Following Jung’s Red Book: An Experiential Image-Making Seminar

Description

Informed by Jung’s theory of active imagination and his ‘practice of the image’ as expressed in The Red Book, this experiential seminar will enable participants to deepen their own active imaginal attitude to access unconscious content to be experienced within their own lives. Following Jung’s example, participants will use journal writing and image making to explore both their lived and unlived lives as well as their adaptation to both the outer and inner conditions of their lives as a part of their own process of individuation.

This seminar will underscore how the process of active imagination is embedded in experiencing the tension of opposites starting with the opposites of conscious and unconscious. Participants will be invited to visualize their experience of the movement between various sets of opposites such as introversion and extroversion, shadow and persona as well as their own emotional states and bodily sensations to connect to and release emerging psychic conditions into expressive form to be lived.

Learning Objectives
After attending this workshop, attendees will be able to:

1. Understand ways to make use of the Jung’s approach to the unconscious as expressed in The Red Book and in the practice of active imagination.
2. Identify and engage one’s connection and disconnection to the process of individuation.
3. Observe and recognize one’s interactions with the unconscious on its own terms – with ego consciousness being in attendance to the symbolic significance of images emerging from the unconscious.

Suggested Reading (Links to PDFs will be emailed upon registration)

• Chodorow, Joan. (1997). Introduction, pp. 1–20 in Jung on Active Imagination. Ed. Joan Chodorow. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. (PDF)
• Cwik, August. (1991). “Active Imagination as Imaginal Play-Space,” pp. 99–114 in M. Stein and N. Schwartz-Salant. (PDF)
• Jung, C. G. (1948/1916). “The Transcendent Function.” CW 8 ¶¶131–193. (PDF)
• Shamdasani, Sonu. (2015). “Jung’s practice of the image.” Journal of Sandplay Therapy 14:1, 7-21. (PDF)

Instructor Bio

Mary Dougherty, MFA, ATR is a Jungian psychoanalyst and art psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago. She is former President, Director of Training, and chair of the Program Committee of the Jung Institute of Chicago, former President of Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, and served for eight years on the Executive Committee of the Council of North American Societies of Jungian Analysts. She is contributing editor to the Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice and has numerous publications in Analytical Psychology. She lectures on the clinical implications of gender, the use of active imagination, and on the impact of Jung’s thought upon creative development and artistic production.

As a printmaker and performance artist she exhibited nationally and internationally, with venues including The George Eastman House, NY; Franklin Furnace, NYC; University of Chicago; Museo Contemporaneo, Sao Paolo. In 2001, she was awarded the ‘Lifetime Achievement in the Arts” award by the Chicago Women’s Caucus for the Arts.