Newsletter 2016

Web Address: http://www.jungsa.net Email: cgjungsa@gmail.com

Hi everyone, and a warm hello from the Society as we head into a new year with another great programme of talks. The Society is in good health, with an increase in the coffers and more importantly a new warmth and friendly feeling in our group. There was a strong quality to the talks last year with one of the highpoints being the enlivened discussion after the movies celebrating Marie-Louise von Franz’s centennial year. I was touched to see this participation as for me Marie-Louise is the one person who really understood Jung’s ideas and extended their application into alchemy and the new sciences. Something I hope to see more of in our up and coming talks.First off I would like to acknowledge and personally thank the fine contribution made by our wonderful Committee:

Vice President / Secretary:      Christine ChapmanRecordings:    Gloria OelmanTreasurer:     Debbie Ostler

Library:     Vivien Heine (incoming) Barbara Pedler (outgoing)Hospitality:     Tim Wright

President:      Dr Robert MatthewsWe give a heartfelt thanks to the hard work and contribution by outgoing librarian Barbara Pedler, and hope she enjoys her Pegasus memento from the Society. Our sincere thanks go out to Debbie Ostler who has once again done a marvelous job holding the treasury in the black; to Gloria Oelman who always gives such importance to good recording of our talks; to Tim Wright who has done a marvelous effort on his first year as caterer, kudos to him; and to Christine Chapman whose lovely talks and contributions are well received by all. And finally we would like to give a warm welcome to Vivien Heine who is taking over the librarian duties.

C G Jung Society

Of South Australia

Feel free to approach me at the meetings with any questions, comments or suggestions. Looking forward to seeing you at the meetings. Yours warmly, Robert Matthews (President).

Jesus, his Mother, her Sister and Mary MagdaleneProfessor Robert Crotty

When: 7:30pm Friday 4th March Members $6; non-members $12

Jung was of course deeply impressed by the Gnostic writings. Although suppressed by the early Church, their writings show creative attempts to find a totality within the opposites of spirit and matter, masculine and feminine. These themes were taken up again in Medieval alchemy. The last 150 years of archeological finds

have discovered numerous great Gnostic treasures. One of these Gnostic codices was indeed owned by Jung (the ‘Jung codex’). It is my privilege to welcome Prof Robert Crotty, a scholar in Gnostic writings (he reads Hebrew, Greek and Latin) to open out series of talks for the year. Robert’s talk is as follows:

The Christian gospel of John is very different from the other three (called the ‘Synoptics’ because of their similarity). Chronology, list of events and language are quite different. References in John to Spirit, Truth, The Way, Light, Word contrast with the pedestrian language of the Synoptics, which derives from earlier Judaic thought.

Since ancient times the differences in John have attracted scholarly attention, even though many Christians have been attracted by its spiritual flavour. My hypothesis is that John’s gospel began as a compendium of three earlier Gnostic collections (the Book of Seven Signs, Gnostic Treatises and Gnostic Discourses). This compendium flourished in Western Asia Minor by the second century CE. Its world-view included an indescribable Spirit, a Son or Word (who takes the appearance of Flesh and becomes Jesus), an evil world created by a deformed divinity, Yaldabaoth, Jesus’ mission as teacher of self-realisation, the presence of the Spirit to continue his teaching office.

At some stage the Roman Christians arrived in Western Asia Minor. Their thought-world, expanded in the gospel of Mark, was based on a human Jesus who, in some way, achieved divinity and was sacrificed by his Father to redeem humanity from its innate sinfulness. Roman Christians were in ascendancy. They overcame control of the Gnostic churches, then overwrote the Gnostic compendium with corrections, explanations and major additions to bring it into line with the gospel of Mark.

Two sections of the present gospel of John (the wedding feast of Cana; the death of Jesus) will be examined to show the (inept) Roman additions and the original Gnostic substratum.

Robert Crotty, is Emeritus Professor of Religion and Education, University of South Australia

Dr Liliane Frey-Rohn – Remembering Jung Movie + Discussion

When: 7:30pm Friday April 1st Members $6; non-members $12

This remarkable interview with Dr Liliane Frey-Rohn was one of the Remembering Jung series produced by Suzanne Wagner. Liliane’s warm and deeply personal account of her own life in the orbit of Jung and his inner circle of colleagues is an intimate and eye opening account of how Jung’s ideas may inform a person’s life. In continuous analysis with Jung for decades, her rich inner development is apparent. She has a PhD in Philosophy and was a fine analyst for many years.

A guided discussion will be held after the movie. And as usual special ‘movie night’ lovely food and drink in between.

The way of Individuation: Logos and Eros Part I

Dr Robert MatthewsWhen: 7:30pm Friday May 6th Members $6; non-members $12

Last year I gave a talk on Jung’s personal myth. I wanted to provide something of a road map for those interested in finding their own personal myth, by looking at how others had walked this path before us. In the Remembering Jung series, Liliane Frey-Rohn, (this film is being shown in the April lecture above) tells how each of Jung’s followers were keen to find

their own path, assisted by but not imitating Jung’s way. She discovered for her that it was more to do with Eros, although as she says, we all need both, the feminine principle of Eros and its masculine counterpart of Logos. In this talk I will explore how Jung saw these two great principles in action within our psyches and sketch out how they may sit within the individuation process. Note this is only a sketch, and must remain so. These powers are only met through lived life and not through any discussion. But the latter may be a preliminary help. This talk will be continued in October as I look at how the

central encounter made by the alchemists with these two great powers in their coniunctio

(conjunction) as Luna (Eros) and Sol (Logos). This will serve as something of an introduction to alchemical writings, which occupied Jung in his later years. For the serious adept, alchemy was not a means to fortune and power, but to individuation.

Dr Robert Matthews is President of the Society, and a Jungian psychotherapist.

The Serpent’s Kiss: chaos and cosmos in the encounter with the self

Craig DelaneyWhen: 7:30pm Friday June 3rd Members $6; non-members $12

Serpent dreams and stories are common and universal.  The fear blending with awe of serpents shows that something in us deems them as greater beings.  All over the world handling them is regarded as miraculous and a sign of having special powers, diabolical or bestowed by the good gods.  Yet we run from them in (our dreams and fear their bite.) What if the serpent kissed us?  Is there any difference between the serpent's kiss and its bite?  Jung pointed to the serpens mercurialis of the alchemists as a symbol of the Self.

Craig Delaney is a Jungian therapist practising in Mitcham, and is the immediate past President of the Society.

a sufi tale – a bird’s flight to god

Jacquie Flecknoe-BrownWhen: 7:30pm Friday July 1st Members $6; non-members $12

To be delivered as a skype presentation

The Sufi tale discussed is one of the 120 tales embedded in the Conference of the Birds by Farīd ud-Dīn Aṭṭār, a beautiful epic poem about the birds' flight towards God. In this tale, Aṭṭār tells of the venerable Sheikh Sa'man in Mecca who dreams he is bowing to an idol, and goes to Rome (the Christian world) to discover what this dream might mean. He falls in love with a beautiful and spiritual Christian girl, loses his reason and converts to Christianity on her wishes. She makes him burn the Koran and drink wine, after which he

wants to marry her. She tells him her bride price is very high and he must tend her pigs for a year before being with her. He goes to the pig fields as demanded. In the meantime his followers are devoutly praying back in Mecca for him to be released from this spell of love and return to them. They set out for Rome, praying for his redemption. Muhammad, the messenger from God, appears and tells the followers their Sheikh is released, 40days after he began tending the pigs. The followers join him, and with him converted to his own faith, set off back to Mecca. The girl has a dream that the sun falls into her arms, and she runs after the Sheikh to be one of his followers. But the way between Rome and Mecca is long hard desert and she succumbs to the heat. He returns, having intuited her trouble, but she dies in his arms.The tale is 450 couplets in length, and has a great deal of complexity in it: to do with the relationship between Christianity and Islam in the 13th Century, about the feminine and the evolution of the God image at this time, and also the meaning of having to be brought low when one lives too high. I will also look at the fascinating ancient tradition of Islamic Prophesying, similar to that in the Old Testament in the ways in which dreams were interpreted at that time. 

Jacquie Flecknoe-Brown is a Jungian therapist practicing in Melbourne and nearing completion of her training as a Jungian Analyst in Switzerland.

In Conversation With Carl Gustav Jung + Discussion

When: 7:30pm Friday August 5th Members $6; non-members $12

In 1957, a young psychiatrist, Richard Evans, somehow mangaged to obtain Jung’s agreement to film interviews with him. Over two days, Jung gave Evans a remarkably concise and lively overview of his key ideas. He was 81 years of age at the time and still his vigor and passion are evident. We will be watching a one hour portion of the orginal footage. The complete interveiw was published as a transcript intitled C G Jung Speaking – see our library. I’ve shown excerpts of this footage before, and people will be happy to know there are subtitles in English for although the interviews were carried out in English, the Swiss accent was a little difficult on this early technology recording (1957). I always find spending time with the original source of these ideas the touchstone for the rest of my research and practice and hope you too will be fascinated to see Jung in action.

A guided discussion will be held after the movie.

And as usual special ‘movie night’ lovely food and drink in between.

At Home in the Language of the Soul

Helen Phillips

When: 7:30pm Friday September 2nd Members $6; non-members $12

Helen will provide us a talk drawn from, At Home in the Language of the Soul, by Josephine Evetts-Secker. Josephine is a Jungian analyst, former professor of English literature, and more recently an ordained priest of the Anglican Church.  The precis for her book: Language has a primary importance in Jungian psychology and its practice. C.G. Jung saw every act of speech as a psychic event. Even the “worker” words in language, like prepositions or conjunctions, carry particular archetypal energies, working dynamically and daimonically in

the conduct of transformational narrative and realizing both personal and collective purposes. This book aims to deepen our consciousness of psyche’s speech as it occurs in our professional discourses, in the psychoanalytic encounter, in dreams, fairy tales, myths, and poetry. Vividly exploring the grammar of the psyche, we are urged to constantly kindle and rekindle our engagement with language.

Helen Phillips is a Jungian psychoanalyst, working in Adelaide and the Barossa Valley.

The way of Individuation: Logos and Eros Part II

Dr Robert MatthewsWhen: 7:30pm Friday October 7th Members $6; non-members $12

We continue our look at the Eros and Logos by a comparison of two analyses of the alchemical text Introitus apertus. This text by the alchemist Eirenaeus Phialetha in his Musaeum Hermeticum I find of great importance. What is particularly interesting is that Jung and Barbara Hannah have both written an analysis of it. I quote Hannah: “Jung has already interpreted this text in his most exemplary manner from the man’s point of view, or rather form the point of view of

Logos. So our task is to study it from the point of view of women, that is, from the point of view of Eros, where it seems to fit just as well – if not better – like so many of these texts that come from the unconscious.”

Robert Matthews is President of the Society, and a Jungian psychotherapist..

The Sacred CircleDr Susan Pollard

When: 7:30pm Friday November 4th Members $6; non-members $12

Exploring the Mandala as a Path of Awareness and Dialogue, we will take up the symbol of the ‘sacred circle.’ We will see how the cycle of ‘quaternary’ appears in life and in dreams and make reference to Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types as individuals travel on the way of individuation:

There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this ‘the thorn in the flesh’ is needed, the sufferance of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent (CW 6: 208)

Dr Susan Pollard is a Jungian analyst in private practice.

You’ve got to have Faith to Face your Fate

Christine Chapman

When: 7:30pm Friday December 2nd Members $6; non-members $12

80's pop music might not have brought a new wave of deep consciousness to the world, but it did give us this quote (Thank you Wham!) How is it possible, in a world of such deep uncertainty, to bear the consequences of holding to your own path of individuation? T.S. Eliot wrote in the Four Quartets: "Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind/Cannot bear very much reality", and Goethe wrote in The

Holy Longing that " ... so long as you haven't experienced/ this; to die and so to grow,/you are only a troubled guest/on the earth" But who of us is really prepared to die in order to live? What does that even mean? And how could we possibly do any of it without Faith? 

Christine Chapman is a clinical psychologist who practices with a Jungian emphasis.

LECTURE VENUE

All Lectures 7:30 pm at:

SOPHIA 225 Cross Road Cumberland Park (next door to Cabra College)

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LibraryA reminder to return any overdue library books at the next meeting. Our library is our most precious and valuable resource of the Society and deserves our care.

Charter of the C G Jung Society of SA

The Society is a non-professional, non-profit organisation which provides a focus and contact group for those interested in the psychological perspectives of C. G. Jung (1875-1961). The objectives of the Society are as follows:

To study and teach the work of Carl Gustav Jung and its applications by means of lectures, discussion, and study groups.

To associate with similar bodies and interested persons in Australia and elsewhere.

The Society aims to awaken among people a greater awareness of the influence and workings of the unconscious in their lives, and to explore ways of working with the unconscious.