Jung

The general philosophy of Contemplative Jung is that personal mindfulness is the foundation of exploration of the psyche - that is, of the knowledge and understanding that leads to compassion.  This is true for oneself or, as a clinician, in concert with another person.

The essential foundation of Contemplative Jung is a feedback loop of understanding, communication and attunement.  In a nutshell it looks like this:

1. Listening skills 

          This includes the development of empty mind listening and spacious holding, including                        courageously exploring personal hindrances to these states of mind.

2. Understanding the Other

          This is where Jung's creative and mutually arising model of the psyche comes in

3. Communication of understanding: What, when and how to say it

          How to convey this enhanced understanding is key

4. Feedback

          Feedback comes in many forms: directly from the other person, also from the body, from dreams and from other images.  Listening carefully to this corrects the process from an autonomous and objective source, beyond the ego of either person.  

A more expanded view of this process is included in the following courses.  These topics can be condensed into a workshop or expanded into a lifetime study:

 Contemplative Jung 1: Self Understanding, Listening Skills and Therapeutic Goals 

            Outline of Topics to be covered:

"Only what is really oneself has the power to heal" - C.G.Jung
The symbolic approach
Self, other and totality: introduction to field theory
The objective psyche and the subject
Individuation and the collective
The complex
Personal point of view and practical hermeneutics – everyone has a p.o.v.
Dogen: meditation/non-meditation and goals
Time and being in personal process: understanding and unconscious
The paradox of experience and expectation
Group process and individuation
Neurological and neuro-psych cues
Jung’s view of the ego
Empty listening
Projection I: personal views
Mindful Learning
Dreaming, fantasy and active imagination
The Word Association Test
Typology
Neurosis, suffering and mental health
Amplification I: surround and associate with precision and fullness

 
2.   Contemplative Jung 2: Models of Psyche, Mind and Transformation 

            Outline of Topics to be covered:

Models and modeling: multiplicity and unity in the one mind
Structure and dynamics: listening for patterns, meta-story and repetition
Measuring change: images, self-assessment and others
The alchemical map – projection and truth
The mental health map (Making Mental Illness)
Neurosis, suffering, fate and transformation
Addiction and compulsion
The cultural maps: coercive and illustrative (Catholic)
Individuation and the collective
Perspectivist theory – the five perspectives
Projection II: The Other
Emotions, intuitions and mind
The universal metaphor
Language and pattern
Anthropology and Evolution
Foreclosed religious language and opening the horizon of being
The Orientational approach
Complex, Archetype and Symbol


Contemplative Jung 3: Communication, Intervention and the Ethics of Helping

            Outline of Topics to be covered:

Measuring symbolic density – and matching response to level
Attunement and time – place – conditions
The agenda of the Other: deep orientation and speaking for the other
Deriving types of change from the symbolon
Listening with beginners mind for the invitation for intervention
Opening, exploring, amplifying/closing, defining, focusing
Moving from complex to symbol to archetype – and back
At play in the field of the psyche: co-projection III
Transforming Psyche
Image, language and communication

Contemplative Jung 4: Always Already Whole - The Total Self in the World

            Outline of Topics to be covered:

How to interrogate the spirit of the depths
Synchronicity
The new question: what is the subject, from within itself? 
Always already whole: Or not
The symbolic approach to the world
Projection IV: projection is perception is world is ourselves
Definitions and experiences of sickness, health and totality
Various views of form and emptiness
New categories, new data, multiple perspectives and grounding
The image of culture, the image of an age, the image of person
Myths of reality, reality of myth and the human condition
Multiplicity in psyche
Back to the symbolic quest with a new perspective
Inner precepts

Course Descriptions:

contemplation...

transformation...

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