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AUTUMN PROGRAM 2026-27
The Symbolic Life:
The Religious Function of the Psyche
A lecture by Jason E. Smith of Manchester by-the-Sea, Massachusetts
Registration link: https://symboliclife.eventbrite.ca
A recording will be available for all who have registered and paid but cannot attend.
Saturday, October 24
1:00-3:00 p.m. (EDT)
Members: $15
Non-Members: $20
Students/Senior Members: $10
This will be a ZOOM event.
For info please call (514) 971-8664 For a brief preview, watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3lGn1NKlA
"Among all my patients in the second half of life — that is to say, over thirty-five — there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook." C.G. Jung, CW11, para. 509
The living process of the unconscious, taught Carl Jung, is more aptly expressed by religious symbols than by scientific formulas. In this talk we will seek to understand the nature of the symbolic life. We will consider both the psychological dimension of religion and the religious function of the psyche. We will explore what it means to live with a symbolic life and the potential consequences of living without one. Finally, we will address the question of how we can understand religious experience in an increasingly diverse and pluralistic world, and what these questions look like in the context of the psychotherapeutic setting.
Jason E. Smith is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. He is the author of Religious but Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life and the creator and host of the podcast Digital Jung. Jason serves as a training analyst and faculty member for the C. G. Jung Institute of New England.
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