Zoom presentation with Tony Caldwell, LCSW

Join us as Jungian psychotherapist Tony Caldwell, LCSW, delves into the complex topic of masculinity. Tony will lead a discussion that explores the concept of masculinity through a Jungian lens. We will address the constellation of factors that inhibit human flourishing, starting with the socialization of boys and making our way through the lifespan.

In this presentation we will explore masculinity as a philosophical and psychological concept, as energetic expression, and as the product of familial considerations in the nurturing system, socialization experiences in the sustaining system, and social sanctioning on the regional and societal levels. We will also address aspects of masculinity as they relate to, are informed by,  and often perpetuate, transgenerational trauma, violence, oppression, repression, splitting, and the accumulation of collective shadow.

Drawing from the works of Jung, Von Franz, Woodman, Hillman, and including a recording of a conversation Tony had with James Hollis about the socialization of men, we will explore developmental and archetypal considerations at the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and collective levels

Zoom discussion led by
Dr. Karen Harper and Alan Scalpone

UFOs, ghosts, faeries…such liminal, uncanny phenomena have been a part of humanity as far back as the record goes. C.G. Jung had a life-long psychological interest in the paranormal and documented many fascinating experiences of his own. Jung came to understand the rich field of strange occurrences as indelible parts of reality. They are “psychic facts” pointing the way to a deeper understanding of the Self. The paranormal can be eerie and unsettling; quite frequently it is thought-provoking, numinous and transcendental.   

 Please join Karen Harper Ph.D., LCSW, and Alan Scalpone for an online conversation about these strange borderlands of reality and the captivating stories that live there. Participants will be encouraged to share their own thoughts and experiences in discussions and breakout rooms.

Jung and Creativity
For C.G. Jung, creativity is a natural process of the psyche. Creative activity can be healing for the individual and even transformational for both the individual and culture. In this presentation Dr. James Newell will discuss the distinction between creativity as a healing practice, creativity as craft, as art, and as high art. Any discussion of Jung and creativity must be understood in the context of Jung’s understanding of psychological maturation, or the process of individuation. As such, Dr. Newell’s presentation will include a discussion of individuation and its relation to the creative process. This presentation will also serve as an introduction to an eight week college-level course on Jung, Creativity, and the Arts offered this fall through the Depth Psychology Academy. 

James Newell, PhD, is an educator, professional musician, and the director of the Depth Psychology Alliance. James earned his master’s degree in Pastoral Counseling and Theology from Vanderbilt University Divinity School, with a focus on Jungian psychology. He earned his doctorate in History of Religions from the Vanderbilt University Graduate School of Religion. James has taught courses in world religions for Western Kentucky University, Central Michigan University, Excelsior College, and other schools. For the past several years he has been developing a certification program in depth psychology offered through the Depth Psychology Alliance.

Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey
led by Mark Winborn, Ph.D., NCPsyA

This presentation by author and Jungian analyst Mark Winborn, Ph.D., NCPsyA, will explore the archetypal journey of the human psyche through an examination of the blues as a musical genre. The genesis, history, and thematic patterns of the blues are examined from an archetypal perspective and various analytic theories – especially the interaction between Erich Neumann’s concept of unitary reality and the blues experience. Mythological and shamanistic parallels are used to provide a deeper understanding of the role of the bluesman, the blues performance, and the innate healing potential of the music. Universal aspects of human experience and transcendence are revealed through the creative medium of the blues.

The presentation will be augmented by visual images, audio recordings, and video to deepen the audience’s involvement in the themes explored.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will:

• Learn to identify archetypal patterns in blues music.

• Learn how the experience of blues music can be understood through
  Jung’s concept of participation mystique.

• Will develop greater awareness of emotional themes permeating daily life and the process of psychotherapy through blues music.

• Will develop an understanding of psychological and cultural influences which led to the development of the blues as a distinct genre of music.

Suggested Reading: Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey (Fisher King Press)

Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist. He received his MS and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Memphis in 1987 and his certificate in Jungian Analysis from the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts in 1999. Dr. Winborn is a training/supervising analyst of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and the Moscow Association for Analytical Psychology. He currently serves on the American Board for Accreditation in Psychoanalysis and the Ethics Committee of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. Dr. Winborn is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Analytical Psychology and the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, as well as being a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Winborn is the author of Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey (2011) and Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond (2014) and Interpretation in Jungian Analysis: Art and Technique (2018), as well as journal articles, book reviews, and two books forthcoming from Routledge Press. He lectures nationally and internationally and maintains a private practice in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was the Training Coordinator for the Memphis-Atlanta Jungian Seminar from 2010 - 2016. https://drmarkwinborn.com/

What are You Dreaming?
led by Laura Hileman, M.A., M.S.

In this time of increasing crisis and instability, what are you dreaming? We know that our nightly dreams wake us up to our personal individuation process. Jeremy Taylor writes that our dreams generate creativity and wholeness on collective levels, too: they mirror society as a whole, as well as our relationship to it. Furthermore, he claims that our dreams, and our conscious dreamwork, “foster and reflect the evolution of human consciousness.”

This possibility offers a wild hope in a time of looming despair. Join Laura Huff Hileman, a Jungian-oriented dreamworker, for a conversation about the power of dreams in personal and collective individuation, then join a breakout group for optional sharing of your own dreams. We’ll conclude with a creative exercise to deepen your own dreamwork practice.

Laura Huff Hileman, M.A., M.S., is a Jungian-oriented dreamworker and spiritual director, formerly on the board of the Nashville Jung Circle. She trained at The Haden Institute, where she now mentors in the Dreamwork Program. Since 2000 she has facilitated dream groups and individual dreamwork through her practice, Fire by Night. She lives and works in Jonesborough, TN, where she enjoys family, mountains, and new challenges in dreamwork as a resilience resource for environmental activists. Be in touch at laura@firebynight.net and www.firebynight.net.

The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology, and Modern Life Two-part Book Discussion
led by Karen Harper, Ph.D. and Adele Tyler, M.S.S.

On February 20th and March 20th, 2022, the Nashville Jung Circle will host a two-part book discussion of The Earth has a Soul: C. G. Jung on Nature, Technology, and Modern Life, a compilation of Jung’s writings on Nature, selected and edited by Meredith Sabini from Jung’s published works, speeches, seminars, interviews, and letters. The book shows a more intimate, poetic side of Jung than his academic writings reveal and is a personal testament to his living out his theories through an embrace of the natural world.

This compilation is divided into chapters based on subject matter, with a brief introduction by the editor in each section to provide context. The book opens with excerpts from Memories, Dreams, Reflections and personal letters, where Jung tells of formative childhood experiences in nature, experiences with indigenous peoples in Africa and the American southwest, and stories of building and utilizing his Bollingen tower retreat. The overall theme is Jung’s concern for modern man’s loss of connection to Nature. Stating that civilization took a “wrong turn” as it evolved from a religious to a scientific viewpoint, Jung argues that advancements in technology have left humans with an estrangement from the natural world, which he equates to losing a part of one’s soul.

In the Preface, Sabini explains that she organized Jung’s extensive writings on this subject by imagining posing a series of questions to Jung: “How did our loss of connection with Nature come about? Was it ever any different? What are the consequences of this loss? Have we really “conquered Nature? How might this rupture be healed?” (Preface, xi).
A review of the book by Richard Reese relates Jung’s thoughts on the evolution of consciousness. Beneath the newly rational mind of modern man, the mind of the “archaic man” still exists, buried in the unconscious :

“Our conscious mind was new, infantile, incomplete, unstable, and easily injured. Jung saw it as a tiny boat floating in a vast ocean of unconscious knowledge. Like a fish out of water, we were separated from our ancient oceanic home, an unpleasant traumatic shock. In the good old days, we lived in an enchanted world where everything was sacred. But science and technology have dragged us away into a miserable manmade world where nothing is holy, and everyone is restless, anxious, and neurotic.”

Jung had a distinct mistrust of modernity. Much of what he says seems prophetic, more true some sixty years after his death than when he was expressing these views: “we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with even wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.” Writing in 1961, the year of his death, Jung said: “Civilization is a most expensive process and its acquisitions have been paid for by enormous losses, the extent of which we have largely forgotten or have never appreciated.” Close to his death he had visions of catastrophes occurring in fifty years.

As remedies to this modern dilemma, Jung suggests that we turn inward, exploring our unconscious through dreams and reflection, and turn outward to spend time in nature and live in communion with the natural world. Jung himself did the latter through building his primitive retreat on Lake Zurich at Bollingen, a stone tower with no running water or electricity, both of which he thought would alienate the souls of his ancestors that he sought communion with. There he spent extended time alone, cooking on a wood stove, drawing water from a well, and raising food in his garden.

But Jung did not believe a return to primitive living was the solution, saying “the wheel of time cannot be turned back.” In excerpts in the final chapter, he suggests that our task as moderns is to retain the level of consciousness we have acquired while enriching it with experiences of the primordial world, with the goal of a balanced relationship between the conscious and the unconscious minds. The book ends with a quote about the need for cooperation between mankind and the natural world, rather than domination from either side – the union of opposites, which Jung wrote about extensively: “Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose.”

Note: the book is available through Amazon at https://amzn.to/3E92Z0a

and also may be ordered through Parnassus Books: https://bit.ly/3q3bk0m

The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology, and Modern Life Two-part Book Discussion
led by Karen Harper, Ph.D. and Adele Tyler, M.S.S.

On February 20th and March 20th, 2022, the Nashville Jung Circle will host a two-part book discussion of The Earth has a Soul: C. G. Jung on Nature, Technology, and Modern Life, a compilation of Jung’s writings on Nature, selected and edited by Meredith Sabini from Jung’s published works, speeches, seminars, interviews, and letters. The book shows a more intimate, poetic side of Jung than his academic writings reveal and is a personal testament to his living out his theories through an embrace of the natural world.

This compilation is divided into chapters based on subject matter, with a brief introduction by the editor in each section to provide context. The book opens with excerpts from Memories, Dreams, Reflections and personal letters, where Jung tells of formative childhood experiences in nature, experiences with indigenous peoples in Africa and the American southwest, and stories of building and utilizing his Bollingen tower retreat. The overall theme is Jung’s concern for modern man’s loss of connection to Nature. Stating that civilization took a “wrong turn” as it evolved from a religious to a scientific viewpoint, Jung argues that advancements in technology have left humans with an estrangement from the natural world, which he equates to losing a part of one’s soul.

In the Preface, Sabini explains that she organized Jung’s extensive writings on this subject by imagining posing a series of questions to Jung: “How did our loss of connection with Nature come about? Was it ever any different? What are the consequences of this loss? Have we really “conquered Nature? How might this rupture be healed?” (Preface, xi).
A review of the book by Richard Reese relates Jung’s thoughts on the evolution of consciousness. Beneath the newly rational mind of modern man, the mind of the “archaic man” still exists, buried in the unconscious :

“Our conscious mind was new, infantile, incomplete, unstable, and easily injured. Jung saw it as a tiny boat floating in a vast ocean of unconscious knowledge. Like a fish out of water, we were separated from our ancient oceanic home, an unpleasant traumatic shock. In the good old days, we lived in an enchanted world where everything was sacred. But science and technology have dragged us away into a miserable manmade world where nothing is holy, and everyone is restless, anxious, and neurotic.”

Jung had a distinct mistrust of modernity. Much of what he says seems prophetic, more true some sixty years after his death than when he was expressing these views: “we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with even wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.” Writing in 1961, the year of his death, Jung said: “Civilization is a most expensive process and its acquisitions have been paid for by enormous losses, the extent of which we have largely forgotten or have never appreciated.” Close to his death he had visions of catastrophes occurring in fifty years.

As remedies to this modern dilemma, Jung suggests that we turn inward, exploring our unconscious through dreams and reflection, and turn outward to spend time in nature and live in communion with the natural world. Jung himself did the latter through building his primitive retreat on Lake Zurich at Bollingen, a stone tower with no running water or electricity, both of which he thought would alienate the souls of his ancestors that he sought communion with. There he spent extended time alone, cooking on a wood stove, drawing water from a well, and raising food in his garden.

But Jung did not believe a return to primitive living was the solution, saying “the wheel of time cannot be turned back.” In excerpts in the final chapter, he suggests that our task as moderns is to retain the level of consciousness we have acquired while enriching it with experiences of the primordial world, with the goal of a balanced relationship between the conscious and the unconscious minds. The book ends with a quote about the need for cooperation between mankind and the natural world, rather than domination from either side – the union of opposites, which Jung wrote about extensively: “Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose.”

Note: the book is available through Amazon at https://amzn.to/3E92Z0a

and also may be ordered through Parnassus Books: https://bit.ly/3q3bk0m

It wasn’t long ago that fortune telling with cards was an underground art, shrouded in mystery, practiced by the marginalized, notorious, or eccentric. Today, tarot has gone mainstream and there is a proliferation of decks and a wide-spread resurgence of interest in divination. Is this a passing fad of uncertain times, or is there something deeper going on? In this lecture, Alan Scalpone will illustrate how the standard 78 card deck of tarot is indeed a highly useful tool for deep self-exploration, creative insight, and so much more. Tarot is, just like dreaming, “a royal road into the unconscious”and a way to pragmatically engage with the mysteries of the psyche to form a more durable relationship to the Self. This talk will include a discussion of the history and theory of tarot cards along with hands-on practical instruction about how to develop one’s own relationship to the cards. Most importantly, we will see how tarot divination praxis strongly resonates with the ideas and principles of C.G. Jung and Depth Psychology.  

Originally hailing from Chicago, Alan Scalpone is a multi-instrumentalist musician and composer who has played in dozens of bands and toured extensively in America and Europe. His eclectic musical career includes performance art, large scale theater works, film soundtracks, and studio work. Parallel to his music, Alan has maintained a life-long interest in the psychological, paranormal, and esoteric. Since arriving in Nashville in 2012, he has pursued this passion through the discovery of tarot and has subsequently given hundreds of readings at metaphysical shops, private gatherings, and school fairs. Alan has been lucky to have some very capable tarot mentors including T. Susan Chang and Nancy Antenucci.