During this Friday night event, Dr. Francesca “Cheska” Ferrentelli told the story The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane — one of Kate DiCamillo’s rich, powerful, and moving middle-grade reader books whose highly archetypal themes are akin to modern-day fairy tales — and discussed it from a Jungian and archetypal perspective. She then presented participants with study questions before they moved to breakout rooms to discuss their findings. Later, everyone came back together in the larger group, where individuals were welcomed…

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The evening of Friday, February 24, lecture participants joined the Society as James Hollis invited them to consider how stories — provisional, localized, and often created at an early stage of our history — become defining narratives, and how therapy can be understood as the identification of and critical analysis of our operative or “meta-stories.” Until these “narrative interpretations” can be smoked out, we remain their captives. Through a series of questions, Dr. Hollis encouraged participants to examine the stories…

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The evening of Friday, December 2, lecture participants joined the Society as Martha Peacock led an in-depth exploration of the value of memoir writing as a step on the path to what Jung called the individuation process. To give the audience a taste of memoir writing, they were asked to reflect and write personally about the three stages of alchemy: Nigredo: the dark night of the soul that often includes suffering and grief Albedo: an awakening of the spirit, a…

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…the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections pg. 191 On Saturday, October 29, participants in this online workshop explored transgenerational complexes through the lens of the Disney / Pixar animated feature Coco. In the film, young Miguel is mysteriously thrust into the mythic land of ancestors and is tasked with resolving generational complexes and trauma. Though seemingly light-hearted family entertainment, the film has rich themes participants explored…

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