Save the date! The first weekend in October (Thursday, October 3 to Sunday, October 6), the C.G. Jung Society of St. Louis invites you to participate in our eighth biennial Jung in the Heartland Conference, Earth Speaks, Psyche Dreams: Jungian Perspectives on Our Shared Ecologies.
This year marks the Society’s return to an in-person conference offering and our first year at Mercy Conference and Retreat Center off Geyer Road in St. Louis County. Meaning will unfold through presentations, workshops, music, dialogue, art, dream work, poetry, massage, yoga, and ritual.
Jung in the Heartland Faculty: Jungian Analysts Lori Pye and Stephen Foster
The Society will welcome Lori Pye and Stephen Foster as its 2024 conference faculty.
LORI PYE is a Founder and President of Viridis Graduate Institute (Ecological Psychology and Environmental Humanities – viridis.edu). As an executive director for international marine nonprofits, Lori worked with numerous NGOs to co-develop the Eastern Tropical Pacific Biological Seascape Corridor with the Ministers of the Environment from Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. Lori received her B.S. at Texas A&M and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Lori has multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals and serves on the Editorial Board for Ecopsychology Journal. Lori lectures at Viridis Graduate Institute and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). She formerly taught at Pacifica Graduate Institute (clinical psychology, counseling psychology, depth psychology, and mythological studies programs), and at Kaweah Delta Mental Health Hospital Psychiatric Residency Program. Forthcoming textbook: Fundamentals of Ecological Psychology, Routledge.
STEPHEN FOSTER is Senior Training Analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA) teaching with their Memphis-Atlanta Seminar. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, with a private practice in Boulder, Colorado. Stephen teaches on a wide range of subjects including nature and the environment, alchemy, Norse mythology, Fairy Tales, and the Tarot (See his website: www.BoulderJungianAnalyst.com).
Before becoming a Jungian Analyst, Stephen worked as an environmental scientist studying the risks and impacts associated with hazardous chemicals in the environment. The combination of these experiences results in his book Risky Business: A Jungian view of environmental disasters and the Nature Archetype, which expands on his interests in the psychology of environmental problems, nature, and archetypes related to humanity’s interactions with nature.
Conference Program Highlights
Jung on the Human Psyche’s Split with Nature
There are forces at work in the human psyche that treat the earth as an object and deny the obvious: that we also mature in our relationship with the earth. Jung discussed this split from the Nature Archetype, which has become activated on personal and collective levels due to climate crisis. It is often through literature and art that our psyches are enlivened, re-animated, and re-connected with the natural world.
Attendees will explore nature in their dreams. By paying close attention to the natural setting of dreams and using Jung’s synthetic method of associative and amplification techniques, participants will search for transcendent symbols that might provide both personal and collective insights.
Our externalization of human wastes into the environment is causing a wide range of problems for humanity, which are forcing us to adapt. Although the earth and humanity are adaptable, the accelerated time scale for adaptation is untenable. Our conference closing will examine Jung’s thoughts on adaptation and consider what this may mean for nature and ourselves as we search for the Lumen Naturae (the Light of Nature).
Earth-Human: Climates in Crisis
Over the course of the weekend, a few ideas will be shared from ecological psychology and the examination of one of the planet’s overarching processes, the necessity of change, to offer ways of sensing and responding differently to a suffering planet.
The Conference sessions will include intra-active workshops and outdoor walks to deepen our ecopsychological (an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary field that focuses on the synthesis of ecology and psychology) understanding of change.
Accommodations & Seminar Site
Mercy Conference and Retreat Center
2039 North Geyer Road
St. Louis, MO 63131
We will convene in a beautiful retreat center with trails, gardens, and a labyrinth. It is only 25 minutes from the St. Louis airport; the food is delicious and locally sourced when possible. Vegetarians, vegans, those requiring gluten-free options, and those with food allergies are easily accommodated. All rooms are individually thermostat controlled and have private baths. An exercise room is available. Rooms and buildings are non-smoking. See Mercy Center’s website for more details and driving directions.
Accommodations at Mercy Conference and Retreat Center are limited and filled on a first-come, first-served basis. If all rooms are filled when your registration with a room request is received, nearby hotels are available.
Open Art Studio
An area will be set aside and materials provided for creating mandalas using paint, collage, markers and found objects. When we create mandalas, we are making a personal symbol that represents who we are in the moment.
Conference Schedule
On Thursday, October 3, check-in opens at 3:00 PM and dinner is served from 5:30 to 6:45 PM. The Opening Session of the conference starts at 7:00 PM. The program continues all day and evening on Friday and Saturday. Sunday’s session on October 6 closes the conference at noon, followed by lunch. A detailed schedule will be distributed to attendees on opening day.
“We should not rise above the earth with the aid of ‘spiritual’ intuitions and run away from hard reality…”
(CW12 ¶ 148)
Registration is open! Choose your option below:
- Jung in the Heartland 2024 Conference Registration (Residential—stay on site overnight with fellow conference participants; all lectures, workshops, meals, and conference activities included)
- Jung in the Heartland 2024 Conference Registration (Commuter—stay at home or elsewhere off site; enjoy all lectures, workshops, meals minus breakfast, and other conference activities with fellow conference participants)
- CE Request—Jung in the Heartland Conference 2024
Refund Policy: Full refund of conference fees if canceled by September 1, 2024. Fifty percent refund of conference fees (less $50 registration fee) if canceled by September 12, 2024. No refunds of conference fees after September 1, 2024. Membership fees are non-refundable.
All rights are reserved by the Conference Directors to make faculty substitutions and/or request that disruptive participants leave without a refund. All content of presentations and events represents the views of the speakers only and may not represent views of The C.G. Jung Society of St. Louis.
CEs: A total of 12 CEs are available to LCSW, LPC, LCPC, and General Studies applicants for the conference proper through the Chicago Jung Center. Additional details will be available as soon as registration opens.
This year marks 30 years of The C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis!
Download a conference brochure here and see our refund policy here.
Art by MEAR ONE