—Harvey Shepherd

Volume 37, Newsletter #1, August 2011

Creativity.

That will be the theme with which the C. G. Jung Society will begin our 2011-12 program year on Friday, September 23. A conversation on that topic with two outstanding local analysts, Jan Bauer and Guy Corneau, will be the keynote of an evening at the de Sève Cinema in the downtown Concordia University campus that will also provide an occasion to renew acquaintances and make new friendships over refreshments.
    There is plenty to discuss. On the one hand, the word can denote a wellspring of energy and insight for those of us associated with the Jungian project. On the other, the word can be used to cover a multitude of mawkish and sentimental sins.
    As an old-timer in our society, may I add that the word creativity has a resonance for me from the collage workshops under the title “Opening Channels to the Creative” that the late Edith Wallace led in Montreal over a number of years? They exemplified both sides of the tension I have just mentioned. On the one hand, participants in these workshops often found them moving and rewarding and there were deeply emotional moments. On the other, there was nothing mawkish in Edith Wallace’s manner or how she conducted the workshops.
    Pondering how I might stir up discussion on this topic, I turned to the index of a book on my summer reading list: Volume IV of the Collected English Papers of the anything-but-mawkish Wolfgang Giegerich. The volume has the general title The Soul Always Thinks and was published last year by Spring Journal Books of New Orleans.
    Wolfgang didn’t let me down. On pages 252 and 253 (well ahead of where my bookmark was at that time in the summer) are some provocative comments on the “great dream.” Commenting on a letter Jung wrote to Sir Herbert Read in 1960, Giegerich takes exception to Jung’s comment that the great dream “consists of the many small dreams.” Giegerich responds:

What a letdown! A few sentences earlier Jung had—correctly, I think—still said, “It is the great dream which has always spoken through the artist as a mouthpiece.” The “great dream” as conceived in this statement is precisely not the sum of the private “small dreams,” but a totally other phenomenon: the work of great art, which is a priori public, belonging to the whole nation, if not humanity, and the product of the whole man (homo totus), including his wakeful consciousness and all his intellectual power. Great art and, by the same token, great thinking, do not come out of “the unconscious” conceived naturalistically and positivistically as a mysterious anthropological constant and a reservoir of timeless archetypes, not out of the personality of the individual (his interior). They come out of the real, concrete historical situation of each respective time, out of the fundamental truths, the open questions and deep conflicts of the age that press both for an articulate representation and an answer. They (the truths, questions and conflicts of the age) are the source, the prima materia and the real subject of production (“creativity”). And they are neither individual nor collective but—logical (which takes us into a wholly other dimension) ... In them and in the great works produced by them, not in himself, not in his “unconscious,” man has his soul and this is why the locus of “the whole weight of mankind’s problems” is in those great works. In them and their succession we find the opus magnum.
… The great artist or thinker is no more than an alchemical vessel in which the great problems of the time are the prime matter undergoing their fermenting corruption, distillation, sublimation and of course articulation.

    I don’t know what Jan Bauer and Guy Corneau may think of this or how much it will bear on whatever they have to say to us on September 23. What is sure is that neither Jan nor Guy is any stranger to “the fundamental truths, the open questions and deep conflicts” of our time, as you can see in part in Murray Shugar’s review in this issue of Guy’s latest book, Revivre. As you will also see, Guy has much to say on creativity in this book. Jan’s presentations in Montreal over the years have often focused on what light Jungian psychology may shed on the issues of the day.
    Anyway, I hope these notes will help get some juices flowing in anticipation of our season-opening event.
The event will introduce an interesting season. Another local analyst well acquainted with issues of the public world will be our lecturer in October. Now an analyst in private practice in Montreal, Françoise Cloutier has a master’s degree in business administration and worked as a senior consultant in information technology before her passion for symbols and deep respect for the unfolding of the psyche prompted her to train at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. Her interests include the sometimes difficult experiences of no hope found in depression, in illnesses and sometimes in periods of life transition. Her intriguing topic will be “The Skeleton Woman.”

    In November we plan a seminar on dreams that will feature brief presentations by several Montreal analysts and others. Stay tuned for details. The fall program will close in December with a presentation by Montreal semi-expatriate Ginette Paris, who will draw on material from her recent book Heartbreak: Recovery from Lost Love and Mourning brought out this year by Mill City Press of Minneapolis. The book is probably less sentimental than you might expect; its cover advises us to “Look at your broken heart with the curiosity of a naturalist, as you would pay attention to your pet, to understand what is going on.”
    Let me close with a reminder that membership in our society is on an academic-year basis. Your membership is probably due for renewal.

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Volume 36, Newletter #1
A Note From the Co-President

You may be surprised to be receiving this newsletter now, during what would usually be the summer lull for our society. We need to tell you about some historic moments that will soon have an impact on the life of the Jungian enterprise in Montreal.
    On the one hand, Montreal has the honour of being the host city for the eighteenth congress of the International Association for Jungian Psychology (IAAP), which will bring Jungian analysts and others from around the world to our city August 22-27. Another moment is the publication last October, after more than half a century under wraps, of a sumptuous edition of Jung’s illustrated journal the Liber Novus, or Red Book. Some of those dedicated to carrying on Jung’s work consider this a significant turning point in the ongoing effort to understand Jung and his work.
    Inevitably, but in some ways unfortunately, the international congress is a professional event restricted to Jungian analysts and certain others. Only a few members of our society are eligible to attend it. However, organizers of the congress have opened two events to the general public, including members of the C. G. Jung Society of Montreal. For this we are grateful to the Montreal Jungian analysts, and most especially Tom Kelly, chair of the conference program committee.
    One session will be devoted to the Red Book. Its editor, Sonu Shamdasani, will present a talk on Monday evening, August 23 entitled “Liber Novus: From Personal Cosmology to General Psychology.”

    The other session also stems largely from a recent publishing event. On Thursday evening, August 26, a distinguished group of Jungians will present a dramatic reading based on the correspondence between Jung and the Dominican priest and scholar Victor White between 1945 and 1950. Among the performers will be two of the editors of The Jung-White Letters published in 2007 by Routledge in the Philemon Series. This dialogue is particularly topical today, when the place of religion is a source of controversy.
    The Red Book will also be the focus of the event that will launch the 2010-2011 program year of our own society. Two Jungian analysts in Montreal — Tom Kelly and Yvon Rivière — will discuss this book and present some of its images, in the course of an evening in Fulford Hall, downtown in the office tower behind Christ Church Cathedral. The evening will also provide an occasion for socializing.
    The enclosed flyers present details of all three of these events. The two public events will take place at the conference hotel, the Queen Elizabeth. (It strikes me as fitting, considering the complex contrasexuality of Jungian thought, that the conference is taking place at an establishment known in French as Le Reine Elizabeth.)
    As we take the opportunity to enjoy these two events in company with stars from the Jungian firmament, I urge those of our members who attend to be aware that this will involve some logistical issues. People at the admission desk will have to sort out members of the general public, including members of our society, from participants in the congress. (These will have paid a substantial fee to attend the conference.) Members of the public and of the Jung Society will be required to pay admission. Please bring your current membership card to avail yourself of the reduced fee.
    I trust that these events will provide a flying start for our own program year, which will feature another look at the topic of synchronicity, to which we devoted the latest of our reading seminar series last fall. Jean-François Vézina, “explorateur de l’inconscient et peintre du silence,” as he describes himself on his entertaining website and blog at www.jfvezina.net, will discuss this topic (in English) under the title “Necessary Chances” on Friday evening, October 15, and at a half-day workshop the next day on synchronicity in movies.

    On November 5 and 6, we will follow up on our enormously successful Ira Progoff intensive workshop of last January with a Level II journaling workshop, again led by Avis Smalley of Vermont. It is a prerequisite of participating in this program that one have completed a Level I workshop like ours of last January.
    There may be an opportunity for those who missed the January weekend to attend one in October. At last report, Cedar Park United Church in Pointe Claire was trying to organize a Level I workshop, probably October 1-2. For more information, send an email to Graeme Sutherland of the church at graeme.renate@sympatico.ca. You can also call the church office at (514) 695-3337 or our own number at (514) 481-8664.
    It is sometimes suggested that psychotherapy is primarily for “neurotics,” but from the beginning Jungian psychology has also been challenged and enriched by the experiences and visions of those with more debilitating emotional conditions. Some of them too have found Jungian approaches helpful, perhaps as an adjunct to other types of therapy.

    Here in Montreal, we in the C. G. Jung Society of Montreal, and people in more than one faith community, mourn Marie-Claire Strickland, who died suddenly in late April at the age of 68, after what her family described in the newspaper announcement as "a courageous lifelong struggle with mental health challenges.”
    Again quoting from the newspaper obituary, Marie-Claire, née Charlebois, “was a lifelong learner, an inspirational teacher at Macdonald-Cartier High School (in Saint-Hubert), and a compassionate friend. We will remember her active mind, her heartfelt laughter, and her burning desire to help others.” Indeed. Some of us in the Jung society will particularly remember her abiding interest in spirituality and her ability to laugh at herself.
    Donations in her memory may be made to AMI-Québec, Alliance for the Mentally Ill, a grass-roots, support and advocacy organization of families and friends of people with a mental illness; the website is at www.amiquebec.org.
  
                                                                                                                                   —Harvey Shepherd

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Volume 36, Newletter #2

A Note From the Co-President

 

“Everything is connected and the web is holy,” wrote a second-century Roman emperor. In so doing, Marcus Aurelius, revered as an exemplar of the Platonic ideal of the philosopher king, provided our society with a motto for the reading seminar we organized last spring on Jung’s concept of synchronicity.

Our programmes in October will continue to explore some of the interwoven strands in the complex pattern of Jungian psychology and of recent developments in the Jungian world. We began this process late this summer as we lent a helping hand to the gathering of nearly 700 analysts and others from around the world at the XVIIIth congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology.

In particular, twelve of our members participated as volunteers, performing routine services and in exchange attending sessions of the congress. In reality, this opportunity was out of all proportion to the services we rendered, and I would like to express our appreciation to the Montreal analysts, particularly Tom Kelly, for according us this great privilege. We also want to give Tom our congratulations on his election as president-elect of the IAAP (which means that, barring unforeseen circumstances, he is will become the next president).

Our society co-sponsored two events during the convention that were open to our members and the general public. One of them was an evening devoted to the much-heralded and long-awaited publication of The Red Book, Carl Jung’s account of the seminal and personal exploration of his own unconscious through a pioneering venture in what has come to be known as active imagination. The other event was a dramatic reading drawn from the recently published edition of the correspondence between Jung and the English Dominican priest Victor White between 1945 and 1960, dealing largely with the problem of evil.

The Red Book also provided the theme for our own social gathering on September 24, which launched our 2010-11 season. Tom Kelly and Montreal analyst Yvon Rivière discussed The Red Book at this gathering, which was also the annual occasion for members and friends of our society to renew acquaintances, if they had not already done so over the busy summer.

Synchronicity will be the theme of our first regular lecture-workshop weekend of the fall. Jean-François Vézina, a clinical psychologist in Quebec City, former president of the Cercle Jung de Québec in that city, author, communicator, movie buff, and “explorateur de l’inconscient,” as he puts it on his Web page (which is well worth a visit at http://www.jfvezina.net) has devoted a lot of attention to synchronicity over the years. “Necessary chances: synchronicity in the encounters that transform us” will be the topic of his lecture on Friday evening, October 15. It is also the title of a book he has written.

I had the opportunity to meet him a few times, all too briefly, alas, at the IAAP Montreal congress and am greatly looking forward to deepening this acquaintance during that weekend—his first with our society. His three-hour workshop on Saturday, October 16 will explore synchronicity further with the help of excerpts from movies. (Please see the enclosed flyer for details.)

If our reading seminar series on synchronicity last year probably played a part in our selection of synchronicity as the topic of the Vézina weekend, these series are also responsible in part for putting us in touch with the leader of our other October event. Olga Lipadatova came to the attention of members of our society largely through her participation in some of our previous seminars. The art workshops she will lead on four Thursday evenings between October 7 and 28 represent our society’s continuing concern to balance intellectual and hands-on activity in our programmes. They will also build on a renewed interest in active imagination spurred by The Red Book.

The workshops will take place at her Centre AION at 2902 Lacombe Avenue, near the Université de Montréal Métro station. As with the Vézina weekend, those seeking more details on the Lipadatova series can refer to her website at http://arttherapyolipa.com. Please register early by calling (514) 481-8664 as spaces are limited. Members: $120, non-members: $150.

What goes around comes around, and plans are already well advanced for our next reading seminar series on four Monday evenings November 1 and 8 and, after a two-week break, November 29 and December 6. Members of our society will lead discussions of readings from Jung and Jungians on “The stranger living within us.” Please see the enclosed flyer for more details.

         November events will also include a Part II Ira Progoff journaling weekend (building on our Progoff weekend in the previous programme year) November 5 and 6. This is limited to people who have attended the Introductory Workshop (Part I). (Those who attend the event at the Cedar Park Church on October 1 & 2 may be interested in joining us for Part II.) November 26 and 27 there will be a lecture and workshop on Mary Magdalene with Ingrid Eisermann of Toronto, who will be visiting our society for the first time. Stay tuned for more details.
     Our programmes, we think and hope, continue to be marked by a rich diversity of material, somehow centering around what we think of as the Self.
     Toronto analyst Daryl Sharp makes a similar comment in his latest book, published this year by the Toronto publishing house he heads, Inner City Books, with the title Living Your Nonsense: Halfway to Dawn with Eros. It’s the latest in a series of books in which some profound ideas are wrapped up in a light-hearted romp through Jungian psychology and Sharp’s own autobiography.
     He writes:
 
I am writing this book, or maybe just typing, but behind it all is the guiding hand of a guiding centre in my psyche, playing me like a puppet. I am not master in my own house. I am a renter at best, my ego sharing space with the panoply of saints and knaves, nobles and villains, with a landlord more or less indifferent to the lot. I mean to say, we are answerable to a higher power whether we like it or not. You might call it God, Gnu or what have you. I call it the Self, because it’s part and parcel of my mental infrastructure as a Jungian analyst. (p. 30)
 
It’s a book you may well enjoy.
    Please don’t forget to renew your society membership if you have not yet done so. Our society depends on your support.
 
                                                                                                         —Harvey Shepherd

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Volume 36, Newletter #3

A Note From the Co-President

 

Perhaps synchronicity strikes again. The subject of our next lecture-workshop weekend, Mary Magdalene, will be topical in a way that we did not predict when Ingrid Eisermann of Toronto agreed to speak to us on Friday evening, November 26, and lead a workshop the next day.

    In September, long after Ms. Eisermann agreed to lead her first weekend for our society, Ontario Superior Court Judge Susan Himel delivered a ruling striking down three important provisions of the Criminal Code: against communicating for the purpose of prostitution, pimping, and operating a common bawdy house. It seems certain that we are in for a period of public debate about prostitution that will strike chords in our individual and collective psyches.

    In such a debate, the mythic figure of Mary Magdalene, an early follower of Christ and, some would say, his first woman apostle, will not be far in the background. Christian tradition tells us that she was present at the Crucifixion and among the women who came to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. Some accounts and speculations go farther and tell us, variously, that she was especially entrusted with Jesus’ teaching and had a conjugal relation with him. There is also a venerable suggestion that she was a repentant prostitute.

    That last suggestion, Mary-Magdalene-as-prostitute, is exasperating to some students of her life and legend, quite possibly including Ingrid Eisermann.

    As history, the notion that Mary Magdalene was a repentant prostitute has long been discredited by any reputable scholarship as a canard, described by feminists as a prize example of the egregious nonsense of which patriarchy is capable. The notion is based in part on the conflation of her story with those of other New Testament figures, including the sinful woman who anoints Jesus in Luke 7: 36-50.

    A particularly succulent example can be found in a sermon by Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century. He said:

 

 
She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the woman from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? … It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts. What she therefore displayed more scandalously, she was now offering to God in a more praiseworthy manner. She had coveted with earthly eyes, but now through penitence these are consumed with tears. She displayed her hair to set off her face, but now her hair dries her tears. She had spoken proud things with her mouth, but in kissing the Lord’s feet, she now planted her mouth on the Redeemer’s feet. For every delight, therefore, she had had in herself, she now immolated herself. She turned the mass of her crimes to virtues, in order to serve God entirely in penance, for as much as she had wrongly held God in contempt.

This quotation may also suggest that the idea of Mary Magdalene as prostitute, while balderdash as history, retains a mythical power that demands that we face up to fundamental issues of sexuality, including prostitution, in our Western and Christian heritage.
    Having said that, I should add that the particular issue of prostitution may be somewhat peripheral to our weekend discussion, as it is to Karen L. King’s book The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Polebridge Press, 2003), where I found the above quotation from Pope Gregory on page 151.                 For those who can lay their hands on a copy, I heartily recommend it as preparation for our upcoming weekend and as a scholarly stimulus to spiritual reflection in general.
    I expect that Ms. Eisermann’s presentations will acquaint us with someone who has things to teach us about the feminine, spirituality, sexuality and their interrelations that are broader and deeper than the particular issue of prostitution.
    Ingrid Eisermann is well qualified to discuss such subjects. Born in Germany, she immigrated to Canada in 1968 and has taught mathematics at Memorial University of Newfoundland, done graduate studies in counselling at Loyola University in Chicago and directed a counselling center in Northern Ontario. Since completing analytical training in 2006, she has had a private practice in North York, and has worked for family service agencies and done individual and couple counselling.
    Please remember that our second soup night of the season will take place on Friday, December 3, a week after Ms. Eisermann’s lecture. Please call (514) 481-8664 to reserve a seat.
    The event that will wind up our fall season, also advertised in a flyer in this newsletter, represents a change from the fall program listings in our calendar. Our society has often benefited from the generosity of Guy Corneau over the years in which he has become one of Quebec’s most sought-after speakers, and will do so again when he speaks to us about his struggle with cancer.
    We were planning to have him speak to us in February, but because of other demands on his time this lecture has been moved up to Friday evening, December 10. We are cancelling the social “Saturnalia” festivity that we had scheduled for December 11 and will schedule another event in February.
    Guy is a graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich and practiced as an analyst in Montreal, although for some years now he has devoted himself to presenting his insights to a broader audience, in Quebec and internationally, in talks and writings, largely in French. Some of us have read about his experiences or heard his address to the International Association for Analytical Psychology last summer or elsewhere. This experience is not to be missed.
    He will be talking about the deep meaning he found in his disease on the physical, psychological and spiritual levels. For Guy, cancer can become a door to joy and internal rebirth, too beautiful an opportunity to let slip away.
    Let me conclude with a request that you take out or renew your annual membership in our society if you have not already done so. Membership plays an important part in enabling us to continue to bring you the sort of profoundly insightful programs that I have just been discussing.
 
                                                                                                                                    —Harvey Shepherd
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Volume 36, Newletter #4

A Note From the Co-President
 
We can scarcely be reminded often enough—this is my case, anyway—that Jungian psychology is not just an intellectual exercise. We had a vivid reminder of this last September, with the program based on Jung’s Red Book and its mandalas and other art work.
    And there were several more: in Jean-François Vézina’s presentation in October on the tricks fate plays on us that Jungians call synchronicity; in Ingrid Eisermann’s presentations in November on Mary Magdalene and the feminine; and on Guy Corneau’s in December on his own experience with cancer. Some of us also worked with images in art workshops with Olga Lipadatova and in a Progoff Intensive-Journal workshop.
    This is all to the good. In important ways, the whole Jungian enterprise is an attempt to redress the one-sided emphasis in our society on the intellectual, the masculine and the extraverted. Yet the embodied sometimes seems lacking in our programming here at the C. G. Jung Society of Montreal. In any case, attendance at such events tends to be rather weak.
    I am pleased to report, however, that our winter-spring events will be anything but dry intellectualism.
We will be starting off 2011 on Thursday, January 20 not with a lecture but with a video. And what a video! Mysterium: A Poetic Prayer is subtitled Testimonials on Body/Spirit Coniunctio which only a few of our members—not me, unfortunately—had a chance to see during last summer’s international congress of Jungian analysts in Montreal.
    Lavishly filmed and directed by Antonella Adorisio, a Jungian analyst and teacher in Rome, a dance/movement psychotherapist, and a teacher in Authentic Movement, this DVD, distributed by Spring Journal of New Orleans, seeks to link together matter and spirit, thoughts and emotions, images and reflections. It offers perspectives from Jungian analysts from Italy, the United States, Venezuela and India as well as images from around the world, and testimony from practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism in India and Nepal.
    One enthusiast for this DVD is Michael Conforti, Jungian analyst, founding director of the Assisi Institute for the Study of Archetypal Patterns in Vermont and a past lecturer to our Montreal society.
“With grace, wisdom, artistry, and a profound understanding and experience of psyche,” he writes,
 

Antonella Adorisio captures the true confluence of psyche and matter in this magnificent video. In it we see how it is that spirit enlivens matter and how our relationship with matter can bring us into the realm of the ineffable, and into the domain of psyche and spirit.

 

In February, we are expecting an extraordinary treat for the very few of us who had the privilege of participating in movement workshops that Erica Lorentz led for us much earlier in her thirty-year career, when she was based in Vermont. I am confident that her lecture to us on Friday, February 4 and workshop on active imagination through movement the next day Saturday, February 5, will be even more remarkable and a wonderful discovery for each participant, both of our talented guest and of ourselves.    
    The all-too-lengthy hiatus in Lorentz’s presentations to us was due to the fact that she moved her base of operations to Houston, where she continued to have an illustrious career in therapy and teaching. This included acting as movement co-ordinator for a Techno-Cosmic Mass put together by Matthew Fox, the guru of Creation Spirituality.
    However, some of us at the IAAP Congress in Montreal found that Erica is back! She hung out her shingle in Brattleboro, Vermont last fall and has settled in with, among other things, two “incredible” kittens that should be about twenty weeks old by the time you read this. I can report on the basis of a social encounter at the Montreal conference that she has more charm and verve than ever.
    Looking through some of the information she sent along tells me that the idea of “witnessing” continues to be important for Erica Lorentz, as it was decades ago. This can be the witnessing and containing of archetypal energies when they become embodied and emerge in our lives and also, I recall from her workshops long ago, a technique in movement workshops. She thinks her work is quite relevant to issues raised by The Red Book. I also discovered with surprise that Mary Magdalene, the subject of Ingrid Eisermann’s presentations in November, is of interest to Erica Lorentz, although she might not touch on Mary Magdalene in her coming presentations to us.

    Our spring program will include the first visit to our society by Robert Black of the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts. His presentation on Friday evening, March 11, may involve a different kind of encounter with our personal past: the topic is “Mythology and Ancestry.” Then, on the Saturday, people whose interest in mandalas has been whetted by The Red Book (or in other ways) will have a chance to pursue that interest at a mandala workshop.
    The weekend presentations of the program year will conclude with a visit by that perennial favourite, James Hollis, who will lecture and lead a workshop on Friday and Saturday, April 15 and 16, on the topic “Stories Told, Stories Untold, Stories That Tell Us.”
    The topic for the spring edition of our ever-popular reading seminars at the Westmount Public Library, animated by members of the society, will be “The Symbolic Life.” This is the over-all title of Volume 18 of Jung’s Collected Works; the reading selections will come from Spring Journal, Vol. 82, also called Symbolic Life.
    Let me conclude with a note of good wishes on behalf of our society to Daryl Sharp, Toronto analyst and founder of Inner City Books. Daryl has been a great friend of our society through lectures in past years, books of his own that have been reviewed a number of times in this newsletter and the great contribution that Inner City Books has made to the cause down through the years in bringing writings by Jungian analysts to the public. Colleagues and friends organized a tribute to him in Toronto in December.
 
                                                                                                                                    —Harvey Shepherd