Art and Psyche in Sicily: Layers and Liminality - September 2-6, 2015

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Please join us for a four-day conference to be held in the beautiful ancient Sicilian town of Siracusa. Sicily, surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, is a crossroads between worlds and cultures where layers of civilizations, from Greek and Roman to Arab and Norman, contact and overlap one another at every turn. The city of Siracusa is a place where Plato stayed for a time and Freud visited in 1910. The stunning landscape, art, architecture, archeology, and colorful history will reveal itself as the conference unfolds. We trust that layers of psyche will also emerge through our interaction with the environment, the presentations, and the experience of a community made up of people who are passionate about art and depth psychology.

Home base for the conference will be a hotel located in Siracusa’s historic center with close proximity to archeological sites, museums, charming shops and restaurants. Selected plenaries will be held in the Paolo Orsi Archeological Museum, followed by a tour for participants, and in the nearby stunning Greek Theatre, followed by a visit to the Neapolis Archeological Area. And, as last time, we will offer a dream-over, this time in an ancient site. A half-day trip to another stellar archeological site outside the town will also be included. We encourage submissions from artists and therapists of all persuasions and anyone with an interest in depth psychology. We are looking for creative proposals that may range from ancient to contemporary subjects and from experiential workshops to formal papers. Our hope is that the overarching theme of layers and liminality will offer flexibility and open space for imaginative expression of mind, body and soul. Possible themes for exploration could include:

*The symbolic relevance of Sicily as a crossroads and container for multiple cultures and civilizations
*The importance of the transcendent function as a connecting principle between art and psyche
*Space and time “in between”
*The emergence of new life from ancient ruins
*The co-existence of art and psyche in a shared liminal space
*Artist/analyst as archeologist
*The relevance of myth for art and psyche
*Island as image and metaphor
*Mapping as physical artistic process and psychological experience

Allow your imagination to respond freely to the place, time and overarching theme of layers and liminality. Please send us your proposal of 500 words along with a brief autobiography and audiovisual needs by January 1, 2015. Let us know if you are interested in presenting a paper, a workshop or a brief “spark” of an idea that would last for 20 minutes followed by discussion. By request following our last conference, we will be sure to save time for audience response and interaction, so as to encourage the emergence of community spirit. Artists are encouraged to send slides of their work or website address.

We look forward to seeing those of you who have attended previous Art and Psyche conferences in San Francisco (2008) and New York (2012) and we welcome new presenters and participants. The continuation of an exciting dialogue between art and psychology embedded in a fascinating environment is the aim of this new conference. Please join us.


Proposals can be sent to artandpsyche.sicily@gmail.com by January 1, 2015.

Acceptances will be sent by March 15, 2015.

With all best wishes,
The Art and Psyche Working Group
Linda Carter, Diane Fremont, Melinda Haas, Ami Ronnberg, Ellen Scott, Caterina Vezzoli, Lino Ancona, Francesca Picone

Sebastian Zimmerman - Fifty Shrinks: Inside Psychoanalyst's Offices

New Book Release: "Fifty Shrinks" is a compendium of photographs and essays of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in the most sacred of spaces, the private offices where they see their patients. Sebastian Zimmermann, a practicing psychiatrist and award-winning photographer, includes a wide array of practitioners from a multitude of backgrounds, orientations and subspecialties. His intimate portraits introduce the leading luminaries in the field as well as newly minted professionals pointing the way for the next generation. Zimmermann captures how the creation of the therapeutic space mirrors the wide spectrum of philosophies, persuasions and techniques used by his peers. This unique book offers a glimpse into the private interiors of psychotherapists and the inner workings of those healers who inhabit them. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sebastian Zimmermann is a psychiatrist in private practice on Manhattan's Upper West Side and an award-winning photographer. His photographs have been featured in the New York Times, the Paris Review, L'Oeil de la Photographie and 20 minutos. Excerpts of this book have been serialized in the Psychiatric Times. Sebastian was the subject of a television documentary on New York photographers for public television in his native Germany. Sebastian studied at the International Center for Photography and privately with Arlene Collins.

The Jung - Neumann Letters Conference - Israel - April 2015

Jerome Bernstein - Healing Our Split: Participation Mystique and C.G. Jung

Chapter excerpts from Jerome Bernstein  (2014). Healing Our Split: Participation Mystique and C.G. Jung, Chapter 8 in Mark Winborn (Ed.). Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Fisher King Press, 2014.

 It is important to remember that Jung was observing and trying to understand the ‘primitive mind’ through the lens of his ‘civilized’ mind. Projecting and fitting what he thought he was observing into categories understandable to him was unavoidable since he had no other frame of reference. Apparently it did not occur to him to try to go beyond "understanding" by putting himself into the psychic and spiritual frame of mind of these ‘primitives’ nor did he have the experience to do so. He observed and analyzed them, as well as their culture and spiritual practices, but did not share or participate in these aspects of their psychic life with them. Nor was he consciously aware that he was observing a highly complex cosmological psychic system that, from the perspective of the Native American, was less linear; reflecting a sense of a Great Round where time is more circular than linear. In such a system, there is no ‘beginning’ to the cosmological story as such; where ‘creation’ ‘happened’ (was told as Story) as opposed to being ordained by a "higher power" or resulted from thought as opposed to thinking; where Story and particularly story-telling itself is the sustaining power of life. He also was likely unaware of the profound differences in language structure between verb-based oral traditional language where words, according to Tewa Professor Dr. Gregory Cajete, "that describe the world emerge directly from actively perceived experience," and more noun-based Western Logos language which is more abstract and conceptual, i.e. more removed from the experience itself. And we now know that language, particularly language structure, has a profound adaptive and interactive relationship to and with culture and therein with the spiritual orientation of that culture...

Rather than being "supernatural" (or "transpersonal") the world – life -- is transrational as well as rational. This distinction is essential because of the confusion between the "supernatural" which trumps the rational (reason) and ‘makes no sense,’ and what I call the ‘transrational,’ which transcends the binary Logos concept of rationality but poses no contradiction to the rational. It is a different experience and because it does not trump the rational, neither makes sense nor doesn’t make sense. It is what it is. From within this framework, science and its offspring, technology, take their rightful place in the evolution of consciousness. Segal asserts that science properly replaces myth – I prefer the word ‘story’ – as "the explanation of the world." It is this confusion around the "logical" and the "prelogical" that confounds and which in Jung’s thought is the cause of dissociation in the Western psyche and specifically its organ of consciousness, the Western ego construct. The problem was in labeling participation mystique as "prelogical" in order to make it fit into the Western Logos frame. The need was and remains to recognize that participation mystique was and is a different manifestation of the reality of the psyche...

We need a consciousness that can perceive and relate to the whole of psychic reality. Nature has its own set of rules, and we need to come to understand and respect those rules better than we do. What is urgent is to bring the psychodynamic of reciprocity into engagement with the psychodynamic of dominion and therein bring balance to our over-inflated self-annihilating Western ego.

Order from Amazon or Fisher King Press
Full sample chapter available at the Fisher King Press link.

　

　

　

Thomas Kirsch - A Jungian Life - New from Fisher King Press

From conception until the present, C.G. Jung, his ideas, and analytical psychology itself have been a central thread of Thomas B. Kirsch’s life. His parents, James and Hilde Kirsch, were in analysis with C.G, Jung when he was born, and he was imaged to be the product of a successful analysis. At an early age, Dr. Kirsch was introduced to many of the first-generation analysts who surrounded C.G. Jung, and over time became acquainted with them. Later, in his roles with the IAAP, he gained a broad knowledge of the developments in analytical psychology, and through both his early family history and in his later professional life, Dr. Kirsch worked closely with many analysts who were integral in forming the foundations of analytical psychology.

Thomas Kirsch graduated from Yale Medical School in 1961, did his residency in psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University, and then spent two years with the National Institute of Mental Health in San Francisco. He completed his Jungian training at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco in 1968. In 1976 Dr. Kirsch became president of the Jung institute in San Francisco, and in 1977 he was elected second vice president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, or IAAP, the professional organization of Jungian analysts around the world. As vice president and then president of the IAAP for eighteen years, he traveled the world and was able to meet Jungian analysts from many different countries. This position allowed him to serve a missionary function of sorts in new areas like China, South Africa, Mexico, Russia, and other former Soviet Eastern Bloc countries. In A Jungian Life, Thomas Kirsch reflects upon his entire existence which has been intimately involved with C.G. Jung and analytical psychology.

Tom Kirsch’s unique life as a Jungian spans much of the history of analytical psychology which he both witnessed first hand and helped shape. His gifts of seasoned insight, finely tuned feeling and a keen eye for specific historic detail makes this volume a rare and significant contribution.

– Tom Singer, M.D., Jungian analyst, editor of ‚Psyche and the City’

Tom Kirsch is one of the core creators of the Jungian world as we find it today. His knowledge of the history, the issues and the personalities is second to none. We knew that Kirsch is kind, empathic, related – and responsible for a raft of interesting publications. Maybe we  – or some of us – did not know how frank, penetrating, controversial and insightful an observer of professional political process he is. At times, the book takes no prisoners. Every Jungian analyst, candidate and scholar simply must read this book. But the way in Kirsch situates his first-person narratives against the backdrop of world politics – in Russia, China, South Africa and Latin America, for example – makes this memoir worthy of serious attention from non-Jungian thinkers and practitioners.

– Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex

Call for Participation: Psyche, Spirit, and Science Conference - July 9-12, 2015

Call for Participation

Psyche, Spirit, and Science: Negotiating Contemporary Social and Cultural Concerns

"The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?"

(C. G. Jung, Memories Dreams, Reflections)

“No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.” (C. G. Jung “Psychology and Religion”, CW 11:167)

The Fourth Joint Conference of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) (www.iaap.org) with the International Association for Jungian Studies  (IAJS) (www.jungianstudies.org)

Co-Sponsored by the Yale Divinity School

 9^th-12th July 2015 

Yale University

New Haven, Connecticut

  

Please email your presentation proposal to both

Co-Chairs of the Program Committee by 15th December 2014

Donald Lawrence Fredericksen dlf10@cornell.edu  and Joe Cambray cambrayj@earthlink.net 

 

Carol Tosone - Sandor Ferenczi and Short-Term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Sandor Ferenczi, a psychoanalytic pioneer and practitioner, suggested changes in psychoanalytic technique which would shorten the length of psychoanalysis. His introduction of "active therapy" involved increased activity from both the patient and analyst as a means to facilitate the exploration of unconscious material. The psychoanalyst prescribed the performance or cessation of certain behaviors, thus instituting active measures which made the patient a full participant in the psychoanalytic process.

Interpretation, Ferenczi contended, was an active intervention which interrupted the patient's psychic activity, leading to the uncovering of repressed thoughts and ideas. In collaboration with Rank, Ferenczi underscored the importance of here-and-now transference interpretations and emphasized the emotional experiences of the patient in
the transference, rather than the sole intellectual recovery of memories. Ferenczi noted that intellectual discovery without affect can serve as resistance.

Ferenczi's central ideas on active psychoanalytic treatment and interpretation are the cornerstone of modem dynamic short-term treatment. His ideas have been lauded and incorporated into the works of modern short-term therapists, such as Davanloo, Mann, and Sifneos. Ferenczi's emphasis on the importance of present life events in psychoanalytic treatment is currently receiving much attention in the psychotherapeutic community. This can be seen in the emphasis on the treatment of Axis I disorders and symptomatology, as well as the process of maintaining a process in most models of short-term treatment.

Sandor Ferenczi's incessant drive to improve psychoanalytic methodology has provided inspiration to modem short-term therapists. While Davanloo and others have had the benefit of years of development in research, theory, and technique, it was Ferenczi who pioneered these efforts and who served as a role model. His courage and experimental spirit embody the essence of psychoanalytic inquiry, and have, in my estimation, earned him the title of "Forerunner of Modem Short-Term Psychotherapy."

Carol Tosone, Ph.D. (1997). Sándor Ferenczi: Forerunner of Modern Short-Term Psychotherapy, Psychoanalytic Social Work, 4:23-41

The Psychoanalytic Muse Exceeds 100,000 hits!

The Psychoanalytic Muse has reached the 100,000 hits milestone since its inception March 10, 2011. Thanks to all the regular readers of the Muse as well as those who find the Muse through various search engines. The Psychoanalytic Muse seeks to bring excerpts from classic and contemporary articles focused on psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. New posts have been irregular over the past few months because of involvement with other projects but new material should be emerging consistently again soon.

Before the Split

Discussing Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond on Shrink Rap Radio

Mark Winborn, PhD, editor of The Psychoanalytic Muse, is interviewed by Dr. David Van Nuys of Shrink Rap Radio. In this podcast, Dr. Van Nuys is interviewing Dr. Winborn about the release of the edited volume "Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond" by Fisher King Press which re-examines Carl Jung's concept of Participation Mystique and a variety of related concepts, such as projective identification. The subject is approached from a variety of clinical, theoretical, and experiential perspectives. Dr. Winborn's co-authors come from the depth psychological traditions of Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis and hail from across the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Shrink Rap Radio (www.shrinkrapradio.com) is an online podcast which interviews a wide variety of mental health professionals and others in the healing arts. The interview can be heard or downloaded at Shrink Rap Radio along with a huge library of previous interviews, including a 2013 interview with Dr. Winborn about his earlier book - "Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey."