture we will explore the various ideas, practices, teachings and writings on how to relate to this most basic of human drives, both from the Jungian and the Buddhist perspectives. Using our post-modern and Western psychological tools of Jungian psychology, we will seek an understanding of how we might come to find liberation and enlightenment powered by the very energy which confounds and mires us.

Gary Brown, M.S.W., C.S.W. is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in New York City. Currently he is vice president of the New York Association for Analytical Psychology and a Supervising Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York. A life-long student and teacher of Buddhism, he is an ordained lay Buddhist priest and a designated Dharma Master.

For the Winter session, the Jungian Reading Group will continue reading Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,

CW vol 7. 

Joseph P. Wagenseller, D. Min., N.C. PsyA., L.P.C., L.P. is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Westport, CT, having practiced for 37 years in Manhattan. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Temenos Institute, now celebrating its 38th year in Westport and is the past President of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York. Currently he is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Board for the Accreditation of Psychoanalysis. Additionally, Dr. Wagenseller is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University. He is the author of “The Archetype of Vocation,” in Protestantism and Jungian Analysis, “Spiritual Renewal at the Midlife from a Jungian Perspective”, Journal of Religion and Health (Vol. 37, No 3) and “Individuation, Jung’s Psychological Equivalent of a Spiritual Journey” in the Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality, ed. Lisa Miller, Ph.D., Oxford University Press, Inc., 2012.

For the Winter session, the Jungian Reading Group will continue reading Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,

CW vol 7. 

Joseph P. Wagenseller, D. Min., N.C. PsyA., L.P.C., L.P. is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Westport, CT, having practiced for 37 years in Manhattan. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Temenos Institute, now celebrating its 38th year in Westport and is the past President of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York. Currently he is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Board for the Accreditation of Psychoanalysis. Additionally, Dr. Wagenseller is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University. He is the author of “The Archetype of Vocation,” in Protestantism and Jungian Analysis, “Spiritual Renewal at the Midlife from a Jungian Perspective”, Journal of Religion and Health (Vol. 37, No 3) and “Individuation, Jung’s Psychological Equivalent of a Spiritual Journey” in the Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality, ed. Lisa Miller, Ph.D., Oxford University Press, Inc., 2012.

This interactive evening will provide an opportunity for participating myth makers to consider the terms “myth” and “mythology,” and to explore how myth shapes our everyday lives. This will lead to a brief overview of the work of Joseph Campbell and set the stage for our gatherings to follow.

Margaret Lowenfeld was a child psychiatrist who developed sand tray therapy, which she called “World Technique.” She encountered C. G. Jung at the International Conference on Mental Hygiene in Paris in 1937 where she first presented her technique to the scientific community. Jung later encouraged Dora Kalff to study with Lowenfeld, and Kalff went on to develop the more widely known Jungian Sandplay therapy. A British and Polish citizen, working as a freshly minted young doctor in World War I POW camps in Poland, Lowenfeld encountered the horrors of war and social and cultural devastation that would haunt her and drive her work in understanding children’s mental development and creative processes. This talk will focus on the life of Margaret Lowenfeld, the questions that personal circumstance and current world events were forcing her to suffer, and the important intellectual and therapeutic contributions she was able to make out of her grappling with these problems.

Cynthia Swartz, M.D., is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist working in a rural family medicine clinic in northern Vermont. Prior to going to medical school, she attended the Analyst Training Program at the C. G. Jung Institute-Boston and continues her independent study of Jungian Psychology. She holds a Master Degree in Organ Performance from Indiana University and currently studies violin and plays in orchestras in her home state of Vermont.