Please read below about the fall line-up of events and mark your calendars to join us.

This fall marks ten years since an event in November, 2024, led to the founding of the Nashville Jung Circle. As we begin this tenth year, which will be celebrated in the spring, we recognize, below, the all-volunteer 2024-2025 board members and officers who lead this organization.
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Each change in seasons is like crossing a threshold, a time of transition to pause and reflect on past and future. Maria Popova writes in The Marganalian of the season of fall:

"What, then, of autumn — that liminal space between beauty and bleakness, foreboding and bittersweet, yet lovely in its own way? ... perhaps, between its falling leaves and fading light, it is not a movement toward gain or loss but an invitation to attentive stillness and absolute presence, reminding us to cherish the beauty of life not despite its perishability but precisely because of it; because the impermanence of things —
of seasons and lifetimes and galaxies and loves — is what confers
preciousness and sweetness upon them."
For the full article, go to: https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/10/11/autumn-light-pico-iyer/

FALL 2024 EVENTS

Friday, September 20th
6:30 - 8:00 pm central time
Online event

Race, Faith, and Place: Bearing Witness to Collective Grief, Shame, and Trauma in the American South
by Tony Caldwell, LCSW

This presentation incorporates experiences gathered while providing services to marginalized populations, facilitating racial healing groups, leading activism and advocacy efforts, and working with analysands and community members. With Tony Caldwell leading the discussion, we will stand at the intersection of race, sex, religion/ theology, spirituality, psychology, sociology, and ethics and interpret the collective phenomena we encounter through the lens of Jungian psychology.

Tony Caldwell, LCSW, is a candidate of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, a faculty member of the Haden Institute, and a former lecturer at The University of Mississippi. He is a Jungian psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Nashville, TN, and a board member of the Nashville Jung Circle. In his spare time he performs original music and co- owns Caldwell Guitars Nashville with his son, Silas.

Sunday, October 13th
2:30 - 4:30 pm central time
Glendale United Methodist Church
In-person Workshop

Jung, Shamanism, and the Anima Mundi
led by Dr. Karen Harper

In this experiential discussion, Jungian and shamanic practices will be discussed and explored in how they are similar albeit with different terminology: active imagination, mythology, work with symbols, and their effects on the individual and collective including the anima mundi or world soul.

For those attending this in-person event please bring a bandana or eye mask if you want to participate in a brief journey. Also, the book Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue by C. Michael Smith will be helpful.

Karen Harper, PhD, LCSW, has a private practice in East Nashville and is president of the Nashville Jung Circle. She has presented nationally and internationally on Jungian topics. Her interest and experiences with shamanism prompted her PhD independent studies focus on Jung and shamanism in Iquitos Peru, “the city of shamans."

Friday, November 15th
6:00 - 7:30 pm central time
online presentation

"The Sacred Call: to Listen, Follow, and Honor"
by Dr. Fanny Brewster

Engagement with a life of integrity requires ego and Soul reflecting one another. How best can we experience our Life Purpose as the Soul's call, reflecting our human and Divine natures?
The integrative work of strengthening the ego is always best supported with a respect and connection to our unconscious. Allowing ourselves to follow the path of the Sacred Call can give us peace, joy even though it is not without suffering--a natural aspect of being human. The life's work is passing through one's suffering and letting this also create moments of joy at having committed to being on a path of Individuation. Living means seeking the deeper intention of the Soul and following this path through the life. Let us consider this in our heart to heart gathering.

Dr. Fanny Brewster is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Holding a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and a M.F.A in creative writing, she has published on topics that engage Jungian psychology with contemporary issues of American culture, creativity and dreamwork. Dr. Brewster developed and led experiential workshops on Dreams, Creative Writing and Mythology and has given national and international workshops and lectures on Culture, Diversity and Creativity—the Depth Writing Workshop. Her most recent book published in June 2023 is Race and the Unconscious: An Africanist Depth Psychology Perspective on Dreaming.

MEET THE BOARD

We are grateful for everyone who supports this organization by reading this newsletter, attending events, and serving in volunteer roles. Below are short introductions to both long-serving and newer board members and officers.

If you would like to volunteer with the Nashville Jung Circle, please email us at info@nashvillejungcircle.org and tell us about your interests and skills. We hope to expand our offerings with some additional help!

What is Depth Psychology?
Often you may hear the terms “Jungian psychology” and “depth psychology” used interchangeably. Are these referring to the same thing, or is there a difference?

Simply put, “depth psychology” is the study of the unconscious mind. The term was coined in 1914 by Dr. Eugene Bleuler, a psychiatrist who was director of the Burghölzli Asylum in Zürich, where Carl Jung began his career. Freud quickly adopted the term, and today depth psychology refers to the theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler (who are considered the founders of this field of psychology), Pierre Janet, Otto Rank, and William James along with more recent work by James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and others. But most often this term is used to refer to Jung’s psychology.

Psychology in most academic settings is focused on the conscious mind, with emphasis on therapeutic approaches like CBT (cognitive behavior therapy). Depth psychology, as the name suggests, looks beyond behavioral and cognitive processes to examine unconscious elements that affect our conscious behavior, using dreams, word associations, synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) symbolic images, and projections to access the unconscious mind. Depth psychology draws on mythology, religion, alchemy, philosophy, literature, and the arts, as well, to study the nature of the unconscious.

Freud first theorized the unconscious, as thoughts and emotions below the surface of consciousness, which he viewed as repressions. Jung, originally a disciple of Freud, expanded the theory of the unconscious to include both a personal unconscious and a deeper layer he called the “collective unconscious,” which contains primordial images, or archetypes, shared by all people and cultures. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helped explain why similar figures and themes, like archetypal heroes and villains, occur in mythologies and cultures around the world. Jung believed that working to understand one’s inner world would lead to healing and wholeness, similar to ideas found in Eastern philosophy and Western mysticism.

Increasingly, depth psychology is available in academic settings like Pacifica Graduate Institute. The Depth Psychology Alliance is a free online community that offers a number of classes and other resources related to depth psychology. For more information, go to: http://depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/welcome-center-new-to-depth-alliance-start-here