The Fisher King Review

I Ching, Jung, Tao and Synchronicity

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 13:51:00 +0000

Here is a link to a major presentation that Fisher King Press author Dennis L. Merritt gave on February 21, 2021, to the C. G. Jung Club of Orange County on “The I Ching—Oracle and Book of Wisdom”.

The I Ching is one of the oldest and most profound books of wisdom whose origins go back to Chinese shamanism and prototypical Chinese ideograms. Jung, who used it extensively, described the I Ching as a book of archetypal imagery first assembled in 1050 BCE. Every major Chinese thinker, artist, and philosopher had been influenced by I Ching until the modern era. One can put a question to the book and via synchronicity get a meaningful answer as if from a Chinese sage. Examples are given to illustrate how the book can be used personally and in the therapeutic setting for guidance on relationships, difficult life situations, and psychological and spiritual development.

The most complex part of my presentation explores the binary code numerical base of the I Ching, which computers run on, and how numbers as the purest forms of the archetypes (Jung) framed the thinking of the sages as they put images and words to abstract numbers beginning with yin and yang lines. Hermes from our Western tradition is used to illustrate how things cross over from what Lao Tzu called the “dark enigma” into consciousness.

https://uci.zoom.us/rec/play/fltK-SapUY39XNrTxatcgAJVD03z5rQ7QyxuNmcg9sFa55sO-lHuqAYWxE26VB4L5W0oVS_2a0Q11b6-.9jMk5ur_mRyfESRI?startTime=1613951061000

Merritt on: Covid-19: Inflection Point in the Anthropocene Era and the Paradigm Shift

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 04:12:00 +0000

Covid-19: Inflection Point in the Anthropocene Era and the Paradigm Shift of Jung’s New Age

Article by Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created a unique moment in the history of our species. Something so small it takes an electron microscope to see is disrupting millions of lives and threatening the world’s economy. Frontline workers risk their lives trying to save patients who may die alone without friends or family at their sides. A virus, a strand of nucleic acid that highjacks the functioning of a cell to reproduce its unique viral form, is bringing our species to a near standstill. Despite the wonders of science, technology, and economic systems we can still be humbled by nature, indeed, by a strand of nucleic acid. It is crucial how we respond to the situation. What can we learn from it and how do we go forward?

We start with an adequate framing of the issue. This is an issue of life and death, which means it is in the most fundamental archetypal realm and requires an archetypal perspective. The fear of death from the pandemic is bringing a sense of immediacy and urgency on a planet-wide scale. Death cannot be separated from life, death makes us aware of the preciousness of life, and death confronts us with questions about the meaning of existence and our place it the bigger scheme of things. Death can bring an end to systems and beliefs that no longer support life and a healthy existence, and that could be the most important outcome of the present crisis.

The virus is demonstrating to what degree we are interconnected and how much we need each other. The forced social isolation and six-foot distancing has cut us off from intimate contacts and group experiences making us aware by absence how important we are to each other. The ghostly empty streets in otherwise bustling cities are eerie reminders that our systems are in shock at all levels. Like a nightmare that wakes us in the middle of the night, this shock is meant to shock us into a new awareness.

Read more...

Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Merritt is the author of Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology: The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volumes 1 - 4.

Press Release: Just Published - Fairy Tales with a Mexican Twist

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 06:22:00 +0000

January 7, 2019

Fisher King Press announced today their newest publication:

Fairy Tales with a Mexican Twist: Soul Stories

by Jacqueline Gerson

illustrations by Saúl Kaminer

Fairy tales convey life’s magic, reflecting the deep psychological themes that govern the outcomes of our lives. Written in simple language, these stories take us along soul’s path once more, revealing how the issues of today can still yield new restorative meanings. This fresh set of tales introduces characters who invite the reader to think the unthinkable, explore the unknown, and feel what is irreconcilable—resulting in a deeper experience of life itself. Staged in remote corners of the world where healing mysteries can be summoned when life’s dilemmas emerge and right and wrong are no longer clear, Gerson’s fairy tales show that there are still Gods and Goddesses who can intervene when humans lose their way on life’s journey.

In simple language, deep psychological themes concerning the soul’s path are illustrated through new fairy tales which bring up life’s magic into often present everyday issues. 28 color illustrations.

About the Author
Jacqueline Gerson is a Jungian analyst with a private practice in Mexico City, where she works as an analyst, teacher, and supervisor. With a lifelong passion for dance and movement, she first approached dreams as spontaneous choreographies created by the psyche. Eventually, that discovery led her to the study of Analytical Psychology to become an individual member of the IAAP. She lectures on topics related to analytical psychology and has been published in The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, with Daimon Verlag, Brunner-Routledge, Spring Journal, as well as the Mexican magazine Epoca. As a new way for her to relate to most sensitive aspects in life, writing stories became apparent. Her special joys are grandmothering, dance movement, writing, poetry, and nature.

About the Illustrator

Saúl Kaminer was born in Mexico City on July 8, 1952. He graduated as an architect from the Mexican National University (UNAM). He started his artistic work in 1970 and moved to Paris in 1976 where he worked intensely in his paintings and sculptures. After 22 years in France, Saul continued his artistic work in Mexico. So far, he has had 65 individual expositions and participated in 160 collective expositions in various countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Title: Fairy Tales with a Mexican Twist: Soul Stories
Author: Jacqueline Gerson
Illustrator: Saúl Kaminer
Paperback: 170 pages with 28 color illustrations
Condition: New
Publisher: Fisher King Press (January 7, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690461
ISBN-13: 978-1771690461
Also available as an eBook from Google Play

Advent and Psychic Birth - An Introduction

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Sun, 25 Nov 2018 20:03:00 +0000

From Advent and Psychic Birth by Mariann Burke

Meister Eckhart in a Christmas sermon paraphrasing St. Augustine says of Christ's birth, "This birth is always happening. And yet, if it does not occur in me, how could it help me? Everything depends on that."(1) The thesis of this book is that our own psychological "birth" is related to the "birth" of God within us, and that this birth is "always happening." The paradox is that we long for this birth and yet we fear it. For centuries our unconscious fears and longing have been mirrored and "contained" in the religious dogma and symbolism of the church, a channel to the riverbed of the unconscious. But in a church and a culture that generally devalues the feminine realm--earth, the body, sexuality, instinct--these energies flow back into the psyche. Today the longing for consciousness and the integration of these energies have led many to leave the church which, they feel, no longer speaks to their needs. Others find spiritual fulfillment in a strong adherence to traditional doctrinal and Biblical interpretation. Still others, in increasing numbers, find that a more personal inner journey leads not only to greater self-awareness, but also to a richer appreciation of their religious heritage.

My approach throughout Advent and Psychic Birth is to try to make connections between the archetypal images and personal experience, in both ancient and modern modalities, through associations, amplifications and clinical material. In one sense this approach has evolved out of my training in analytical psychology. Yet it has become deeply personal and flows out of my own felt sense of the Advent imagery and my own journey toward psychic birth. Far from diminishing my faith in Christ, it has broadened and deepened my understanding of the meaning of incarnation. Jung writes: "The efficacy of dogma by no means rests on Christ's unique historical reality but on its own symbolic nature, by virtue of which it expresses a more or less ubiquitous psychological assumption quite independent of the existence of any dogma."(2) On first reading these words we may feel that Jung is undermining dogma and Christ's mission on earth, yet our own experience as it relates to the underlying pattern of dogma, can only serve to enrich its meaning. "In religious matters ... we cannot understand a thing until we have experienced it inwardly ... for it is in this experience that the connection between the psyche and the outward image or creed is revealed .... "(3)

For each of us the image that speaks to us differs. For some it is an image from the Bible or from another religious tradition, while for others it is a dream image, or an image that seems to surface directly from the body. Each of these can be received as "messages " from God.

If we look at the biblical poetry of Advent in a more personal way, we find that while it belongs to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, it transcends both. Beginning in darkness and destruction and ending in light and rebirth, Advent imagery represents a mythic or archetypal pattern. The Advent call to awaken from sleep is a call to follow the way of consciousness, to search for the inestimable gift, the treasure of the "hidden" self as well as the Imago Dei which carries the power to revitalize us both as individuals and communities. Symbolically, the four Sundays of Advent remind us of the quarternity and of wholeness, as does the familiar Advent wreath with its four candles, one lighted each week suggesting the gradual dissipation of inner and outer darkness. During the first three weeks of the Advent liturgy, the tone is decidedly one of action and movement, beginning with the Baptist's call to prepare a way. With the desert "transition" the tone changes, and during the fourth week the Virgin appears, strong, questioning, willing to trust in the unknown. As in any religious initiation we are led to participate in a new dimension of life. Here, if we can contact our own "virgin energies," we listen as the angel speaks and we, in silence, like Mary, wait as the earth "buds forth a savior."

In chapter 1 we shall look at the background of the Advent season in the myths and practices underlying the winter solstice festivals, when our ancestors anticipated the return of the sun which had "disappeared." We shall look in particular at the myth of eternal return, in which the end of the year is celebrated analogously as a death, a return to chaos, and a renewal of time, of society and of each person. Our ancestors' sense of expectancy mirrors our own as we look at material from the oldest celebration of New Year in ancient Babylonia, noting, too, an earlier time, when the "birth of the new child or sun" came, not following the death of the old king and the restoration of the new, but out of the all-encompassing Earth Mother. The myth of eternal return is patterned after the creation myth in which life comes out of the "void," at the word of God. From a psychological perspective the myth reflects our own anticipation of new life even in the midst of our experience of "chaos" and darkness.

Longing is the theme of chapter 2, our own longing for rebirth and wholeness. We shall look at the ancient practice of the alchemists and at their opus in which they projected into matter their own psychic aspirations and their longing for God and for self. As Advent celebrates the feminine mystery of birth, so the alchemists intuited rebirth from the earth and from matter. Though they understood little about matter, they worked in their laboratory watching the effect of fire on the particles of earth they had placed in the round vessel, or vas. Through meditation and work they sought a more personal experience of incarnation. Through "operations" they performed on matter, the operations of water (solutio ), air (sublimatio), fire (calcinatio), and earth (coagulatio), they "brought forth" their "stone" or "Child," names they gave to the goal of their work, the inner "gold" of immortality. We will make some connections between the color worlds of the alchemists, the nigredo (black), albedo (white), and rubedo (red), and the stages represented in the Advent biblical imagery.

Hope is the theme in chapter 3, hope imaged by the savior child-god, the One who restores and frees us. The child-god represents one aspect of our own psyche together with the "dream" child, the real child, the divine child. Men and women in therapy often dream of children and infants, perhaps representing possibilities to be developed psychically. We shall look at two clinical vignettes in which women express their desire to have a baby. In some cases such an image may represent hope hidden under a sense of isolation and depression. Hope in its religious expression reaches a pitch of intensity during Advent with the "O" Antiphons. We shall look at these prayers as expressions of our longing for Christ as well as for our own hope for release from loneliness and fear.

Chapter 4 leads us back to beginnings where we encounter our fear. We are called to awaken and awakening to fuller consciousness can be painful and frightening. Key images here are the mountain, in mythology regarded as the Center of the World, the place of renewal and rebirth. Biblical passages recounting destruction by water and fire are also read during the first week of the Advent liturgy reminding us of the "return to chaos" in the solstice festivals, a prerequisite to "awakening" the sun. Psychologically this awakening can be viewed as a call to further development or, as in the case of movement toward "psychic birth," to a separation of the ego from the paradisical oneness of containment. Psychologically, this painful separation both from the mother and from the unconscious is needed for further development of the ego and a more secure sense of self.

In the wilderness our fear gives way to sadness and our sadness to anger. We need our anger, for it helps us to find our way. The wilderness journey is by far the longest stage in the way to rebirth. Jung tells us that there is no clear way; the way is made up of fateful detours and wrong turnings. The Baptist calls us to minister to the poor, psychologically to recognize and embrace the "poor" in ourselves. The parts we fear and hate, perhaps our anger and rage, our inner fierce "animals" need to be wrestled with in the wilderness of our psyche. Often the "demons" release their energies as light and power for movement into birth. In the wilderness we experience both demonic fire and life-giving waters, as we move into a period of "waiting" for the dawn.

After a night of darkness, we begin to experience the joy hidden within our own darkness. The dew symbolizes the awakening of joy. In chapter 6 we look at Mary as the Virgin and Mother, psychologically speaking the feminine side of God. While the motifs of fire and water are dominant during the wilderness sojourn, now we focus on air and earth motifs. The "child" of the alchemists comes out of the earth, that is, the human personality, and is nourished by all the elements. So we, too, in our journey to "birth" need to sense our spiritual "center" as giving purpose and meaning for our life. Yet while we look to heaven, or to "ideal" people in our lives to search for this center, we must come down to earth, to "embody" and to feel our body as "home" and cradle for our new life, the "child of joy." This process in the psychological literature is referred to as "idealizing and mirroring," or "ascent and descent." Mary represents the vessel within us, containing the virgin healing energies open to the transcendent power which can make our "impossibilities" realities. Mary at the annunciation represents in us the new creation and the possibility of recovering joy, and through an awareness of joy to experience a greater capacity to love.

Whatever one's religious persuasion one cannot help being touched by the poetry of the Hebrew and Christian biblical Advent texts. The Advent liturgy offers a rich fare of images: images of death and destruction, images of hope, of struggle, of waiting, of pain, puzzlement, questioning, doubt, images of birth and of love. Psychologically speaking, it is more important to experience an image than to interpret it or to relate it to mythological sources, helpful though this may be. Experiencing opens us to the energizing power of the image which "feeds" us, giving us substance and meaning. Whether the image comes from the Bible, Koran, I Ching, Tarot, or from our dreams and visions, the image brings us in touch with a wisdom and shared experience of humanity. Images of Advent speak to us of our yearning for life, even as the One whose birth we celebrate came to give us life "to the full."

Probably no other time of the year evokes in us such a range of emotional response--from sadness to joy--as the weeks leading up to the feast of Christmas. The word, "Advent," from the Latin, adventus, means "coming" or "approach." The word connotes a longing or hunger for something more in life, something intimated but still unfelt. For Christians this longing focuses on the divine child, a child who was embodied in the Jesus of history, and who, from a psychological perspective relates us to "unborn" aspects of ourselves. Advent, then, is the season of the unborn. And it is this aspect of Advent that we will explore as images of psychic pregnancy and birth. Each of us nurtures some promise that wants to be born. Psychic birth refers to any potential aspect of ourselves that longs for realization; it refers to our "becoming" who we are meant to be.

Advent biblical imagery metaphors the individuation process, the reconciliation and balancing of opposites within the personality, the conscious and the unconscious. Ideally the ego holds the tension between the two sides dialoguing and integrating aspects of the "dark unknown." This may happen, for example when our intellectual development dwarfs our feeling and emotional life, causing, perhaps, neurosis and psychosomatic symptoms. The "new" possibility, the more balanced personality may be symbolized through a reconciling symbol. The child is such a unifying symbol, born of two opposites, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious.

But what happens when the ego is not strong enough to stand the tension of opposites when, for example, the feeling or instinctual side has been so repressed that a healthy tension of opposites does not exist? This may be due to a poor "fit" between mother and infant through the fault of neither, or it may be due to emotional and bodily absence of a nurturing adult. In a letter to Walter Corti Jung wrote that God wants to be born in the flame of our consciousness. But we must be strong enough to bear this flame. And what if this flame has no roots in the earth? "Could God then be born? One must be able to suffer God."(4) In Jung's view God becomes conscious through each of us. We are God's limitation in time and space. In striving to find our own self, we become an "earthly tabernacle" for God. When this becomes our path toward psychic growth, then the pattern of ego development becomes the pattern of individuation. In these pages my focus on psychic birth refers primarily to this development. The divine child, then, might ref er not only to God but also to the hidden "cut-off" sense of self, the ego identity. But the Advent message brings healing as we resonate to its themes of death and birth out of our deepest need. Whether our need is to become more "grounded" in our "earth," that is, in our own ego self, whether our need is for liberation from the pull of opposite tensions in our life, or whether our need is simply one for renewal and affirmation of God's presence within us, the Advent imagery can speak to us in a deeply personal way.

In linking God's incarnation in Jesus and our own personal "becoming," the biblical imagery of Advent leads us into the depths of our own hope, desire, and joy. To awaken Advent within us means to open ourselves to the call to be initiated more fully into the meaning of death and birth, that mythic reality that fires our longing to experience the Life dwelling within us. During Advent the child carries that image of Life in all its various meanings. It evokes first the image of Jesus as divine child, a child-god. On a human level it recalls our own childhood as well as the child side of ourselves always present. On another level this Life is related to the "child motif," the mythological and symbolical child. In his Psychology of the Child Archetype Jung writes that this image of child links us to our own preconscious past, to our psychic roots, for the child lived a psychic life before it became conscious. The image of child, then, links us to our origins. Symbolically the child motif also links us to the future, because the child represents potential; it wants to develop. While the child links us to the past, it never ceases to look forward.

In tracing the psychic roots of Advent we come to see the deeper meaning of the recurrent celebration of Christmas, bringing before us again and again through ritual repetition of the mythical event the link to our origins, so that this link with our original condition may not be broken. For when we lose our relation to the instinctive side of the unconscious we become unchildlike and artificial. Unrelated to these vital energies within we begin to suffer from a sense of emptiness. Could it be that this separation from our inner "fire" may account in some way for the depressive symptoms so often suffered during the Advent-Christmas season? Are these symptoms caused by the physical and psychic effects of sunlessness? We know that during the weeks before Christmas many people feel more anxious, restless, irritable, and even hostile. Clinically we refer to this phenomenon as the "holiday syndrome." Above all, there is often loneliness, experienced more poignantly amidst Christmas partying. At times the outer celebrations find little resonance within. Perhaps it is within this very dissonance that we can discover the psychic roots of Advent, as a way leading us back to our instinctive roots, to the child.

This child is also a symbol of hope, and hope is linked with our heartfelt desire to risk the new and to create the new. The child envisions possibilities and opens its heart to them. A child cannot will otherwise. What can we say, then, about the sense of hopelessness that weighs on so many of us, or about depression, suicide, addiction, and the poverty of spirit historian Christopher Lasch points to as the sign of an unhealthy narcissism pervading our culture?(5) Maybe we can get some light on these questions by asking another. Is it possible that out of our very poverty of spirit hope reawakens, hope as a catalyst of desire?

Advent stirs up that deepest desire in us symbolized by the child--the urge to realize our true self. We live in an age that abuses, victimizes and neglects children, and this in itself reflects the need we have as adults to give attention to the side of us which, perhaps, has suffered the same fate. The "self-pathologies" of our time, especially narcissism or self-hate has reached epidemic proportions. This means that many children grow to adulthood with either a grandiose or deflated self-image that defends against both the vulnerable as well as the powerful hidden self and causes untold heartache, self-destructive activity, and waste of human potential.

Many years ago Jung wrote that the tragedy we face today results from our uprooting from grounding in the unconscious, or we might say, in Mother Earth. All that follows from that--psychosomatic illness, spiritual malaise, wounded self-esteem--we know well. While Jung always expressed interest in the historical cause of physical or psychic problems, he felt that we must also ask: What is the purpose of this disturbance? To what does it call attention? Can we discover the hidden value in it? Can we ask, "What is God calling me to in this depression?" Can we say, for example, that the prevalence of a sense of emptiness and loneliness in our society points to a collective hunger, not only for those aspects of our personality that want to be freed, but for the emergence of a hidden self? The value of this disturbance, then, may lie in its opening us to an awareness of our hunger for God and self, two aspects of the same reality.

It is failure to live our individual pattern that leads to a sense of emptiness and loneliness. This feeling is heightened in those who have been forced to abandon their own instinctive life with its needs and desires. "False self" is Donald Winnicott's phrase which describes a person who, out of need for survival in childhood, became compliant to the wishes and demands of others, and thus lost contact with his or her instinctive needs. This condition sometimes results in a feeling of being cut off from others, unrecognized, unable to communicate what is of deepest importance. Describing such a person, psychologist Stephen Kurtz writes of T.S. Eliot, that as a child he suffered isolation which left its scars of fragmentation. Eliot, it seems, was an unexpected child of middle-aged parents. One sister was eight years old when he was born; another was away at college. Eliot's father was growing deaf and was emotionally distant. Kurtz and Edel suggest that Eliot's mother projected on him her own need to be praised and acknowledged for literary achievement and that she treated him as a late "gift of God." Eliot's precociousness was reinforced by certain physical ailments, in particular a hernia which kept him from sports.(6) Eliot's mother did not raise the child but entrusted him to the care of an Irish nurse. This pattern is well known to therapists who note that the real child often was never seen, although his or her parents may have provided material care and goods. The child as idealized projection of parents' needs is treated as special and "a little god" but the real child hides in isolation, emotionally alone and neglected, perhaps only to realize much later that he or she was never loved and never had a childhood. Psychologically there are many variations on this theme, and the problems many experience today getting in touch with feelings and needs often stem from unmet needs for holding, mirroring, and understanding. When parents idealize their children, they fail to love the whole child, "the child of vomit, shit, fear and rage."(7) The child is rewarded for "proper" behavior, cleanness, and intellectual accomplishment. When this happens the child comes to loathe his "dirty self" the real self. Lack of self-esteem begins very early.

Like many therapists, I have heard people say, "I don't have a self. I fluctuate. If I'm praised I have one, if I'm neglected or criticized, I lose it." A woman I knew dreamed she had been born on another planet. She said, "Maybe that explains why I feel that I don't belong here. I don't feel that I'm in my life." Even the desire to be "incarnated" or reconnected with instinctual needs and wants seems to go underground. Eliot, in The Waste Land writes of this sense of imprisonment:

We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison (8)

The message of Advent speaks to this sense of imprisonment and isolation. Advent's darkness is related to the depressive's suffering in which despair seems to stifle hope.
Yet Advent's night closely resembles the mystic's night of the soul, that is, a felt absence yet a sense that Life is there in the darkness. It is as if in the darkness hides another "key" that opens the prison. As part of a series of cries for freedom which we will reflect on later, one of the Advent "O" Antiphons captures a response to Eliot's verse. It is the antiphon read during the fourth week of Advent.

Keys are associated with initiation and with the mysteries. In alchemy the goal or the "lapis" was referred to as "key."(10) And significantly, in ancient Egypt the key was associated with the cross. The gods often held the "Nern Ankh," the cross of eternal life, by the top as if it were a key. It was used in ceremonies of the dead in order to open the gates of death into immortality.

It seems that Eliot himself found this key through discovering his creative gift. In poetry he communicated his own longing and, touching depths in his readers, opened them to the "hints" and "guesses" of a deeper source of freedom. After his own experience of the wilderness, Eliot discovered that out of the wounding comes a gift that links us to a source of freedom that would otherwise, perhaps, have remained closed. This is the paradox of Advent in its darkness-light symbolism. Advent darkness stirs up, on the one hand, unconscious fears and, on the other, a deep desire for freedom and for all that the child represents. Fear of consciousness and rebirth is the fear of change, and for most of us, nothing is so feared as the prospect of moving into the dark, but that is often where the key is to be found.

Advent as an initiatory journey from darkness to light celebrates the hidden "sun" and the hidden self waiting to be born. In the words of a traditional Christmas hymn the divine child "bloomed" like a rose in the cold of a winter midnight. The qualities associated with the rose: love, virginity, fertility, passion and eros, appear only intermittently in the imagery of Advent. It is as if they, too, are hidden like the new sun of the winter solstice. But we know that they are as present there as is the birth we await.

Mariann Burke is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Newton, MA. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, Andover-Newton Theological School, and the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She has done graduate work in Scripture at Union Theological Seminary and La Salle University. Her interests include the body-psyche connection, feminine spirituality, and the psychic roots of Christian symbolism. She is a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart (RSCJ). Mariann is the author of Advent and Psychic Birth and Re-Imagining Mary: A Journey Through Art to the Feminine Self, both published by Fisher King Press.

1. Raymond Blakney, trans., Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (New York: Harper and Row, 1941), p. 95.
2. C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, (translated by R.F.C. Hull. Bollingen Series XX. Volume 12, Collected Works, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) p. 185.
3. Ibid, p. 14.
4. C.G. Jung, Letters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973, Volume 1), p. 65.
5. See Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1979).
6. Stephen Kurtz, C.S.W., The Art of Unknowing (Northvale: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1983), p. 170.
7. Ibid.
8. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Complete Poems and Plays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1971), p. 49.
9. C.G. Jung, op. cit. p. 282.
10. J.C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978), p. 90.

Four Volumes of Jungian Ecopsychology

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 23:07:00 +0000

The four volumes of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe offer a comprehensive presentation of Jungian ecopsychology.

Volume 1, Jung and Ecopsychology, examines the evolution of the Western dysfunctional relationship with the environment, explores the theoretical framework and concepts of Jungian ecopsychology, and describes how it could be applied to psychotherapy, our educational system, and our relationship with indigenous peoples.

Volume 2, The Cry of Merlin: Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologist, reveals how an individual’s biography can be treated in an ecopsychological manner and articulates how Jung’s life experiences make him the prototypical ecopsychologist.

Volume 3, Hermes, Ecopsychology, and Complexity Theory, provides an archetypal, mythological and symbolic foundation for Jungian ecopsychology.

Volume 4, Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects: An Archetypal View describes how a deep, soulful connection can be made with these elements through a Jungian ecopsychological approach. This involves the use of science, myths, symbols, dreams, Native American spirituality, imaginal psychology and the I Ching.

Together, these volumes provide a useful handbook for psychologists and environmentalists seeking to imagine and enact a healthier relationship with their psyches and the world of which they are a part.

The Eros Template: Some Common Themes of (Male) Narcissism

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 23:52:00 +0000

The following is an excerpt from
Eros and The Shattering Gaze;
Transcending Narcissism
by Kenneth Kimmel

The Eros Template

Eros is an unrepentant, narcissistic lover who retreats from all emotional attachments. He takes the first steps toward maturity and love only after suffering and enduring a life-changing wound that opens him. We find him brought to life by countless writers and artists in many guises and circumstances throughout the long, meandering history of the Western world. Eros, son of Venus, husband of Psyche, is the prototype of the many versions of the puer aeternus we will meet in Eros and The Shattering Gaze; Transcending Narcissism. We recognize him through the actions of men who leave behind the scattered wreckage of lost relationships. This type of man harms many women in their search to find the diamond in the dung heap of love and relationship. He’s the one who leaves a goodbye note, is caught with the best friend, or turns cold and distant when the “L” word is spoken. It is ironic that these men who give so little are loved so much. This is due, perhaps, to their aura of specialness, or to their accomplishments, attractiveness, sensitivity, charisma, charm, and creativity, or even to that pitiful little-boy-lost quality that can evoke a mothering response in the most independent of partners.

Apuleius’ “Tale of Amor and Psyche” is the classical story that best charts the course of these men’s romantic, narcissistic, and even predatory love. It is embodied in the character of Eros as well as in that of Lucius, the hero of The Golden Ass. These stories follow Eros and Lucius through their wounding and suffering, and toward the possibility of mature love, humility, and devotion. Regarding this from the standpoint of the male (as opposed to that of women), one can extract from Eros a template that outlines the key qualities of one pattern in narcissism—that of “mother’s perfect little god,” who habitually seeks instant pleasure in paradise but never in mutual relationships.
Here are some of the common themes of narcissism in the Eros Template extracted from “The Tale of Amor and Psyche.” They are generally found embedded in our notions of romance and love, and are met throughout Western history.

Mother’s special boy. He is the divine son of his mother. He is so special, and he knows no bounds. He can’t take no for an answer. His desires and impulses must be gratified instantly. He is incestuously bonded to his mother, but as long as he does her bidding she protects him from the slings and arrows of the cruel world that may try to knock him down a few pegs for being so full of himself.

His beauty is only skin deep. He is a physically beautiful man but he lacks the capacity for internal reflection. His life centers around surface things: fulfillment of physical desires, attainment of beautiful possessions, and expectations of perfection. The great control and power that he must exert over his outer environment and relationships is a form of compensation for an emotionally unstable and chaotic internal identity that he cannot hold in check.

Predator. His desires are fueled by an internal lack, and when he becomes satiated he searches ceaselessly for a new object of desire and pleasure. He is a predatory hunter. He seeks the adrenaline rush of sexual conquest and power over the helpless victim. Like Psyche awaiting her sacrifice atop the mountain, she is merely his thing to be used to meet his needs.

He seeks fusion in relationships. He maintains his control over the love object by keeping her in the dark about who he really is. She has no identity separate from his, and as long as she is fused with him she is not an object to be related to but is compelled instead to be an object of his desire alone. He unconsciously seeks to relive the fantasy of incest with his own mother in his own little Garden of Eden, by finding her substitute, the newer version of Venus—young Psyche.

He is split between his mother and his lover. His loyalty is split between the need for mothering and the desire for the mature love of a woman, a division that interferes with his maturation and prolongs his stay in eternal youth. Alternatively, he is tossed between his longing for the untouched virgin and his desire for pleasures that only the goddess of love may bestow.

Idealization and devaluation of the object of love. He is always in search of the ideal, perfect woman. Because she is only human, the woman merely plays a role in his perfect fantasies and he has no idea who she really is. The moment she begins deviating from his expectations his feelings turn cold or destructive. Her imperfections arouse all sorts of uncertainties and insecurities within him, and to avoid those unstable feelings he must devalue her. Using her to maintain his stability and his illusions of perfection, he can also blame her when she lets him down. He sets things up so that he never has to look within to his own weaknesses. He rids himself of his own bad feelings by dumping them into the devalued woman.

The narcissistic wound leads to negation of the other. Owing to an unstable identity, he is full of exaggerated sensitivity and therefore is easily slighted and wounded, which leads to negation and devaluation of his ideal love object. Because the internal feelings prove too unbearable to look at, he instead chooses to retaliate against any perceived betrayal that causes him pain. He will easily abandon and evacuate the woman from his mind if it will allow him to avoid suffering.

Continual return to mother to avoid the difficulties of life. He will seek the old familiar retreat to his mother’s rooms to heal the narcissistic wounds inflicted by what he sees as a cold, cruel world, a world that demands to meet him as a real person. He is split between the need for security, sympathy, and maternal comfort, and the instinctive hunger for sexual gratification.

Feigned innocence serves to mask his own destructive, hateful impulses. By splitting off his awareness he turns a blind eye to the terrible mother and her group of vengeful handmaidens who fall mercilessly upon Psyche when she surrenders herself to Venus. By involving himself so exclusively in bemoaning his own mistreatment, Eros feigns innocence. His guilt lies in his complicity. A man such as this can bat his eyelashes innocently while he compartmentalizes his hatred and aggression, though it will often seep out indirectly, passively.

The mother-bound man destroys all links to human relationships. Mother-Venus and her handmaidens threaten Psyche with death if she fails to fulfill any of the impossible tasks set before her. They hope to destroy any links to love, dependency, and vulnerability. As in the previous paragraph, Eros feigns innocence as the dirty work is done for him, thus insulating himself from real life and real relationships and the pain that might ensue. These destructive handmaidens exist within the mother-bound man as protecting and persecuting objects, encapsulating him in a shell and protecting him from the risk of an intimacy that might cause him pain. He stays safe within mother’s orbit, unwilling to break free of her power. On a conscious level he is only cognizant of his role as the “offended party” and will not own responsibility for the violence he inflicts on others when defending himself against perceived threats to his self preservation.

The wounding that pierces the narcissistic shell. In the end, Eros has suffered through his wounding and his separation from his wife Psyche. The bearing of shame plays a vital role in deflating one’s omnipotence (although this step is not as clearly elucidated with Eros as it is with Apuleius’ main character, Lucius). Eros develops within himself the courage and resilience to defy his mother’s wrath and to return to Psyche. The wound that Eros ultimately bears exposes the false self that he has perpetuated in order to maintain his illusion of control over life. He chooses the life-giver, as Neville Symington calls it, with all its uncertainties (Narcissism: A New Theory (London: Karnac Books, 1993), 80.

Repairing the capacity to love. A psyche must develop a resilience and cohesiveness in order to bear the vicissitudes of life, and from this, love in its transcendence may emerge. In the story, Eros comes to see this in Psyche, as he realizes the depth of her sacrifice and devotion, all for the sake of love. Her courage has touched something within him that inspires him to break out of his prison and seek connection and love in a human way. He discovers the capacity for care and the meaning of sacrifice. He repairs his marriage, but only after the couple suffer through separation, pain, and loss. Through a process of great suffering in which the capacities for transcendence emerge, Psyche, recognized as a man’s inner psyche-soul-anima, transcends the maternal complex in which she has been mired. Love frees the soul.

Remembering Erel Shalit, 1950 – 2018

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 19:55:00 +0000

Remembering Erel Shalit, 1950 – 2018

Erel Shalit was a Jungian psychoanalyst in Tel Aviv and worked as a training and supervising analyst. He was a past president of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology and founder and past director of the Jungian Analytical Psychotherapy Program at Bar Ilan University. Earlier in his career he was the director of the Shamai Davidson Community Mental Health Clinic.

Erel Shalit was instrumental in firmly establishing Fisher King Press as a publisher of Jungian Psychology Books: Publishing Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path in July of 2007 was the stamp of approval that brought Fisher King Press credibility in the Jungian circles and in turn so many other fine Jungian authors.

Dr. Shalit authored several Fisher King Press publications, including: The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey, Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path, The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel. With Nancy Swift Furlotti, Erel co-edited, The Dream and its Amplification.

I am grateful to have been a friend of Erel Shalit, grateful to be the publisher of so many of Erel’s books, grateful for all of the love, compassion, and consciousness he has brought to the world.

Mel Mathews
Publisher, Fisher King Press

Remembering Thomas B. Kirsch

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 19:46:00 +0000

Remembering Thomas B. Kirsch
June 10, 1936 – October 22, 2017

From conception on, C.G. Jung, his ideas, and analytical psychology itself was a central thread of Thomas B. Kirsch’s life. His parents, James and Hilde Kirsch, were in analysis with C.G. Jung when Tom was born, and he was imaged to be the product of a successful analysis. At an early age, Dr. Kirsch was introduced to many of the first-generation analysts who surrounded C.G. Jung, and over time became acquainted with them. Later, in his roles with the IAAP, Dr. Kirsch gained a broad knowledge of the developments in analytical psychology, and through both his early family history and in his later professional life, he worked closely with many analysts who were integral in forming the foundations of analytical psychology.

Dr. Kirsch graduated from Yale Medical School in 1961, did his residency in psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University, and then spent two years with the National Institute of Mental Health in San Francisco. He completed his Jungian training at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco in 1968. In 1976 Dr. Kirsch became president of the Jung institute in San Francisco, and in 1977 he was elected second vice president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, or IAAP, the professional organization of Jungian analysts around the world. As vice president and then president of the IAAP for eighteen years, he traveled the world and was able to meet Jungian analysts from many different countries. This position allowed him to serve a missionary function of sorts in new areas like China, South Africa, Mexico, Russia, and other former Soviet Eastern Bloc countries. In A Jungian Life, Thomas B. Kirsch reflects upon his entire existence which has been intimately involved with C.G. Jung and analytical psychology.

We are grateful for the generous contributions Thomas B. Kirsch has made to humanity, and we are proud to be the publisher of his memoir: A Jungian Life.

Mel Mathews
Publisher, Fisher King Press

Jungian Child Analysis - News Release

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 20:35:00 +0000

Just Published by Fisher King Press

Jungian Child Analysis

Jungian Child Analysis brings together ten certified Child and Adolescent Analysts (IAAP) to discuss how healing with children occurs within the analytical framework. While the majority of Jung’s corpus centered on the collective aspects of the adult psyche, one can find in Jung’s earliest work clinical observations and ideas that reflect an uncanny prescience of the psychological research that would later emerge regarding the self and the mother-infant relationship. This book discusses and illustrates in very practical ways how one uses an analytical attitude and works with the symbolic: this includes illustrations of analytical play therapy, dream analysis, sandplay, work with special populations and work with the parents and families of the child. Not only will the book capture your interest and further your development in working with children and adolescents, but also will enhance your work with adults.

Jungian Child Analysis, edited by Audrey Punnett; foreword by Wanda Grosso; contributors include Margo M. Leahy, Liza J. Ravitz, Brian Feldman, Lauren Cunningham, Patricia L. Speier, Maria Ellen Chiaia, Audrey Punnett, Susan Williams, Robert Tyminski, and Steve Zemmelman.

Contents:
Preface – Wanda Grosso
Introduction – Audrey Punnett

Chapter 1 – Margo M. Leahy
Jung and the Post-Jungians on the Theory of Jungian Child Analysis

Chapter 2 – Liza J. Ravitz
Child Analysis and the Multilayered Psyche

Chapter 3 – Brian Feldman
The Aesthetic and Spiritual Life of the Infant: Towards a Jungian View of Infant Development

Chapter 4 – Lauren Cunningham
Play, Creation and the Numinous

Chapter 5 – Patricia L. Speier
The Portal of Play Through a Jungian Frame

Chapter 6 – Maria Ellen Chiaia
The Importance of Being: Silence in Child Analysis

Chapter 7 – Audrey Punnett
Children’s Dreams

Chapter 8 – Susan Williams
Awakening to Inter-subjectivity: Working with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Chapter 9 – Robert Tyminski
Males Coming to Terms with Sexuality in Later Adolescence

Chapter 10 – Steve Zemmelman
Working with Parents in Child Analysis and Psychotherapy: An Integrated Approach

Editor: Audrey Punnett
Paperback: 250 pages
Condition: New
Edition: First
Index, Bibliography
Publisher: Fisher King Press (May 21, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690380
ISBN-13: 978-1771690386

Emily Dickinson: A Medicine Woman for Our Times

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 21:47:00 +0000

Just Published by Fisher King Press

Emily Dickinson: A Medicine Woman for Our Times
by Steven Herrmann

Among the 19th century poets, Emily Dickinson is by far the most scientifically minded. Science is the voice that summoned Dickinson at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and gave her unique distinction as a poetess of botanical and entomological and astronomical classifications. Like no other 19th century poet she forms an integration between science and spirituality. She studied at Holyoke at the exact historical moment of the first Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention in 1848. This, therefore, is a feminist book. It speaks up for the Divine Feminine. On the front cover purple-white rosemary blossoms are exploding with color. Emily Dickinson’s garden was a place where butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds drank up the radiance of flowers. Rosemary in particular was one of her favorite healing herbs. C.G. Jung mentions the antitoxin of rosemary flowers as a synonym for the Self, the total personality. When Steven Herrmann refers to Emily Dickinson as a Medicine Woman, he is speaking of an archetype of healing within all humans. Her poems are enduring imprints of the Medicine Woman archetype. It is by access to the Medicine Woman archetype that she’s able to espouse a democracy of equality that the world needs right now. She advises women to cherish “Power” and take heed from the Serpent. We need a Medicine Woman to balance things out. In a democratic sense, she’s a fierce and uncompromising spokeswoman for Liberty. Emily Dickinson is a dispenser of a new American myth for our times.

About the author
Recognized internationally, Steven Herrmann is the author of William Everson: The Shaman’s Call, Walt Whitman: Shamanism, Spiritual Democracy, and the World Soul, and Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward. In 2015 his chapter “C.G. Jung and Teilhard de Chardin: Peacemakers in an Age of Spiritual Democracy” was published in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Carl Gustav Jung Side by Side. He has taught on the subjects of Jung, Whitman, and Melville at the C.G. Jung Institutes of San Francisco, Chicago, and Zürich, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and on Jung and James at Yale University. Herrmann’s expertise in Jungian Literary Criticism makes him one of the seminal thinkers in the international field, and a foremost authority on Whitman, Melville, and now Dickinson in post-Jungian studies.

Emily Dickinson: A Medicine Woman for Our Times
Paperback: 298 pages, Index, Bibliography
Publisher: Fisher King Press
1st edition
Official Publication date: March 21, 2018
Language: English
ISBN 10: 1771690410
ISBN-13: 9781771690416

War and The Enemy in the 21st Century

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 02:05:00 +0000

One of the greatest rewards of being a publisher is in reflecting and rejoicing in the many meaningful and timely Fisher King Press publications. It truly is a privilege to be the midwife of these newborns—many of whom arrive far ahead of their time—and to witness their maturing and assimilation into the collective consciousness.

With the wars being fought on many fronts, and with the posturing and possibility of yet more, I reached for Erel Shalit’s Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path (which we published in 2008) and have been reading from Shalit’s chapter on The Enemy, which in the beginning of the chapter, states:

This is just the first few paragraphs of the chapter that explores many facets of the enemy archetype. If you have a copy of Enemy, Cripple, Beggar, I encourage you to revisit this timely publication. If you do not have a copy . . . well, here’s a link to purchase a copy of this rich and worthy book: Enemy, Cripple, Beggar.

As the publisher of Fisher King Press, I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the many readers of our publications, and to our authors who have done the hard work of research, mining the depths of their inner worlds, and for bring back to us these timeless gems.

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Fri, 19 May 2017 19:44:00 +0000

Just Published by il piccolo editions

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems
by Charles Zeiders

Charles Zeiders has given us a great gift; a poet, healer, and lover, he shares with fearless eloquence his heart, his mordant wit, and his empathic depth. Most of all, however, he inspires hope, hope in the human soul. I am captivated by his words and reading him I can feel my soul's enthusiastic approbation. You must give your soul the same pleasure. -Dr. Stephen Martin, Jungian Analyst and President Emeritus of the Philemon Foundation

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems teems with psychic and spiritual energy. It’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting that includes the Marx Brothers and splotches of transcendent gold. - Peter Devlin, from the Introduction

Zeiders’ love poems depict the paradoxes of a Christ-redeemed eros . . . But the volume explores the insane side of love…Like Dante’s Virgil, Zeiders navigates us through an earthly Inferno of malignant narcissists, charlatans, and pedophiles…Thankfully, the poet brings us safely to the other side . . . Just as the Christian vision of the universe begins and ends with Love, so Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems provides hope. -Joseph Walls, from Kiss Epiphany: A Spiritual Critique of Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems

From the exploration of the transfigured state found in the “Love Poems” we turn to the “Other Terrible Problems” . . . Nietzschean nihilism presses upon us. So does war and gore…Psychopaths head our institutions . . . we cannot find a way to offer our eros in the mad contexts they create . . . yet, the lesson is that within the container of love . . . one’s entire humanity can be accepted. -Margaret Connolly, from the Editor’s Afterword

About the author
Charles Zeiders is a clinical and forensic psychologist. His books include The Clinical Christ and Wall Street Revolution and Other Poems.

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems
Paperback: 104 pages
Publisher: il piccolo editions
1st edition
Official Publication date: May 19, 2017
Language: English
ISBN 10: 1771690445
ISBN-13: 9781771690447

After Midnight: Selected Poems

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 18:56:00 +0000

Just Published by il piccolo editions

After Midnight: Selected Poems
by Joseph Bobrow

"Joseph Bobrow’s poems are prayers for safe haven. They are sutras for life, for the protection of soldiers, children, mothers, fathers, everyone. We can take refuge in our relationships with one another, and in the beauty of the world." —Maxine Hong Kingston, author, activist, and the recipient of the National Medal of Art from President Barack Obama.

"Joseph Bobrow’s poems know that every day we are dying and that every one of those dying days we are also fully alive. He writes that “memory and inclination are subject to conditions on the ground,” and so they are in these moving poems which are the gift of seeing and of the ability to respond to tragedy and delight in equal measure while weaving them into the fabric of a life fully realized." —Dan Gerber, author of Sailing through Cassiopeia, 2013 Book of the Year Award in Poetry from The Society of Midland Authors.

"Joseph Bobrow’s poems are down-to-earth meditations on the poignant mysteries of life, love, and loss. Not one is abstract or philosophical; every one is a Dharma talk with heart. I kept touching into moments of Bobrow’s experience that mirrored—and enriched—my own. Bows!" —David Richo, author of You Are Not What You Think: The Egoless Path to Self-Esteem and Generous Love.

"Reading Joe Bobrow’s poetry makes me want to live more wildly, more fully. His poems live in an irresistible arc between the raw and vivid details of his precious life and a sense of vastness, of spaciousness, of universality. I want to return to these poems again and again. His voice makes me want to reply with my own poetry, and to touch his voice in the darkness." —Stephen Cope, best-selling author of The Great Work of Your Life and Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

"In the dense moments of Bobrow’s writing intensity hovers, swells. Pain and bliss rise, fall, rise again. Which will it be moment to moment? Where can we go when it is happening? Seek refuge in a poem? These poems accost us with more of how it feels to be alive. Be ready. —Michael Eigen, Author of Under the Totem: In Search of a Path

About the Author
Joseph Bobrow is the author of Waking Up From War: A Better Way Home for Veterans and Nations (foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama), Zen And Psychotherapy: Partners in Liberation (comments by Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh), and the co-translator of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Guide To Walking Meditation. After Midnight: Selected Poems is his first collection of poems.

Joseph is a Zen master and Roshi of Deep Streams Zen Institute in Santa Barbara, which offers Zen Buddhist practice, interdisciplinary education, and peace-building programs that implement new integrative models of transforming suffering. For ten years, Coming Home Project, a community service of Deep Streams Zen Institute, helped thousands of post-9/11 service members, veterans, families, and caregivers transform the unseen injuries of war. A retired psychoanalyst, Joseph now serves on the faculty of Pacifica Graduate Institute and teaches widely.

Title: After Midnight: Selected Poems
Author: Joseph Bobrow
Paperback: 60 pages
Condition: New
Publisher: il piccolo editions (Feb 28, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690429
ISBN-13: 978-1771690423

Our Creative Fingerprint

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 23:49:00 +0000

Just Published by Fisher King Press

Our Creative Fingerprint
by Nancy Carter Pennington and Lawrence H. Staples

Creative work is the handmaiden of self-discovery. No matter where our creative work starts or what path it follows—with a word, with a note, with a brushstroke—it eventually, with repeated effort, returns us home to the very source of our beings. We are never more true to ourselves than when we are creating something. Inexorably, what we create reflects ourselves as profoundly, faithfully and uniquely as our fingerprints. Each single thing we create, no matter when or under what conditions it was produced, will bear trace deposits of ourselves, a creative fingerprint sufficient to identify us and show who we are just as our physical fingerprints do.

For those who know how to interpret them, our creative fingerprints are as unerring as our physical fingerprints in identifying us. Our creations are self-portraits. We cannot escape ourselves no matter how hard we may try. In all art, there is an underlying voice that cannot be completely hidden or extinguished. In the end, our creative work can reflect only one thing: ourselves.

Topics explored in Our Creative Fingerprint include: Creativity and Inner Truth—part of which examines seven paintings by Frida Kahlo, Divine Discontent: The Inner Urge to Create, Transformation: Cleaning Our Psychic Augean Stables, and Creativity and Rebirth.

About the Authors
Nancy Carter Pennington received her MSW from The University of Maryland. For more than 30 years, Nancy has had the privilege of working with clients on a range of issues: phobias, OCD, grief, depression, obsessive thinking, guilt, and relationships.

Lawrence Staples has a Ph.D. in psychology; his special areas of interest are the problems of midlife, guilt, and creativity. Dr. Staples is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zürich, Switzerland, and also holds AB and MBA degrees from Harvard. In addition to Guilt with a Twist: The Promethean Way, Lawrence is author of the top-selling book The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness and co-author, with Nancy Carter Pennington, of The Guilt Cure.

Title: Our Creative Fingerprint
Paperback: 92 pages
Publisher: Fisher King Press (January 6, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690402
ISBN-13: 978-1771690409

The Rabbi, the Goddess, and Jung

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 21:14:00 +0000

Just Published by Fisher King Press:

The Rabbi, The Goddess, And Jung
by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

"The Rabbi, the Goddess, and Jung, a book of essays written in tribute to the depths and the riches of Jungian Psychology—how it helps us get the “word from within”— enters the world at a time when most of us get the word from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram ... when the suck of all those e-mails demands our response before we write down that dream or take time to listen for the still small voice of the soul. As William Giraldi says, we are in thrall to our “illuminated rectangles.” I was moved to read his passionate defense of inwardness. I think it is not only literary art that needs to remain “steadfastly itself,” but Jungian Psychology, which does the subversive work of countering the dominant culture, honoring the “word from within” and the practice of tracking the dream. As Jung tells it in The Red Book, being a slave to “the spirit of the times” can annihilate the soul. A descent to the “the spirit of the depths” can release the spiral serpent of wisdom and creativity." (Naomi Ruth Lowinsky www.thesisterfrombelow.com)

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky creates a sanctuary for the soul in her new book, The Rabbi, the Goddess, and Jung. She shows us the ways in which cultivation of one’s inner life creates sacred space. Admitting that this is not an easy practice in our hectic, fearful times, she demonstrates how the word from within orients—whether it comes as gift or disturbance, guest or ghost, riddle or revelation. It may force a confrontation with one’s worst fears. It may visit in nightmare images, such as . . . Learn More

War of the Ancient Dragon by Laurel A. Howe - New Title Press Release

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 01:49:00 +0000

New Title Press Release - Just Published by Fisher King Press:

War of the Ancient Dragon: Transformation of Violence in Sandplay
by Laurel A. Howe

ABOUT THIS BOOK
Six-year-old Randy conducts bloody wars in the sandtray, calling them "World War One," "World War Two," and "The War of the Ancient Dragon." He burns fires and bombs helpless victims, killing some and saving others. What could possibly be going on in his imagination?

The contents of his imagination—what the alchemists call the “realm of subtle bodies”—are revealed in his sandplay from one session to the next, and there we see the raw, autonomous dynamism that motivates Randy, already branded a bully and nearly expelled from first grade. We see fiery, destructive conflict, part his, part his culture’s, part lived, part projected, a conflict of archetypal opposites that engulf Randy’s personality and fuel his violent behavior.

But also from Randy’s imaginal world, out of the very war between opposites that drives him, the unknown third possibility unfolds. Allowed to exist and be seen with a paradoxical healing aim, the war fights itself out over time in the safe container of the sandtray, finds its unpredictable resolution, and gradually releases Randy from its grip. He finally emerges, calling himself “king of the bloodfire,” returned to the rule of his own emotional life. He has adapted to school, proud of his achievements, a star student in math.

Randy’s lively narratives animate his dramas and reveal the distinct hallmarks of an alchemical opus over the course of 24 therapy sessions. He remarkably echoes the words of the ancient sages such as Zosimos, who centuries ago in his own imagination witnessed the “torture” of transformation in fire.

Randy’s process is thoroughly documented and amplified, unveiling the alchemical stages of transformation—nigredo, albedo, and rubedo—in a way that helps us relate to those chapters in our own individuation struggles. Psychological Perspectives editor Margaret Johnson writes that the work is “valuable above and beyond being a case study because it remarkably grounds what can be very illusive alchemical imagery into psychological experience.”

War of the Ancient Dragon guides us through the gritty realities of the alchemical process, helping us realize how they can manifest in everyday life, dream images, and fantasy. Above all the book is a testament to the healing capacities of the imagination, the humble “star in man” that connects us to the unconscious: to unknown and unexpected developments in ourselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurel Howe is a Jungian analyst who earned her diploma from the Center for Research and Training in Depth Psychology According to C.G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz in Zürich. She is a faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute of Colorado, a teaching member of the International Society of Sandplay Therapy and the Sandplay Therapists of America, and an advisory board member of the Colorado Sandplay Therapy Association. She has a private practice in Lakewood, Colorado where she works with children and adults and mentors students of analytic psychotherapy and sandplay therapy. In addition to sandplay and alchemy, Laurel writes and presents lectures on the history and psychological meaning of Mary Magdalene and feminine archeological images from the Levant prior to and during the development of the Old Testament.

Title: War of the Ancient Dragon: Transformation of Violence in Sandplay
Author: Laurel A. Howe
Paperback: 166 pages
Condition: New
Edition: First
Index, Bibliography
Publisher: Fisher King Press (April 28, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10:1771690348
ISBN-13: 9781771690348

The Psychic Drive for Wholeness - Workshop

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 18:24:00 +0000

The Orphan: The Psychic Drive for Wholeness

A Workshop for Psychotherapists and Lay People in Oberlin, Ohio

Presenters: Audrey Punnett and Dyane Sherwood

Date: Saturday March 12, 2016 from
Time: 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM EST
Location: The First Church in Oberlin, Ohio

REGISTER

Dr. Punnett will show how the constellation of the orphan archetype with its accompanying feelings of isolation, anguish, and despair can act as a catalyst for the individuation process. Jungian theoretical concepts will be woven into her presentation of the case of an 11-year-old boy, including his sandplay process. Her work with the boy will also demonstrate how, when working with children, there is always the potential that parents see progress and want to end the child's therapy too soon. She will discuss how she worked with this problem and invite discussion from the participants.

Dr. Punnett will have copies of her recent book, The Orphan, for signing, which can also be ordered through the publisher, Fisher King Press.

In the afternoon, Dr. Sherwood will discuss the psyche's survival strategies in response to actually being orphaned, including the case example of a young girl and her sandplay process. We will see how the healing capacities of a child's psyche are constellated and expressed symbolically. The case example will serve as a basis of looking at ways these survival strategies also appear in situations in which a person feels emotionally abandoned, including reactions to the therapist within a therapeutic setting.

Participants need not be child therapists in order to benefit from this program and apply it to life experience and to working with patients.

Audrey Punnett, Ph.D., received her diploma in both adult and in child and adolescent analysis at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She is also a Teaching Member and past President of the Sandplay Therapists of America (STA). She has lectured nationally and internationally on the archetype of the orphan. Her private practice is in Fresno, California.

Dyane N. Sherwood, Ph.D., received her analytic training at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, where she was certified as both an adult and as a child and adolescent analyst. She is a Teaching Member of the Sandplay Therapists of America (STA) and International Society of Sandplay Therapy (ISST). She has taught widely on topics in Jungian psychology such as alchemy, active imagination, implicit communication, attachment, and working with trauma. She is the author of articles and book chapters, and the most recent can be downloaded from her website, http://dyanesherwood.com. She is in private practice in Oberlin, Ohio.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives and a growing list of Cutting-Edge alternative titles. www.fisherkingpress.com

Speaking of Jung: Deldon Anne McNeely

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 19:42:00 +0000

Speaking of Jung's Laura London interviews Deldon Anne McNeely

Listen to the new podcast:
http://www.speakingofjung.com/podcast/2016/2/28/episode-13-deldon-mcneely

The Soul of Glacier Country

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 19:15:00 +0000

Fisher King Press author Dennis Merritt will be giving an illustrated talk on “The Soul of Glacier Country” at the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC) annual conference in Portland, Oregon on Friday, April 1, 2016. SAC is a branch of the American Anthropological Association. The section Dennis will be speaking in is “Landscapes of Transformation—Encountering the Sacred.” The presentation offers a visual illustration of the glacial history part of his book Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects: An Archetypal View, which is volume 4 of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe—Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology.

A basic premise of ecopsychology and deep ecology is that a person connected to the land will have a natural desire to protect it. Dreams of landscapes, plants, animals, and natural phenomena like storms can be used to establish a sense of place, especially if these natural elements appear with a numinous or sacred quality in a dream. Dennis Merritt will present his dream of a typical Midwestern landscape that appeared in a sacred light and describe how he used that dream to connect with the soul of glacier country via weekly round-trip bus rides through a notable glacial feature called drumlins. Ten different time frames can be experienced on that journey.

Love Matters according to Maja Reinau

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 05:42:00 +0000

Just Published by Fisher King Press

Love Matters for Psychic Transformation: A Study of Embodied Psychic Transformation in the Context of BodySoul Rhythms®

by Maja Reinau

From the Foreword by John Hill

Maja Reinau’s book Love Matters for Psychic Transformation serves as an excellent introduction to BodySoul Rhythms (BSR), a method created by Marion Woodman, Ann Skinner, and Mary Hamilton. BSR has been immensely successful, transforming the lives of many women who have participated in its programs. Maja Reinau’s book elucidates the gems that structure this creative method.

The author received her training as a Jungian analyst at The International School of Analytical Psychology, Zürich, and at the same time completed her training in psychodrama. Having undergone intensive personal analysis, clinical supervision, course work on theory, and the experiential method of psychodrama, one might ask why did the author undertake a further training in BSR? Maja Reinau’s book provides ample answers to this question. BSR has been a second home for the author. It is her passion that draws together several loose ends of a rich, multi-faceted personal and professional life. With focus on the psyche-body connection, which includes Jungian theory, dreams, myths, body movement, voice work, mask-work, and artwork, BSR adds a feminine dimension that protects, structures, and provides communal solidarity in the face of challenges arising from a patriarchal culture that engenders disconnect. Maja Reinau notes that at first BSR work had to be open to women only, simply because it was too difficult to hold the container for mixed groups in view of the deep wounds of intimacy generated in cross gender relationships. Eventually it intends to include men in all its programs, in fact this is already taking place in many of the workshops today.

Love Matters for Psychic Transformation skillfully outlines the space-time rhythms of an intensive BSR week. Usually it takes place in a beautiful landscape, which in itself nourishes soul work and activates inner landscapes. It would be beyond the scope of this foreword to describe all the activities of an intensive week, but let me mention a few that strike me as outstanding. Breakfast begins in silence, followed by a ritual dance, the reading of a poem, and a short meditation. The morning ends with a presentation on some specific theme, often connected with Jungian psychology. The afternoon is centered on body and voice work, adding an experiential dimension to what has been already activated through nature, dreams, meditation, or the morning presentation. The focus of the first evening is on providing a positive mothering exercise, the following evenings on the making of masks, and the final evening on an ending ritual.

After having described the basic dynamics of BSR, Maja Reinau interviews six women who have completed the BSR training program. With great skill and confidence the author has documented the transformative moments that take place in BSR intensives. As each story unfolds, one feels one is moving with these women in the river of life. One story speaks about a shamed body gaining presence in the loving gaze of like-minded women. Next we learn about a participant who discovers she can explore a different feminine body that is free from the judgments of the brain and a culture that tells women how they should look. Another narrative tells us how the darkest, shut-off parts of a woman’s soul finally could be met through the eyes of another. Through mask-work one woman faces a rigid defense system, learns to trust what happens in the moment, and discovers that her psyche finds nourishment and new life through listening to myth and poetry. In another case we read about a dramatic occurrence of rebirth that brought healing to an original birth trauma. In the final interview we witness an immersion in a common field connecting body, soul, and group members in a holistic experience that stimulates the imagination in a playful, loving way.

The interviews portray in the most vivid, detailed way what actually happens in an intensive week. Elaborating on this material, Maja Reinau launches into an in-depth theoretical discussion on the key issues that have been activated in each individual participant during a BSR intensive week. She draws upon the findings of Jungian theory, neuroscience, and developmental psychology, but is mindful that theory can never be reductive and certainly not replace the subjective lived experience of the participant, which always has the last word. Nevertheless theory helps weave fragmentary events into a pattern that can serve as a guide for future development as well as a means to communicate the meaning of the BSR method within a larger collegial context.

As Maja Reinau concludes her description of BSR, one has the impression that one has witnessed the essence of women’s mysteries within a modern context. Process, presence, and paradox become the essential ingredients of those mysteries. Each participant has the opportunity of gaining awareness of the creative potential of the psyche, a sense of being truly present to oneself and to the other, and an acceptance of life’s contradictions, especially the realm of the shadow. This salutary brew nourishes the soul when stirred under the auspices of an archetypal feminine triad: the mother, the virgin, and the crone, symbolizing loving containment, pregnant creativity, and the wisdom of age. For Maja Reinau, love is the final transformative factor that brings healing and renewal. This kind of loving is a highly differentiated blend of mirroring, containing, empathic attunement, and resonating with the life energy of all who undertake this daring journey. As one peruses the pages of this book, one cannot but feel the inspiring presence of Marion Woodman, Ann Skinner, and Mary Hamilton. Maja Reinau’s book pays ample tribute to their pioneering endeavor in bringing hope and renewal to the lives of all who have undergone a BSR experience.

Maja Reinau, M.D. is a Zurich trained Jungian analyst, specializing in psychotherapy for children, adolescents, and adults. She has also been trained as psychodrama therapist, EMDR-therapist, and has completed the BodySoul Rhythms leadership-training program. Dr Reinau is as supervisor for the Danish Psychiatric Society, teaches at the Jung Institute in Denmark, and trains doctors in psychotherapy. In addition to her private analytical practice, Dr Reinau also works for the department of personality disorders at the University Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark. She is a member of IAAP, AGAP, and DSAP. For more information, please visit www.majareinau.dk

Love Matters for Psychic Transformation
Author: Maja Reinau
Publisher: Fisher King Press
230 pages – Large Page Format (9.25 x 7.5)
Index, Bibliography
Publication Date Feb 16, 2016
ISBN 10: 1771690313
ISBN 13: 9781771690317

Guilt with a Twist Good Reads Giveaway

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 08:22:00 +0000

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Guilt with a Twist

by Lawrence H. Staples

Giveaway ends January 27, 2016.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

The Christmas Myth: Taking Back the Child-God

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 01:41:00 +0000

Article by Mariann Burke, author of Advent and Psychic Birth and
Re-Imagining Mary: A Journey Through Art to the Feminine Self

In Christianity the Advent-Christmas Mystery celebrates the historical birth of Jesus through the mythological imagery of Virgin Birth, Cave, Star, and the Child-God. Feelings of renewal related to the winter solstice and the ancient Saturnalia festivals find echoes in our own family reunions, gift-giving, and general merry making on New Year’s Eve. The circular “return” to primordial Origins for renewal has given way to linear history with its goal of unlimited progress. Yet the soul’s language is circular, as Frances Hatfield writes in her poem “The Soul’s Geometry” from The Book of Now: Poetry for the Rising Tide:

This “looking” is a soul hunger, a return or remembering beyond history still slumbering in the unconscious of those who crowd churches on Christmas day, many who do not believe in Virgin Birth, angels, etc. and have lost the imaginative power to see reality in the mythic world which these images reflect. We want to feel, to surrender ego momentarily in the imaginal world of music, poetry, and ritual of remembrance made present. Back in 1936 C.G. Jung suggested what he felt each of us needs and longs to remember, “In the last analysis most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instinct, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us.”(2)

It is this remembering as the profound meaning of the Incarnation and the essence of some religions that makes Advent and Psychic Birth as relevant today as it was when it was published in 1993. While the literalists take the Christmas myth as history, and the doubtful seeing the cracks in the whole Christian myth still enjoy the artful Nativity story and its magical mystery, many atheists, taking science and materialism as guide while dismissing angels and stars, still hunger for the communal sense fostered by living myth. In Jung’s view Christmas rituals and the Christ Child image speak to our longing for rebirth, that is for greater awareness of our innate divinity, and they are a “religious necessity only so long as the majority of people are incapable of giving psychological reality to the saying: ‘Except ye become as little children…”’(3) Exploring the Child-God mythic image and its powerful psychic energies latent within us, we participate in the emerging myth or spirituality of the 21st century and beyond.

In this article, I want to offer a few meanings of myth, the Child-God and the imaginal world in which they are experienced. Why focus on these topics? Years ago in church settings during discussions of Advent and Psychic Birth, a number of people questioned my use of the phrase “Christian myth.” Comments ranged from, “I was taught that myth is pagan and false” to “Myth is less than history for history consists of ‘real events’ and is therefore true.” Over the years thanks to the influence of Joseph Campbell and others we have a better idea of how mythology affects our lives. Yet Jungian analyst James Hollis has recently published two books on myth saying that he senses a need “out there.”(4) I hope that you will explore these topics more fully than is possible here, using resources listed here as well as others readily available. It is a sad commentary on the spiritual hunger of our times that expressions of soul or imaginal experience have been overshadowed by the reams of ego-based information that can overwhelm us. The word, “mythological" is a stumbling block for many who either dismiss it as old fashioned or fear it as “pagan.”

Myth and Mythic Sensibility

“Pagan myth” has greatly enriched Christianity’s beauty, and this is true especially during the Christmas season with its joyous music, its crèche, its promise of hope and above all, its message of love. At a Christian academics’ meeting years ago a sign read, “The DNA of Christianity is pagan.” This is a reference to the many similarities of images and motifs found in pre-Christian times: virgin births, saviors, Child-Gods, angel mediators, annunciations, goddesses of heaven and earth, together with rituals of bread, wine and water that have found their way into the Christian religion, inspiring exquisite art, music, and poetry opening us to depths of soul. For Jung myth is the language of the unconscious soul reflected in our dreams as well as in all the arts, especially music, for here, momentarily, we surrender to a Greater than our ego, an “out of time” experience. The soul truth expressed in myth and acted out in rituals hidden deep within the unconscious psyche of our ancestors resonates within us still, the presence of a timeless Reality and its Mystery.

Mythic stories bring us to similar depth. Where do they come from? I used to think that Revelation in a religious sense came from heaven, another “world.” In a sense it is true that in the unconscious soul of particularly intuitive persons, the mythmakers, the deepest longings of the human race have been expressed in story. Myths use symbolical language, the language of the imagination, to express unknown but intuited Greater Reality often referred to as the “numinous” or “God.” An image or person becomes a symbol if that person or image carries such intense energy for us that it opens to something beyond itself to Unknown Mystery. The intense energy with which we encounter such persons or things indicates in Jung’s view an aspect of our own soul. Those who have religious experiences are hard put to find words or figures to express them because the words never quite capture the experience. Symbols are bridges to that Beyond. Through the years Jung noted in his patients’ dreams and visions many of the images found in ancient myths: serpent, tree, mountain cave, child, etc. Dreamers who are captivated by an image often respond in awe to invisible realms it may open within them and in so doing they are living the mythic life.

We know that the Judeo-Christian myth answers questions like, “Who am I,” “Where did I come from,” “Why is there suffering?” in the Book of Genesis, a work of poetic genius describing the creation of the world and its inhabitants by a Father God, Yahweh, who created the world and looking upon it, saw its goodness. In the story Adam and Eve as the first couple are expelled from the Garden of delights. Feeling lost and guilty of sin, they need a savior. In Christianity the Son of God takes on human nature to redeem humanity through his death and resurrection and the story finishes at the end of time with the Final Judgment when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. The center of the story is the Incarnation when the eternal “pierces” time through Jesus.

Christians live both in history and in eternity, expressed through the Christian myth. One of the treasures of being Catholic, it seemed to me, was always to be reminded of the eternal “other” world existing somewhere. It took me time to realize that the “other” is within. For the person who asks about the relation of myth to history, it is important to note that while history begins with an event, myth does not. Myth expresses a truth in poetic mode. True, both history and myth are narratives and thus give us a structure, a “world view” in which to live our lives. The myth is always happening in a spiral if not circular effect within, for do we not experience many rebirths, “deaths” and “resurrections” throughout our life? As the 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart reminds us, the birth of God is always happening in the soul. Psychically, myth is the story of the soul, its despairing moments, its journeying toward fulfilling its longing, its intimations of immortality. Myth is true because it is an expression of our human nature in its soul searching or longing for Paradise or wholeness.(5) And though scientists today speak of quantum physics and the possible existence of multiple universes, for millions the Christian story holds a powerful resonance. Yet, for many, the story ceases to provide sustenance since it does not accord with modem scientific knowledge or it has been presented as history.

It is important to note that myth changes meaning throughout history and different cultures. For example there is no evidence that Adam and Eve were historical persons and it is generally noted that taken symbolically Adam means “earth” and Eve means “life” which would indicate that humans are a combination of “earth” or body and “life” as soul. Here is where Jung, exploring the psychic meaning of myth, helped to revitalize it. Jung’s focus on the unconscious soul and its expressiveness in the language of myth and symbol put him at odds at times with the Catholic Church which generally has taken the Christian story literally. Years ago he wrote that while the Church is a treasury of symbols, the myth, taken literally, closes the door to a more personal or symbolic connection. “People are worn out by the effort of having to cling on to ideas which seem incomprehensible to them and therefore quite literally unbelievable.”(6) The Annunciation, for example, interpreted as an historical event reduces the image dramatically and distances the viewer from understanding the personal spiritual message therein, its call from the soul to accept the psychic “birth” of one’s own potential, and one’s creativity in whatever capacity. (See my book Re-Imagining Mary, a Journey through Art to the Feminine Self.) Jung believed that if the energy pulsating through these vital images is dwindling, it calls for a new way of seeing or revitalizing an older way.

The Imagination

This is the way of imagination where the mythic and the spiritual are experienced as real, even more real than the physical world, as in visions and dreams, great drama and poetry. Here “Virgin Birth” is true in its symbolic reality, in all its beauty and depth. “The spiritual void or crisis of meaning in Western society is a crisis of imagination,” wrote Christian mystic and theologian, Thomas Merton. He continued, “The trend of modern thought away from symbolism has frustrated the basic human need for symbol and metaphor to the point of perversion: we have become instinctively suspicious of that for which we are starved.”(7) Jung’s work honoring the soul and its language in myth and symbol has attracted millions of those “starved.” One of his friends, Henry Corbin (1903-1978), who was brought up Catholic and for years taught and wrote on Islamic spirituality, believed that Western Christianity could be renewed if it could draw on the richness of the Iranian view of the imagination. Corbin was appalled at how Imagination has been denigrated to a superficial “imaginary” which usually means “unreal.”

In writing of the Sufi tradition Corbin explains that in their complicated cosmology the imaginal world, called “interworld,” is midway between the sensate or physical and the realm of intellect. On this middle level, lacking in the Western thought, the Sufis teach that we experience dreams, visions and all spiritual meaning including prayer which they view as the highest form of imagination (usually capitalized in this tradition). Here we leave history (though history, too, has its imaginative component in its various interpretations), and dwell in “eternity” or mythic time. Here the Burning Bush that Moses saw, which on the physical level would be a pile of brushwood, is a Divine manifestation. In this Iranian spirituality, creations, annunciations, and incarnations happen over and over again, not just once in history.(8) These moments or “theophanies” are experienced on the imaginal level as pathways to a greater Presence. On this level the soul can feel “at home,” resonating with its inner truth.

To be present to this order even for a fleeting moment is to be in the mythic and imaginal world. We all have experienced such moments when by surprise we are awed by beauty when ordinary things seem transformed or when we feel surrounded by a Greater Presence. Among many artists, the painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985) has been for me a painter of ordinary things that capture an invisible presence permeating them. I loved his use of color and his playful sensibilities. I wondered why he delighted in painting flowers, houses, dogs, cats, musical instruments and people often flying about in the sky. Daily life is his subject—the reality of birth, marriage, children, food, clowns, celebrations, funerals, all permeated with spirit. For he mixes the mundane and the mystical and his world seems one in an all- encompassing Presence. “His work has some ardent and sorrowful thirst for myth.” (9) Since early childhood he had been captivated by Biblical imagery both Hebrew and Christian. In the painting, “The Dream” he chooses a Christian mythic image, the Annunciation, and the painting is sometimes referred to as a Jewish Annunciation.

Click to View The Dream by Marc Chagall

Let us look for a moment at this scene which pictures a Russian village at night. The bed where the young couple sits fully clothed is in the sky above the houses. Art historian Alfred Werner describes the young angel hovering over them and points out how the “pillow” wings of the angel echo the bed pillows. This detail, I feel, offers a nice touch of interweaving heavenly and earthly, as if the artist says, “It’s all one.” Chagall probably knew that in the gospel of Philip (86:4) the bridal chamber is a metaphor for the Holy of Holies in the temple of Jerusalem. We can wonder if the woman has announced her pregnancy to her lover. Has the angel announced or confirmed? In the lower right hand corner we see three letters, LAZ which may stand for the Lazarett, hospital(10) Maybe the rooster is announcing the news of an approaching birth.(11) Far in the upper right hand corner we see another building which looks like pictures of Rachel’s tomb in Palestine where childless women came to pray. Is “The Dream” like a message from the unconscious suggesting that the fulfillment of our longings for new life is present in the here and now?

In this picture we sense the artist’s vision: he sees daily life in its joys and struggles enveloped by an invisible world. The sensible world is instinct with the aura of a greater presence. Growing up in Vitebsk, Russia in a Jewish ghetto, Chagall experienced poverty and drabness. “I have chosen to paint; to me it has been as indispensable as food. Painting appeared to me like a window through which I could fly to another world…”(12) Chagall found solace and meaning in the irrational where the mythic sustained and nourished him. His childlike sensibility led him to intuit and to “see” the grandeur surrounding mundane daily events. Could it be that “The Dream” as Jewish Annunciation expressed the artist’s belief that every newborn is a “Messiah”?

In the wake of science and the demise of religious faith for many, the need for living myth continues. Philosopher of history Joachim de Fiore (1135-1202) mused about three ages of history: The Age of the Father in Judaism, the Age of the Son in Christianity, and the Age of the Spirit which he saw beginning in the 13th century when such renewal occurred for a time. Moderns searching for the “new” may realize that bits of the old provide its gestation. Some writers suggest that moderns still experience both pagan and Christian mythic images. We experience the pagan myths when we put up a Christmas tree (The tree is a symbol of the Mother Goddess) or when we enter a church at Christmas and reflect on the nativity scene, the Child at its center.

The child image still carries enormous psychic energy. One reason we know this is that the image occurs repeatedly in dreams. In my analytic practice many people have brought dreams of babies and pregnancies. Recently I interviewed a fifty year old man who when asked whether he had recurrent dreams, answered, “Yes, quite often I used to dream that I was given a baby that I was supposed to take care of.” Two months ago a client of another analyst gave him permission to share this recent dream image with me. In the dream the Virgin Mary is handing the infant Jesus over to the dreamer. What powerful dreams! The child image lives in the psyche of 21st century men and women. Is this related to the “unforgotten wisdom” that Jung feels remains unconscious within us, stirring at Christmas, leading us toward a more vibrant living myth?

The Child Archetype

In his essay on the Child Archetype, Jung elaborated on qualities of psychic energy for which the word “child” is appropriate. He is speaking of child as symbol not a literal child, though the two are related. For example often due to experience of trauma in early years children adjust to what is expected and thus develop a persona which is at odds with their nature or “roots.” Then as adults they become stilted or “unchildlike.” In his essay Jung considers the mythological child motif as related to past, present, and future.

As link with the past Jung again reminds us to refer not only to the historical past of the literal child, for the child motif represents the pre-conscious core of the personality, the Source or origin of our being, our “unconscious identity with the universe.”(13) It is these unforgotten psychic energies that draw us to the Christmas rituals and symbols. As noted, Jung suggests that one reason the religious observances happen over and over is to remind us of the link with our original Source. What we are as yet incapable of being or doing we project into the myth, into the Christ Child, for here we celebrate not only Jesus’s birth but psychically the remembrance or reconnection with the divine within ourselves.

The child motif, then, points not only to the pre-conscious past but to the present where this dynamic energy seeks to keep us psychically balanced or to compensate when our conscious mind (ego) becomes too overbearing. It regulates psychic opposites, conscious and unconscious, rational and non-rational. This psychic movement parallels our body’s need for balance between the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (relaxation) modes, or between acidic and alkaline foods in our diet, (our pH). Dreams, remembered or not, contribute to achieving this psychic and body equilibrium. When we stray too far from our inner “ground” or Self we suffer the consequences with neuroses and all manner of disturbances including depression and psychosomatic symptoms, the result of rejecting or suppressing the Divine energies, the needs of the soul.

The child represents the future because it symbolizes potential. The child wants to develop and this means change. Literally when we see a newborn we can’t help but marvel at this little miracle “bundle of joy” who, of course, may become a little or big terror! The human baby in its fragility and helplessness, its unconsciousness, stirs within us a glimmer of hope, of possibility and new life. And we know that challenges and difficulties will come in its path. The mythic child begins in insignificance but is invincible. Jung writes that this child “is born out of the womb of the unconscious, begotten out of the depths of human nature, or rather out of living Nature herself. It is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind; of ways and possibilities of which our one-sided conscious mind knows nothing; a whole which embraces the very depths of Nature. It represents the strongest, the most ineluctable urge in every being, namely, the urge to realize itself.”(14)

Threatened and weak, yet strong and invincible, these qualities are seen in the mythic Child-God who is born miraculously (virgin conception or miraculous birth) or in mountain caves or sacred springs, since this birth represents a psychic realization. The Greek Child-God, Zeus, God of law and order, was born in a cave, and Dionysus, the God of wine and frenzy, in some accounts, was washed up by the sea. The Child-God suffers all kinds of hardships: abandonment and attempts on his life, for this birth is not welcome to the status quo. (Note Herod’s attempts to kill the infant Jesus.) For Jung, this presence of the victorious Child-God in many world mythologies indicates a psychological reality in all people, that throughout our lives we experience forces that seem to work against us and yet we usually come through them to periods of renewal. Longing for the new, for rebirth, is one aspect of the oldest myths, and the Child-God image corresponds to this desire to return to the Source of life - to our instinctual “roots.”

Taking Back the Child-God

We have seen how the language of soul describing our deepest needs is expressed and made real in the realm of imagination where the child as one image resonates with us as carrying possibility, life, and hope. In this section I draw on Jungian analyst John P. Dourley ‘s On Behalf of the Mystical Fool. (15) He writes that as change happens slowly and builds on past tradition, it seems providential that two great thinkers, C.G. Jung and Teilhard de Chardin (both in their time censured by the Church) spoke to the unfolding of a myth or spirituality for the future. Teilhard speaks of the unfolding in a cosmological evolutionary sense and Jung, toward psychic growth as movement toward greater consciousness effecting both inner and outer worlds. They agree on the natural divinity of the human person and on the invisible Divine presence in Mother Nature. Teilhard speaks of a divinity being born today feminine in nature, the Spirit of Sophia Wisdom. Jung suggests that our longing for Paradise and wholeness implies a return to our maternal Origin or psyche, which holds the possibility of rebirth, a natural psychic process. Jung was interested in Eastern religious thought and found it helpful in parallel to his revision of Incarnation. “With us, man is incommensurably small and the grace of God is everything, but in the East man is God and he redeems himself.”(16)

What follows from Jung’s concept that psyche has a “religious function,” a capability for experiencing Deity, is his denial of a transcendent God who came down from heaven and assumed human nature. God is not “without” but “within,” as the Sufis say, “There is no God but the experience of God.”(17) Jung applies the religious word Incarnation to his psychological approach that as the ego opens itself to the Self, the greater transpersonal power of psyche, we become more fully human because we live more rooted in our Source. This Source is unlimited in scope and the Ground of our being. If we are open to these depths we experience renewal described as “child” or “oneself.” The Jung myth presupposes taking the gods projected “out there” back to the soul from which they emerged.

How does the unconscious become more conscious in individuals and history? The individuation journey to wholeness leads gradually to awareness and integration of personal complexes, projections, etc. and into a greater acceptance of self and other, a larger compassion and love of the diversity and interconnectedness of the world, the “unus mundus.” Becoming open to the “inner Ground” through attending to dreams, synchronicities, and meditation, one discovers oneself and opens to others as “oneself.” Jung writes that Eastern introversion is more conducive to “self-liberation” than Western Christianity where the saving liberating power comes from beyond the human, from an external Savior. In Eastern religions, as noted, the person is savior to himself/herself. (18) Jung questions whether the western extraverted style can practice the discipline necessary for this self-liberation and the unmediated experience of God or Unitary Reality. At the same time he sees similarities between the Zen-like practice of meditation and the depth psychological approach of “listening” to the unconscious soul. This explains his attraction not only to Zen Buddhism but to the Christian mystics, especially Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) who described the deep mystical experience where God and creature become one Reality.

Jung’s revisioning of the Christian myth places Divine Presence not only within us but in nature and all things. Both Jung and Teilhard de Chardin have been accused of pantheism defined as this presence. Teilhard speaks of “‘sacred” matter and Jung writes, “It was only quite late that we realized (or rather, are beginning to realize) that God is Reality itself and therefore—last but not least—man. This realization is a millennial process.”(19) Dreaming the myth onward means giving attention not only to our inner life but to the outer world contemplating there the presence shining through daily events. When we give attention, become “one” with a stone or flower or tree it rewards us by “speaking” back. As Dourley notes, both Jung and Teilhard were mystics and pantheists in this sense. Many today who find in these prophets spiritual sustenance long to be in tune with the God Reality present.

The pendulum has swung too far from the earlier beginnings of the Judeo-Christian myth away from the former Earth Mother Goddess. For the latter, mythic stories tell of the creation of the world out of Her body, since all diversities: heaven, earth, Nature and Spirit were united in her image. In contrast the Sky or Father God saw his creation as separate from himself and called it “good.” The Father God myth brought with it welcome emphasis on Spirit and consciousness but, unfortunately, at the expense of splitting from the values of Nature, and the non-rational realm. Yet the Goddess myth of unity and oneness could not be abolished and to its credit, in the view of many, the Catholic Church continued some aspect of the Goddess through the image of the Virgin Mary. But the Sky God mythology took hold and at this point we live in a society that calls myth “false,” denigrates the non-rational and imagination, calling it “imaginary” and after 1500 hundred years still generally regards earth, the feminine realm, and women as inferior. It may be that the archetypal image of the child and its energies are surfacing to lead us forward to a new, deeper understanding.

The mythic child comes out of “living Nature herself” representing wholeness, the union of opposites, of light and shadow, matter and spirit, rational and non-rational, masculine and feminine. Its urgency to develop comes with an invincible Spirit moving into the future. It “appears” at Christmas in the nativity or crèche scene resembling a mandala (circle) where the numinous center, the Christ Child is surrounded by Mary, Joseph, shepherds, Magi and animals. In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi, that great nature mystic, came closer to focusing on the Child alone when he filled a manger with straw, tied up ox and ass close by and invited people in surrounding villages to circle around as he celebrated Mass. Jung used to say that we are the stable in which the child is born emphasizing the psychic personal nature of the image. The child comes from the soul’s darkness as the unforgotten wisdom that “calls” to us during winter darkness.

Years ago at a Christmas Mass the officiating priest, beginning his sermon, held up a baby for the entire congregation to see. “This,” he began, “is the real meaning of Christmas!” Handing the infant back to his mother seated in the front pew, the priest continued, “But Jesus grew up and it is his adult life that inspires us, for he came as our Savior.” There he “lost” me; I wanted to hear more about the child, childlikeness and why Jesus said the child is first and greatest in the Kingdom of God. For that brief moment, as he held the infant, smiling and reaching out to the parishioners who responded with smiles and murmurs, I sensed an echo of that primordial wisdom of the Child-Gods, those psychic energies within our soul. Like the Divine Child, they come to save us. To “save” means to “give life.”

In Jung’s view, the modern myth evolves as we take back the Child-God and, conscious of our shadow, experience our innate divinity. In so doing we create a future where we respect each other’s dignity and live with more compassion and love. Psychically the child image remains alive, and remembering our unforgotten wisdom becomes the touchstone and profound significance of the beautiful Christmas story.

Mariann Burke is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Boston. In addition to Advent and Psychic Birth, she is the author of Re-Imagining Mary: A Journey Through Art to the Feminine Self. Mariann holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, Andover-Newton Theological School and the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and has done graduate work in scripture at Union Theological Seminary and La Salle University. She is a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart.

Notes
1 Frances Hatfield, “The Soul’s Geometry,” The Book of Now: Poetry for the Rising Tide, ed. Leah Shelleda (Carmel, CA: Fisher King Press, 2012), p. 70.
2 William McGuire and R.F.C. Hull, eds, “The 2,000,000 Year Old Man” in C.G. Jung Speaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 89.
3 C.G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” CW 9i (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 169.
4 See James Hollis, Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Everyday Life (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1995) and Mythologems: Incarnations of the Invisible World (Toronto: Inner City Books, 2004).
5 For an interesting discussion of this topic see Lynn White, “Christian Myth and Christian History,” in Journal of History of Ideas, iii.2 (New York, 1942). Also see Hal Childs, The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness, PhD. Dissertation (Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000.) for discussion of John D. Crossan and C.G. Jung on approaches to the historical Jesus and myth.
6 C.G. Jung, Letters, Vol 2 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, LTD, 1978), p. 288.
7 Christopher Pramuk, Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2009), p. 275.
8 Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: Mazdean Iran to Shi’ite Iran. Trans. By Nancy Pearson, Bollingen Series (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), xii. See also Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press,l969)p. 4ff.
9 Benjamin Harshav, ed. Marc Chagall on Art and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 183.
10 Alfred Werner, Chagall: Watercolors and Gouaches (New York: Watson Guptill Publications, 1998), p. 58.
11 Alfred Werner, Chagall: Watercolors and Gouaches, p. 58.
12 Harshav, ed. Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, p. 134.
13 C.G. Jung, “The Child Archetype,” CW 9i, p. 172.
14 C.G. Jung, “The Child Archetype,” CW 9i, p. 170.
15 John P. Dourley, On Behalf of the Mystical Fool: Jung on the Religious Situation (New York: Routledge, 2010) pp. 7, 31. See Chapter 3, “Taking Back the Divinity,” pp. 46-68.
16 C.G. Jung, “Psychological Commentary on ‘The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation,’” CW 11, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 480.
17 Corbett, L. Psyche and the Sacred: Spirituality Beyond Religion (New Orleans: Spring Journal, 2007), p.4
18 John P. Dourley, On Behalf of the Mystical Fool: Jung on the Religious Situation, p. 48.
19 C.G. Jung, “Answer to Job,” CW 11 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 402.

Audrey Punnett and The Orphan: Hosted by the Idaho Friends of Jung

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 22:35:00 +0000

On January 22-23, 2016, the Idaho Friends of Jung is hosting
The Orphan: Alone yet at One with Oneself in the World
presented by Audrey Punnett, PhD

Date: January 22-23, 2016
Time: Lecture, Friday, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm; Workshop, Saturday, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Location: Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 6200 N Garrett St, Boise, ID 83714

This salon is based on Dr. Audrey Punnett’s recently published book, The Orphan: A Journey Towards Wholeness. The lecture will focus on the experience of being alone while being at one with oneself in the world. Dr. Punnett will use excerpts from her book to illustrate the connection between psyche and spirit through the archetypal image of the orphan. The workshop will expand on this topic by using excerpts from the film of the fish tale, Finding Nemo with group discussion about the individuation journey as initiated by the death of Nemo's mother, Coral.

Audrey Punnett, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, certified child, adolescent and adult analyst graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and a member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco where she is past chair of the Infant, Child & Adolescent Training Committee (iCAT). Dr. Punnett has published in peer-reviewed Journals and she teaches nationally and internationally. Dr. Punnett is an Associate Clinical Professor, UCSF-Fresno, Department of Psychiatry and maintains a private practice in Fresno, California.

A Welcome Contribution to the Mysteries of Advent

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Fisher King Press) — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 16:51:00 +0000

Mariann Burke’s Advent and Psychic Birth does true justice to a great tradition. The author describes Advent as a remembrance and ritualistic preparation for the birth of the historical Christ. She notes, however, that if Christmas is solely a revival of an outer event, it will sooner or later loose its inner significance for the soul.

It is not by accident that the birth of Christ is celebrated around the winter solstice. The author draws attention to the historical links between Christmas and the ancient Saturnalian festivals, held in Rome during the second half of December. They can be understood as a revival of yet older traditions that focused on bringing the ailing sun back to life. The people of archaic cultures had no access to modern astronomy and could never be sure if the sun would regain its strength for the coming year. Hence it needed the help of humans to guarantee the continuity of life, as witnessed in Jung’s conversation with Pueblo Indian who claimed that without their religious practice, the sun might never rise again.

It is precisely this uncertainty that provides Advent with a new significance. If we just follow the outer rituals, without ever questioning the meaning of the birth of God in man, our soul will hardly access the full implications of the tradition. The author reminds us that Advent is a time of darkness. Not only the waning sun possesses an ominous significance, but also the first texts of this cycle begin with the destruction from the Great Flood. They also describe cataclysmic events of the future, and advocate us to remain awake during the night, for we do not know when the master will arrive. The liturgy of the second Sunday focuses on liminality, a time of betwixt and betweens. It is devoted to John the Baptist and his time in the wilderness, a psychological space outside of the norms of conventionality. On the third Sunday there are hints of a new baptism, implying a spiritual rebirth destined for humankind. The fourth Sunday celebrates the union of the Holy Spirit with the human Mary, a meeting of heaven and earth, a joining of opposites in preparation for the emergence of a new image of God and man.

With the help of alchemy and convincing case material, Mariann Burke shows us that the symbols and ritual drama of Advent awaken us to our deeper self. We too are exhorted to accept those dark, exiled, repressed components of the psyche. When we immerse ourselves in those ‘dead’ regions of the soul, we might loose our bearing, at least for a while. We begin to confront hidden desires, fears, or anger, but we can also watch out for signs of new symbol. We learn to be open to the creative potential of the unconscious, often manifesting in images of pregnancy, birth, or the appearance of the Divine Child.

This book is a welcome contribution to the mysteries of Advent. It encourages us to participate in the transformative process of death and renewal. It suggests that the soul needs to die and be reborn so that life blossoms in new and surprising ways. Mariann Burke’s book is a testimony to the wonders of revelation, a story that features the ongoing interaction between the human and divine. It can also help us to weave together the broken threads between Christianity and the older nature religions. Advent celebrates a time to anticipate the soul’s striving for wholeness.

John Hill, Jungian analyst, author of At Home in the World: Sounds and Symmetries of Belonging
Title:

Title: Advent and Psychic Birth
Author: Mariann Burke
Paperback: 172 pages
Publisher: Fisher King Press (Dec 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1926715993
ISBN-13: 978-1926715995

Mark Winborn and C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago

fisherking@fisherkingpress.com (Patty Cabanas) — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 18:19:00 +0000

Fisher King Press author Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA will be presenting three days of presentations and teaching at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. On Friday, Dec 11 from 2 pm – 5 pm, Dr. Winborn will be doing a public presentation based on his edited book Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Then on Saturday Dec 12 from 9 am – 12 noon he will be providing a program titled “Bion and Jung: Intersecting Vertices” to the analysts and candidates of the Chicago Institute. Finally, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning he will be conducting a workshop for the institute’s analytic candidates entitled, “Speaking with Complexes: The Art of Analytic Interpretation.”

In addition to “Shared Realities,” which was nominated for the 2015 NAAP Gradiva award for best published works in psychoanalysis, Dr. Winborn is also the author of Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey. Dr. Winborn resides in Memphis, TN where he is currently the Training Coordinator for the Memphis-Atlanta Jungian Seminar. In addition, he serves on the Executive Committee for the American Board for Accreditation in Psychoanalysis.