Lecture

Jung in Dialogue with the Soul: Is Analytical Psychology a New Religion?

Lecture Description:

This lecture will focus on the implications of the dialogues between Jung and his soul that are recorded in “The Red Book.” In one of these dialogues, the soul tells Jung that he has received a revelation that he should not hide. His calling is the new religion and its proclamation. The presenter will discuss his idea that because of Jung’s dialogue with the soul that 12 years later, he was able to write, “We stand on the threshold of a new spiritual epoch; and that from the depths of man’s own psychic life, new spiritual forms will be born.” 

Is Jung's approach to the psyche really the revelation of a new form of spirituality, what Edward F. Edinger calls the "new dispensation," or is this idea merely a symptom of inflation? If analytical psychology is indeed an emerging form of spirituality, what does that look like in practice, how does it compare with traditional religious forms, and what are the implications for the practice of psychotherapy and for our culture?

Workshop

Depth Psychology as a Spiritual Practice

3/17/12 | 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Event Location: The First Unitarian Church of Cleveland
(21600 Shaker Blvd., Shaker Heights, Ohio 44122)

Workshop Description: 

This workshop will review Jung's approach to religion and spirituality, and then present the idea that for many people the practice of depth psychotherapy is a contemporary form of spiritual direction. Instead of a traditional theistic idea – that of integrating spiritual direction into psychotherapy and depth psychology – Dr. Corbett suggests that using a Jungian approach these disciplines can be seen as synonymous.

The psyche reveals the sacred in the form of numinous experience, and manifests the Self, which is an imago dei; the psyche is therefore sacramental. Because the Self acts as a kind of blueprint for the individuation of the personality, there is no firm distinction between our spirituality and our psychology or between psychological and spiritual problems. This workshop will illustrate this idea with examples from our participants’ experiences.

About Corbett:

Lionel Corbett, M.D., trained in medicine and psychiatry in England, and as a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, teaches depth psychology as a member of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s core faculty in Santa Barbara, Calif. Dr. Corbett is the author of “Psyche and the Sacred: Spirituality Beyond Religion,” “The Religious Function of the Psyche,”  “The Sacred Cauldron: Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice,” and is co-editor, with Dennis Patrick Slattery, of “Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field” and “Psychology at the Threshold: Selected Papers.”