Your Life as Fiction

Course Description

As Jung reminds us, life isn’t about solving our problems or challenges. It is about outgrowing them. So instead of fixing challenges, we are invited to adopt a new, more resilient attitude to life. Healing is about opening ourselves to new possibilities and ways of being. In other words, we are asked to re-imagine our lives.

How do we reimagine our lives? Through storytelling. Whether in fiction, therapy, coaching, or daily life, storytelling is a powerful way to learn about ourselves. Our lives are shaped and understood through narrative. Stories can help us hold and transform the complexity of our experiences.

We sometimes dismiss fiction as fantasy. In doing so, we overlook its capacity to inspire our individuation process. Carl Jung engaged deeply with different forms of fiction. Less known is that he read and met with science fiction author H.G. Wells. He also wrote a book on flying saucers and a preface to From India to the Planet Mars. This reflects his respect for the symbolic power of all kinds of storytelling.

In this course, Craig Chalquist, will guide us in the exploration of fiction. He views fiction as extended active imagination, much like Jung’s Red Book and Black Books. Craig also draws on Joseph Campbell’s insight that modern mythology often arises through personal creativity. Fictional characters will guide us. Through their voices and struggles, we can glimpse archetypal forces—the gods—speaking to us.

The exploration of this course points to a broader vision. By engaging with these stories and symbols, we can shape a new personal and planetary mythology. This mythology resonates with the challenges and possibilities of our time. Fiction, then, becomes much more than entertainment. It offers a mirror, a map, and a compass for navigating the mystery of life.

This course invites us to reflect on the fictional dimensions of our life. Through lecture and discussion, we will learn to see fiction as a way to connect to wisdom and healing.

This course is ideal if

• You want to analyze how fiction can help you explore your inner world and how it offers insight in your individuation process.
• You want to describe the fictional narratives that mirror your own life and the challenges you face.
• You are seeking inspiration from mythological and archetypal figures that accompany you on your life path.
• You are interested in creating a new personal (and planetary) story and mythology.
• You want to integrate storytelling and fiction into your life or professional practice.

Course Overview

Class 1: Jung, Fiction, and Individuation

We will start with examples of how fiction influenced Jung’s ideas about individuation. Fiction is a rich resource for understanding deep dynamics both personal and collective. What shows up fictionally displays signs of our time. This class will also start us on the path of creating our “charmway,” our own living fiction.  

Class 2: Activated Imagination

Jung’s experiments with active imagination began with a surprise: being told by two folkloric characters that “we are real.” We will consider how the imaginal possesses its own kind of reality and study examples of how fictional characters guide the efforts of their “creators.” How might our cast of characters guide us? 

Class 3: Welcome to Terrania

The Lamplight Trilogy of hopeful, near-future tales offers an array of fictional characters with much to say about individuation, dream, myth, and change. We will see how the creation of these tales went step by step in accord with what the characters suggested, and how they and the author evolved together as the story progressed.

Class 4: Fiction as Personal and Collective Mythology

In this last class we will explore how fiction might be useful for weaving together personal and collective mythologies for our time. It has been said that we lack a Big Story, a meaningful container for contemporary experience. How might storytelling fill in this meaning-sized gap?