Keynote by Prof. Dr. Jean Houston, hosted by Dr. Stephen Aizenstat

Carl Jung spoke of the imaginal as an archetypal realm that communicates with us through the unconscious, often in the form of images. He referred to these archetypal images as containing a kind of libido infused with psychic energy and creative potential. Prof. Dr. Jean Houston, world-renowned global catalyst and one of the principal founders of the human potential movement, guides us through an evocative exploration of the imaginal—from the personal to the collective, systemic, and eventually to the cosmic domains of life. Based on her new book series, the Future Humans Trilogy with her co-author Dr. Anneloes Smitsman, Dr Houston will explain how to extend the Jungian explorations of the imaginal from an evolutionary perspective. By exploring the imaginal realm as part of the cosmological architecture of life and consciousness, we gain a breakthrough understanding for how to develop our capacities for radical self-renewal and systemic transformation. Through this new understanding of the imaginal, we gain the keys from the deeply personal to the collective systemic, for how to co-create a thrivable world that works for all.

This keynote presentation is hosted by Dr. Stephen Aizenstat, and will feature an experiential component as well as a Question and Answer Discussion/Dialog.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Describe how to develop one’s capacity for radical self-renewal and systemic transformation;
• Apply an evolutionary perspective to personal and collective renewal, and
• Explain that working with the imaginal realm can inspire the co-creation of a world that works for all.

About Stephen Aizenstat:

Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., has devoted his life to understanding the profound wisdom and healing power that exists within each of us. He is Founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has explored the power of dreams through depth psychology and his own research for more than 35 years. His Dream Tending methodologies extend traditional dream work to the vision of an animated world and his work opens creativity and the generative process. His book, Dream Tending, describes multiple new applications of dreamwork in relation to health and healing, nightmares, the World’s Dream, relationships, and the creative process.

He is affiliated with the Earth Charter International project through the United Nations, where he has spoken. Professor Aizenstat has been mentored by and collaborated with many notable masters in the field including Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman and Robert Johnson. He has conducted sold-out Dream Tending seminars, workshops and “pop-up” events in the U.S., Asia and Europe.

About Jean Houston:

Jean Houston, Ph.D., scholar, philosopher and researcher in Human Capacities, is one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time. She is long regarded as one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement. Dr. Houston is noted for her ability to combine a deep knowledge of history, culture, new science, spirituality and human development into her teaching. She is known for her interdisciplinary perspective delivered in inspirational and humorous keynote addresses. Jean Houston is the author of 26 books.

As Advisor to UNICEF in human and cultural development, she has worked around the world helping to implement some of their extensive educational programs. Since 2003, she has been working with the United Nations Development Program. Together with other international agencies and companies, over the last 45 years, Dr. Houston has worked in over 100 countries. In 1965, along with her husband Dr. Robert Masters, Dr. Houston founded The Foundation for Mind Research. She is also the founder and principal teacher, since 1983, of the Mystery School, now called the Renaissance of Spirit, a school of human development, a program of cross-cultural, mythic and spiritual studies, dedicated to teaching history, philosophy, the New Physics, psychology, anthropology, and the many dimensions of human potential.

Where does creativity originate from? In this session, Dennis Slattery will look at creativity, its textured existence, and its longing to in-form our lives. The creative process follows a double path and a set of principles; and like human-beings is compelled by curiosity, wonder, and direction. The quest for creative expression is innate in human beings and is akin to a spiritual quest. According to Slattery, the creative quest is a journey into a mysterious terrain, one which reflects who we are, i.e., our true identity. If we are open-hearted and courageous, the journey also reveals our purpose because like Life, the creative process is ongoing and transforming. It can nudge us toward awakening. But this path is also ridden with blisters and pitfalls and we must learn to walk this double-edged sword for our own good. This session with Jungian analyst Slattery is an invitation to “follow one’s bliss”, an opportunity that comes only to a few.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Describe what motivates us to create;
• Identify creative projects that have been the most satisfying to create or that you long to create, and
• Identify the deep hungers that provide the energy and motivation to create a fulfilling life (including artistic expression but not limited to them).

About Dennis Slattery:

Dennis Patrick Slattery Ph.D., has been teaching for more than 50 years, the last 26 of which has been in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, where he is currently Emeritus Faculty. He is also a Core Faculty Member at Jung Platform since 2017. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 30 volumes, including 7 volumes of poetry and one novel co-authored with Charles Asher. His most recent titles include Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit, co-authored with Deborah Ann Quibell and Jennifer Leigh Selig, and From War to Wonder: Recovering Your Personal Myth Through Homer’s Odyssey. In addition, he has written over 200 articles, book reviews and op-ed pieces.

He offers writing retreats on C.G. Jung’s The Red Book as well as on Writing One’s Personal Myth through the works of Joseph Campbell and other writers. He has been taking painting classes in watercolor and acrylics for the past 8 years as well as enjoying riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle with his sons Matt and Steve in the Texas Hill Country.

For Jung, the psyche carried an image of the Divine, which he called the Self. He believed that the experience of the Self is often indistinguishable from the traditional accounts of divine experiences. Throughout his work, Jung emphasized upon the individual’s ability to experience the sacred as a direct experience without the need for belief, doctrine, or dogma. He draws upon Rudolph Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans to unravel the mystery of the Self that is both powerful and overwhelming. However, unlike Otto who looks for the experiences of the Divine in biblical stories, Jung reiterated that the emotional quality defined the experience of the Self. Lionet Corbett’s session is an exploration of the numinous from a depth psychological perspective drawing anecdotes and examples from clinical practice. The session will also look into the experience of the numinous which has often been attributed as psychopathology (hysteria, psychosis, and temporal lobe epilepsy, etc).

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, you will be able to: 

• Recognize the presence of the numinous around you;
• Recognize the symbolic manifestations of the Self, and
• List the differences between Jung’s approach to spirituality and the traditional theistic approaches.

About Lionel Corbett:

Dr. Lionel Corbett trained in medicine and psychiatry in England and as a Jungian Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Dr. Corbett is a professor of depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, where he teaches depth psychology. His primary interests are: the religious function of the psyche, especially the way in which personal religious experience is relevant to individual psychology; the development of psychotherapy as a spiritual practice; and the interface of Jungian psychology and contemporary psychoanalytic thought. 

He is the author of numerous professional papers and six books: Psyche and the sacred; The Religious Function of the Psyche; The Sacred Cauldron: Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice; The Soul in Anguish: Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Suffering, and Understanding Evil: A Guide for Psychotherapists. He is also the co-editor of four volumes of collected papers: Psyche’s Stories; Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field; Psychology at the Threshold; and Jung and Aging.

The landscape of our dreams, when illuminated, has the ability to bring depth and meaning to our lives. We become encouraged to know the disowned parts of ourselves—the parts that we are in conflict with and turned away from. Tina Stromsted will draw inspiration from the Authentic Movement and Marion Woodman’s BodySoul® work to engage with our dreams, reawakening our natural rhythms, instinctual wisdom, and the songs of our soul. The session will help in re-membering the body, psyche, senses, and emotions towards healing and fulfilment. It is by encountering our wounding and our potential that we become reconnected with the instinctual resources and spiritual intelligence. The soul whispers to us to recover the unlived parts of our nature; and, our dreams carry the treasures to become our guide on this journey. Join Tina Stromsted to learn how to respond to this inner prompting and channel this vital energy for the welfare of the individual and the community.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Describe how Jung’s Active Imagination in Movement can be used in individual healing and psychotherapeutic settings;
• Apply embodied processes in becoming aware of the body, and identifying the symbolic messages from the unconscious, and
• Utilize Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms® approach to assess one’s wounding and potential.

About Tina Stromsted:

Tina Stromsted, Ph.D., MFT, LPCC, BC-DMT, RSME/T is a Jungian psychoanalyst, Board Certified Dance/ Movement therapist, and Somatic psychotherapist and educator. She teaches at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, the Depth Psychology & Somatics Doctoral program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and as a core faculty member for the Marion Woodman Foundation. Past co-founder and faculty of the Authentic Movement Institute in California, she was a founding faculty member of the Women’s Spirituality Program, and faculty in the Somatic Psychology, and Expressive Arts Therapy departments at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

With 40+ years of clinical experience in hospitals, community mental health, and in private practice, her numerous articles and book chapters explore the integration of body, psyche, soul, relationship, community, and nature in healing and transformation. She has been co-leading the PreCongress Day in Active Imagination in Movement sessions at the International Association for Analytical Psychology Congresses with analysts Joan Chodorow, Marion Woodman and colleagues for decades, and has presented at and organized many programs and conferences on Embodied Jung, BodySoul work, DreamDancing, Embodied Alchemy and other depth-oriented themes in international settings. Dr. Stromsted lectures and teaches at universities and healing centers in many parts of the world and her private practice in San Francisco.

In this session, Robert Romanyshyn explores the paradox of individuation, which is at once, going out into the world and coming home to oneself. That is, when the perspective of the soul becomes the guiding principle of life, coming home to oneself becomes a coming home to the world. Romanyshyn explores the idea of looking at oneself as an orphan—someone who is a wanderer witnessing the wonders of the world for the first time. This way of being reveals the miracle in the mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary, and sacred in the profane. It is from this point onwards that one’s life begins to unfold and becomes an integral part of the larger human community. It is also from this point onwards that the wanderer becomes a witness to the whispers coming from the margins, and cultivates the virtues of slowness, patience, and hospitality. Join Romanyshyn to witness the erotic coupling of nature and the psyche and in homecoming, the world as the vale of soul-making.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Describe the hidden purpose of losing one’s mind (and finding the soul);
• Explain what is lost, marginalized, and disregarded epiphanies of the Anima Mundi and the meaning in them, and
• Describe the therapeutic value of finding one’s story as part of the human experience. 

About Robert Romanyshyn:

Robert D. Romanyshyn, Ph.D. is an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, an Affiliate Member of The Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and a Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He is also a Core Faculty Member at Jung Platform. 

Author of eight books including his newly published Victor Frankenstein, the Monster and the Shadows of Technology: The Frankenstein Prophecies, he has published articles in psychology, philosophy, education and literary journals, published a book of poems, written a one act play about Frankenstein, and created a multi-media DVD entitled Antarctica: Inner journeys in the Outer World, a psychological reflection on the melting polar ice. In addition to online seminars and interviews, he has given lectures and workshops at universities and professional societies in the U.S., Europe, Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand.