IAJS/ Duquesne University Conference, March 18-21, 2021 Authors and Abstracts
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IAJS/ Duquesne University Conference, March 18-21, 2021
Authors and Abstracts
Apocalypse Imminent:
A depth psychological analysis of human responses to fear of catastrophe and extinction.
J. Alvin and E. Hanley
In the dire situation of the world today, humans are striving to cope with impending catastrophes and end
of life on Earth. Emergency food buckets with a shelf life of 25 years are now sold in quantities that provide
a year of lasting sustenance for an individual. Efforts to colonize Mars are underway and its pop-culture
representations are based on key narratives of American heritage: ingenuity/technology, the great
frontier/utopia, and democracy/capitalism. The configuration of apocalyptic social phenomena, arranged in
a cultural and astrological gestalt, may be reminiscent of other points in human history where the threat of
catastrophe rendered similar archetypal expression. As psychologists, we must ask: what precisely is being
achieved by the development and sale of stockpiled food and plans to colonize other planets? What are we
turning toward and away from? What kind of life are we buying into? Key concepts explored in the research
of these topics include technology, climate change, food sustainability, cultural complex, and more.
To be explored in a discussion panel are the archetypal root and metaphor of these social phenomena and
the implications these endeavors have for humanity entering the next phase of existence. It is our intention
to present papers on the above topics and, with Dr. Romanyshyn as a respondent, facilitate an in-depth and
meaningful discussion.
1 Wise emergency survival food storage
Jonathan Alvin
The purpose of this philosophical hermeneutic study will be to understand the Wise Emergency Survival
Food Storage (WESFS) as an artifact that reflects and reproduces its cultural matrix (Cushman, 1996). At
this stage in the research, the WESFS will be defined generally as it is advertised: sealed plastic buckets,
containing a full year of dehydrated and freeze-dried food supply for one individual, with an advertised
shelf life of 25 years (Wise Company, 2018). WESFS is situated against a historical backdrop of 20th
century American developments in food technology related to war and space travel. Dehydrated food was
manufactured during World War II; its weight allowed more soldiers on board ships sailing across the
Atlantic Ocean to fight in the war. Freeze dried foods were developed for space flight; astronauts needed a
variety of food tastes in order to avoid appetite fatigue during space missions. The psychological reality of
WESFS is the concern of this study. What kind of world does the WESFS exist in? What kind of world is
bought into, when a person purchases the WESFS? In order to situate the psychological reality of the
WESFS and the individual who purchases such a product, a study of the American post-World War II
individual will be undertaken.
References
Cushman, P. (1996). Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy.
Addison-Wesley/Addison Wesley Longman.
Wise Company. (2018). 720 Servings of Wise Emergency Survival Food Storage [Product for Sale].
Retrieved February 7, 2019 from: https://www.wisefoodstorage.com/720-serving-
package.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpuW5pOis4AIVzCCtBh2dDgQyEAQYAiABEgKBAvD_B
wE2 Mars Colonization
Eric Hanley
The purpose of this study is to explore, examine, and interpret the cultural phenomenon of Mars
colonization as it is expressed in popular culture. Specifically, this proposed research focuses on one
particular aspect of the topic: How Mars colonization is expressed in our culture as a great frontier and is
thus reminiscent of past iterations of the American West and the righteous efforts to conquer and colonize
the wildness beyond our current borders. This paper reviews multidisciplinary literature, situating the topic
in a cultural historical context, and examines themes of technology, fantasy, and capitalism as Mars
colonization is expressed in the form of frontier narrative in television, film, and literature. The qualitative
methodology follows the philosophical principles of hermeneutics and social construction as bases for
exploring the archetypal expression of this cultural phenomenon.
References
Hillman, J. (1994). Wars, arms, rams, Mars (pp. 70-88). First published in, Fields, R. (1994), The awakened
warrior. New York: Putnam Books.
Jung, C. G. (1970). Flying saucers: A modern myth of seeing things in the skies (R. F. C. Hull & G. Adler,
Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Series Eds.), The collected works of C.G. Jung (Vol. 10, pp. 307-433).
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1958)
Palmer, R. (1969). Hermeneutics: Interpretation theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and
Gadamer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Romanyshyn, R. (1989). Technology as symptom and dream. London: Routledge.
Slotkin, R. (1998). Regeneration through violence: The mythology of the American frontier, 1600–1860.
New York: University of Oklahoma Press. (Original work published 1973).
Turner, F. J. (1893/2017). The frontier in American history. Okitoks Press.
Jung, Groddeck, and analytic technique
Marco Balenci
In two very recent articles in the International Journal of Jungian Studies, this author compared Carl
Gustav Jung with Georg Groddeck, German "wild analyst" who founded modern psychosomatic
medicine. For the first time, it was emphasized the theoretical closeness of their main concepts―Es and
Selbst. These concepts constitute the nucleus of a standpoint - towards the human being, the psyche, and
the unconscious - which is very different from Freud's. The common references of Groddeck and Jung
were Goethe and Nietzsche in philosophy, Carus and von Hartmann in psychology. Both Groddeck and
Jung held symbolization and the conception of a creative unconscious to be remarkably important. These
aspects were fundamental for their clinical work, aimed at pioneering therapies: Jung with schizophrenics,
Groddeck treating physical diseases. They overcame the limits of the psychoanalysis of their time and,
going beyond neurosis, discovered the pre-Oedipal period and the fundamental role of mother-child
relationship. Jung and Groddeck gave a maternal turn and considered analytic therapy as a dialectical
process, ushering in a two-person paradigm. Groddeck remained within the psychoanalytic movement,
albeit in disgrace; whereas Jung left. Although both had considerable influence, it is interesting that
neither of them were interested in creating a training school. However, Jung was somehow forced to do it.
After seventy years of Jungian schools, it seems necessary to discuss Jung's therapeutic approach in the
light of Naturphilosophie and maternal turn. Moreover, it is to call into question the use of the
couch―also following research developed in Italy on mirror neurons. Ultimately, Jungian analysis can be
seen as a human relationship in a specific setting.References
1. Balenci M. (2018) Totality in Groddeck’s and Jung’s Conception: Es and Selbst. International Journal
of Jungian Studies, 11(1), 2019, pp. 44-64. doi: 10.1080/19409052.2018.1474127
2. Balenci M. (2020) Jung’s and Groddeck’s Analytic Practice: Alternative Methods That Have Prevailed
over Freud's Psychoanalysis. International Journal of Jungian Studies, in press.
3. Groddeck G. (1977) The Meaning of Illness. Selected Psychoanalytic Writings, Including his
correspondence with Sigmund Freud. L. Schacht, ed. London: The Hogarth Press.
4. Jung C.G. (1966) The Practice of Psychotherapy. Collected Works, vol. 16. H. Read, M. Fordham, &
G. Adler, eds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
5. Samuels A. (1985) Jung and the Post-Jungians. London & New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Marco Balenci, PhD, is a psychoanalyst AIPA-IAAP. He did teaching and research at the Universities of
Pisa and Rome. He is a former secretary of the Centre for Historical Studies of Psychoanalysis and
Psychiatry in Florence. His research interests mainly concern theoretical topics and psychosomatics, also
studying Jungian analyst Elida Evans’ pioneering work on cancer (Quadrant, 2020). Moreover, he has
published papers on dreams, Jungian typology, realistic anxiety, Freudian technique, Georg Groddeck,
psychic breakdown, identification in the analytic relationship. He has written the chapter on the Self for
the Italian Treatise of Analytical Psychology (ed. Aldo Carotenuto), co-edited five academic books, and
edited the Italian version of Anna Freud biography by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. His latest articles in
English discuss cancer from a Jungian and holistic standpoint (Madridge Journal of Cancer Study &
Research, 2019) and the influence of extraversion-introversion typology on psychology, psychiatry, and
medicine (Medical & Clinical Research, 2020). He has a private practice in Florence.
Presenter of the film by John Akromah: The Nine Muses. (clips only)
Discussants Prof Kevin Lu and Ms Diana McGlory
Suzanne Barnard, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University, filmmaker,
and licensed clinical psychologist. She received her Ph. D. from Loyola University of Chicago (Clinical
Psychology), and completed postdoctoral studies at Georgetown University. She is coeditor, with Bruce
Fink, of Reading Lacan's Seminar XX, and has published widely on Lacanian, French feminist, and
Foucauldian approaches to the body and subjectivity. She also writes in film theory (currently focused on
Deleuzean approaches to cinema, affect and subjectivity), and has presented on the film work of Pedro
Costa, Ben Russell, and John Akomfrah. Her research engages psychology, philosophy, film, and
ethnography, and she has taught courses on Deleuze and collaborative aesthetics, on psychology,
migration and "slow cinema," and on the posthuman in science fiction film.
She received a grant from Duquesne's Center for African Studies to create and teach a course on global
identities and African cinema, in tandem with which she also curated an African Film Series in Spring
2015. She has been a video consultant for The REP Professional Theatre Company (Pittsburgh). Her film
work has been supported by the Heinz Foundation, Binaural Media, Women and Girls Foundation, and
Duquesne University. She is recently the recipient, along with Christopher McCann, of an NEH
Endowment Grant for a new film project (working title: "Breath and Folding: An Ethnographic Film on
Cosmologies of Air, Light, and Space).
Journeying: Grievance to Grief
Fanny Brewster
The social, political and ethical context for the American Africanist experiences of being human has been
framed by the journey of the Middle Passage. It has not mattered how many years, decades, centuries, wespend buried in our historical amnesia regarding our most human condition regarding American racial
relations, we always return to confront our racial ourselves. This confrontation is with the interior Self that
dwells within individual consciousness, as well as the ego self that must meet daily experiences of life.
This is our struggle as human beings attempting to hold onto something of the Divine.
The spiraling grievances of racism that has consumed our American collective psyche for centuries
has produced suffering that our consciousness could not bear to witness. Accompanying these grievances
is the grief that also spirals as the necessary kinship of suffering. How are we to embrace both grievance
and grief connected to our ego and archetypal selves? We search for meaning and deeper understanding of
how we have arrived—today, and how we will be in the future. When we consider the historical context of
being with others in our cultural containment, we find limitations based on ethnicity. What does this mean
for our future, our hope as human beings, as psychological beings? The multidirectional movement from
grievance to grief assumes continuity, based not only on human behavior but also on psychological
complexes—both cultural and racial. What is the journey that being human demands as we are held within
the archetypal?
References
Brewster, F. (2016). African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows. London and New
York: Routledge.
Kimbles, S. (2014). Phantom Narratives: The unseen contributions of psyche to culture. New York:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Levine, L. (2007). Black Culture and Black Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press.
Adams, M.V. (1996). The Multicultural Imagination: “Race”, color and the unconscious. London and New
York: Routledge.
Guthrie, R. (2004). Even the rat was white: A historical view of psychology. Boston: Pearson Education.
Fanny Brewster, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst and Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is a writer
of nonfiction including African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows ((Routledge,
2017), and Archetypal Grief: Slavery’s Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss (Routledge, 2018) and The
Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race. (Routledge, 2019) Her poems have recently
been published in Psychological Perspectives Journal where she was the Featured Poet. Dr. Brewster is a
lecturer and workshop presenter on Jungian related topics that address Culture, Diversity and Creativity.
She is a faculty member at the New York C.G. Jung Foundation and the Philadelphia Association of Jungian
Analysts.
Healing is Political: Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe & Social Reform
Robin McCoy Brooks
Healing is Political. The author contends that psychoanalysis must recognize how catastrophe is
effecting our patients. The wound of the world opens the patient to their own personal
woundedness through which one be wrenched out of the indifference of banal existence into a
possibility of political action. The theoretical mechanism (if we may call it that) through which the
individual may move from personal concern to political responsiveness is referred to “trans-
subjectivity.” Trans-subjectivity is conceptualized as a crucial extra-psychical dimension of
sublimation and a psyche-social dynamic that is the precursor to political action. The author adapts
a trans-disciplinary approach to support her thesis by critically analyzing psychoanalytic and
philosophical sources that background her application in the chapters that follow. These luminaries
of the psyche-social include include Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Gilbert Simondon and
Bernard Stiegler. Included is an introductory reading of Heidegger’s existential analytic of care
through which a notion of politicality is defined and used as a touchstone throughout.References
Brooks, R. M. (2018). Self as political possibility: Subversive neighbor love and transcendental agency
amidst collective blindness. International Journal of Jungian Studies, 10,1,48-75
Giegerich, W. (2004). “The end of meaning and the birth of man.” Journal of Jungian Theory and
Practice, 6, I.
Hook, D. (2018). Six Moments in Lacan. London and New York: Routledge.
Lacan, J. (2006). Ecrits: The First completed Edition in English (translated with notes by Bruce Fink, in
collaboration with H. Fink and R. Grigg). New York ad London: W. W. Norton.
Simondon, G. (1992). The Genesis of the Individual, Incorporations. (edited by Jonathan Crary and
Sanford Kwinter). New York, NY: Zone.
Robin McCoy Brooks is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Seattle, WA. She is the Co-Editor-in-
Chief of the International Journal of Jungian Studies and serves on the Board of Directors of the
International Association for Jungian Studies. Robin is also a founding member of the New School
for Analytical Psychology and active analyst member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian
Analysts. Robin’s book entitled Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe and Social Reform is currently in
production (Routledge, 2021, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis Series, Ed. Jon Mills).
How Jung’s erotic relationships with three ex-patients led him to the Rosarium Drawings, his template for
healing in psychoanalysis
Betsy Cohen
Carl Jung’s Psychology of the Transference (CW 16, 1946) explains the foundational importance of the
relationship between the analyst and patient. He offers eleven woodcuts from the 16th century alchemical
Rosarium Philosophorum as his template for healing in analysis. He shares no personal reasons for
choosing these drawings. My paper explores some personal reasons, particularly his own Eros.
In my research, (2015) studying the entirety of Jung’s 236 case examples, I discovered that in
only eight does he discuss his relationship with his patient. Jung writes that the analyst and patient are
symbolic of the archetypal King and Queen in the drawings. I address how Jung tends to separate the
archetypal and personal psyches as either/or, rather than both/and.
Jung delineates symbolic stages of analysis, without describing the everyday struggles, the nitty
gritty existential reality of a clinical encounter.
His personal erotic experiences with Sabina Spreilrein, Maria Moltzer, and Toni Wolff propelled
Jung to flesh out an alchemical metaphor for Jungian psychoanalysis. I explore these three relationships to
illustrate that Jung found the Eros, mutuality, unconsciousness, and container he was seeking for self-
awareness and his own analysis. In “Marriage as a psychological relationship,” he justifies the need for
this container in a marriage, as well as his need for someone outside the marriage.
References
Brooks, R. (2012). The ethical dimensions of life and analytic work through a Levinasian lens. International
Journal of Jungian Studies, 1-19.
Cohen, B. (2015). Dr. Jung and his patients. Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, 9(2), 34-49.
Colman, W. (2013). Bringing it all back home: how I became a relational analyst. Journal of Analytical
Psychology, 58(4), 470-490.
Jung, C. G. (1931/1964). Marriage as a Psychological Relationship. In The Development of Personality.
CW 17. Bollingen Foundation, NY, NY.Owens, L. (2015). Jung in Love: The Mysterium in Liber Novus. Gnosis Archive Books: Los Angeles, CA.
Sedgwick, D. (2014). Jung as a pioneer of relational analysis.
https://www.cgjungpage.org/learn/articles/analytical-psychology/943-jung-as-a-pioneer-of-
relational-analysis7
Jung’s ethics: one or many?
Giovanni Collacicci
My paper is a presentation of my research on the ethical foundations of Jungian psychology. Jung appears
to have developed his ethical outlook, which has a deliberately “wider” scope than Freud’s (see Merkur
2017) from a variety of (not always acknowledged) sources: Kant, Nietzsche, Aristotle and Christian ethics
in primis (Colacicchi 2015, Colacicchi forthcoming).
Many post-Jungian authors appreciate the Kantian dimension of Jung’s ethics (even if they are not
aware that it is Kantian): Jung’s focus on the moral obligation of the patient to “make the unconscious
conscious” and integrate the shadow has indeed a decidedly Kantian flavor, albeit of a 20th Century Kant
who has read Freud; others – again, mostly unaware of the fact – enjoy the Nietzschean Jung, with his focus
on individual ethics vs collective morality, Nietzsche’s “master morality” vs “slave morality”; and many
others, perhaps the majority of those who have been drawn to Jung as opposed to Freud, consider Jung’s
ethical stance as an unorthodox way of maintaining the main moral tenets of Christian morality: a
psychological re-vision of Christianity, for sure, but still within the Christian framework of sin (in Jung’s
model, unconsciousness) and redemption (which for Jung is individuation, an openness to the Self – which
may or may not coincide with an openness to God). Finally, other authors, such as the philosopher John
Cottingham and the psychologist Ladson Hinton, have highlighted Jung’s Aristotelian approach to reason
and emotion and his focus on practical wisdom.
Would it be a mistake to try and reconcile the kaleidoscopic variety of ethical views which are
found in Jung’s vast opus since they reflect his pluralistic conception of the psyche (Samuels 1989)? Or
can a coherent ethical model be drawn out of his work, a model which may be called, for once and for all,
“Jung’s ethics”?
References
Colacicchi, G. (2015). Jung and ethics: A conceptual Exploration, PhD diss. Centre for Psychoanalytic
Studies, University of Essex.
Colacicchi, G. (forthcoming), Psychology as Ethics: Reading Jung with Kant, Nietzsche and Aristotle.
London, Routledge.
Cottingham, J. (1998). Philosophy and The Good Life: Reason and Passion in Greek, Cartesian and
psychoanalytic ethics. Cambridge, CUP.
Hinton, L. (2019). Jung, Time and Ethics. In Jung and philosophy (J. Mills, Ed.). London, Routledge.
Merkur, D. (2017). Jung’s Ethics: Moral Psychology and his Cure of Souls (J. Mills, Ed.). London,
Routledge.
Samuels, A. (1989). The Plural Psyche: Personality, Morality and the Father. London, Routledge.
Giovanni Ivison Colacicchi, PhD, holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of Florence, his
hometown, and a PhD in Jungian Studies from the University of Essex. He is an independent scholar,
teacher and philosophical counsellor. His current research focuses on Jung’s ethics and meta-ethics, on the
cultural and theoretical foundations of analytical psychology, and on practical philosophy. He is a
contributor to the blog L’indiscreto (www.indiscreto.org) on which he has written on the relevance of
Jungian psychology to the understanding of contemporary “selfie culture” and the cult of celebrity. He isthe author of Psychology as Ethics: Reading Jung with Kant, Nietzsche and Aristotle (Routledge,
“Philosophy and psychoanalysis” series, forthcoming). He teaches philosophy, history, languages,
psychoanalysis and literature at various higher education institutions in Italy and the UK. He lives in
Ferrara, Italy, with his wife, Elisa, and their son, Francesco. Correspondence:
giovannicolacicchi@gmail.com
The March from Selma to Montgomery and the Nonviolent Movement in Analysis
Renee Cunningham
On January 18, 1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. and four hundred marchers set off from Brown’s A&E Chapel
to the County Courthouse in Selma, Alabama to protest illegal voting rights practices being committed
against African Americans in the Southern United States. What began as a movement to confront racism
in America ended up as a revolution forever transforming the American narrative and the archetypal
experience of Democracy in America.
This talk will focus on the archetypal experience of nonviolence and how nonviolent philosophy
works to confront, dissolve or break apart violence, first through the “other within” via the inner
master/slave, and subsequently, the exteriorized “other in culture,” expressed through oppression in racism.
These paradigms are shifted from the inner to the outer realms through the implementation of the “eightfold
path of nonviolence.”
The eightfold path of nonviolence consists of Martin Luther King Jr.’s six tenets of nonviolence
and Mahatma Ghandi’s philosophical principles of Satyagraha (Truth force) and Ahimsa (love force). The
marchers daily practice of nonviolent philosophy, coupled with prayer, song and marching prepared the
marchers for the daily confrontations with Selma’s Sheriff (the other within) in an effort to gain access to
the voting Registrar’s office to register to vote. Each march and confrontation (between the archetypal
master-slave) with the town’s Sherriff symbolized the engagement between conscious and unconscious
forces enabling a slow but necessary integration of shadow, which ultimately led to the passing of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Selma marches form the metaphor for the civil rights movement which takes place in an
analysis with the patient. Indeed, the patient brings into treatment their own trauma which gets
unconsciously enacted in the analytic relationship. The analyst symbolically holds the tension between
conscious and unconscious forces (like King), and implements the tenets of nonviolence in and effort to
guide the patient home to themselves.
References
Dalal, F. (2006). Racism: Processes of Detachment, Dehumanization, and Hatred. The Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, 75(1), 131-161.
Kernberg, O. (1991). The Psychopathology of Hatred. Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association,
39s, 209-238.
Kernberg, O. F. (1998). Aggression, Hatred, and Social Violence. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis,
6(2), 191-206.
Petri, F. (2014). Gandhi, Jung and Nonviolence Today The Relevance of the Feminine in the Network
Society. IIC Quarterly, 41(1), 7-18.
Pickering, J. (2012). Ancestral transmission through dreams and moving metaphors. The Journal of
Analytical Psychology, 57(5), 576-596.
Renee Cunningham, MFT, is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Phoenix,
Arizona who has been an active clinician for twenty-seven years. She is a Jungian analyst trained through
the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, Texas Chapter. She is also a member of the New MexicoSociety of Jungian Analysts, International Association for Analytical Psychology and the Chinese
American Psychoanalytic Association. Renee is a national speaker who teaches and supervises Chinese
Psychoanalytic Candidates. She is the current Program Chair for Phoenix Friends of C.G. Jung. She has
been published in Psychological Perspectives and Progress: Family Systems Research and Therapy. Her
current book entitled, Archetypal Nonviolence, King, Jung and Culture, is due to published by Routledge
in 2020.
Towards a New Hermeneutic: Re-Viewing Analytical Psychology through the Mythic Lens of Marija
Gimbutas
Maude Davis
According to Joseph Campbell, Lithuanian archeologist Marija Gimbutas unlocked the “meaning of the
mythology of a previously undocumented era”-- the prehistoric goddess-religion and earth-centered culture
at the root of Western civilization. Her research into Neolithic artifacts from sites across Europe offers
interpretive keys to a mythology that corresponds to the deepest archetypal layers of the collective
unconscious. Working in the decades prior to her publications, Jung and many of his followers relied on
subsequent periods in history as a lens through which to see the psyche. Indeed, Gimbutas articulated this
issue, claiming that Neumann’s description of the Archetypal Feminine “is based on a post-Indo-European
religious ideology after the image of the Goddess had suffered a profound and largely debasing
transformation.” Expanding accepted critical foundations and horizons of meaning, Gimbutas’ work
implies a new hermeneutic to reimagine Jung’s seminal concepts such as archetypes, consciousness and the
dynamics of symbols.
This paper begins with a review of Gimbutas’ classification of prehistoric Goddess symbols into
four distinct themes: Life Giving, Renewing and Eternal Earth, Death and Regeneration, Energy and
Unfolding. Her categories will be compared to Toni Wolff’s ancient Greek-based description of four
feminine archetypes: Maternal, Amazon, Hetaira and Mediumistic. Then, using Gimbutas’ thesis,
contributors to the Jungian canon will be reconsidered including: Neumann’s description of the
mythological stages in the evolution of consciousness; Edinger’s model of the ego-Self axis; and
Bernstein’s more recent observation of an evolutionary “spectrum of reality, a borderland” bridging the
Cartesian mind-body divide. Extending Bernstein’s ideas, I argue that an understanding of a Gimbutas-
informed psychic life cycle connecting us with our indigenous human roots has value for the healing
process. The conclusion will provide examples of case studies which demonstrate how this new theoretical
model can be applied to the clinical practice of analytical psychology.
References
Bernstein, J. (2005). Living on the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Challenge of
Healing Trauma. New York, NY: Routledge.
Edinger, E. (1972). Ego and Archetype. Boston, Mass: Shambala Publications.
Gimbutas, M. (1989). The Language of the Goddess, Forward by Joseph Campbell. New York, NY: Thames
and Hudson.
Neumann, E. (1955). The Great Mother. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, (1983).
Wolff, T. (1956). Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche. (P. Watzlawik, Trans.). Privately printed for
the Student Association, CG Jung Institute, Zurich.
Maude Davis, MA, is a Ph.D. candidate in Expressive Art Therapy, Education and Social Change at
European Graduate School, Saas Fee Switzerland; and a Diploma Candidate at the CG Jung Institiute in
Zurich. A clinician at the Living Arts Counseling Center, Maude is a therapist-director of Self-RevelatoryTheater pieces. Maude developed a Jungian-based drama and expressive arts therapy technique: Psyche’s
Cabaret.
Psychological Methodology in Light of Jung’s Multiple-Epistemologies and Gebser’s Pluralistic Model
of Consciousness
Mark Dean
The dominant trend within contemporary psychology reflects an attempt to establish an accounting of the
psyche that reduces its nature so that it conforms to a single mode of consciousness, a late mental mode.
This process, while asserting itself as establishing an understanding of the psyche on firm scientific footing,
and thus gaining control over psychological experience, is actually both regressive and destructive. By
utilizing a single mode of inquiry, and authentication, it distorts, rather than clarifies, the nature of the
psyche. More problematically, it establishes a hierarchic and hegemonic stance within the plurality of
modes of awareness made available through the evolution of consciousness, artificially elevating the
manipulation of human cognition and behavior to the status of psychological operations. Additionally, the
assertion that the form of mentality which evolved in correspondence with the material order, could account
for phenomena that are more than physical, represents a misapplication of descriptive means. Psychological
phenomena are primarily constellated rather than constructed, arising, as Jung’s said of the “Inner Image”
, “…from the most varied sources” (Jung, 1936). Consequently observation of psychological phenomena
requires a participating observer, one whose point of observation is interior to the psychological drama, and
whose consciousness is capable of engagement with a plurality of modes of consciousness and the variety
of forms of phenomena, to which they correspond. Reconsidering Jung’s utilization, of shifting, and often
divergent, epistemologies, against a background of the Gebser’s description of the pluralistic nature of
consciousness, aids us in understanding the necessity of analytic process as a methodological approach to
the psyche that conforms to its intrinsic nature (Gebser, 1985). It also clarifies the necessity of the structural
nature of the analytic ritual.
References
Christou, E. (2007). The logos of the soul. Putnam, CT: Spring Publications.
Combs, A. (2009). Consciousness explained better. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.
Gebser, J. (1985). The ever present origin. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1936). Definitions. In C. G. Jung., Psychological types. Collected Works, vol.6 (R.F.C Hull,
Trans.), (pp. 408-486). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wampold, B. (2010). The basics of psychotherapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Mark Dean, MA, LPC, is a Jungian Analyst practicing in the Philadelphia area. He is currently Vice
President of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, a member of the Inter-Regional Society of
Jungian Analysts, and the International Association of Analytic Psychologists. His background includes
over 30 years of practice as an art therapist, an extensive fine arts exhibiting career, and teaching at Arcadia
University near Philadelphia. Additionally, Mark is the Co-Founder of the Center for Psyche and the Arts
and currently active in training analytic candidates, conducting supervision, and lecturing on analytic
psychology. Mark lectures and teaches on issues associated with analytic practice, imagery, and the nature
of consciousness, as these pertain to the ethical practice of psychotherapy.
Encounters with African elephants: transformative gatherings
Gwenda Euvrard
In this paper I explore how my (and our) sense of an inter-connected connected humanness might come
into deepened and expanded being in our encounters with African elephants. As a keystone species,elephants' daily engagement in the wilderness constantly transforms the world in which they live,
activating, opening up and expanding the gathering of relationships which is the ecosystem. In contrast,
we humans have, to a large extent, become disconnected from our wild origins in the elemental landscape
and with other creatures, resulting in a disconnection from the fullness of our humanity (Abram, 2010;
McCallum, 2005). How might our encounters with keystone African elephants invoke into presence
possibilities and potentialities which might bring us into an experience of an expanded, deepened, more
integrated and more inter-connected humanness?
Many African folk tales passed down through the oral tradition carry and presence the collective
mystery of African elephants. These various stories articulate and invite us to reflect on the range and
depth of possibilities of our humanness that encounters with African elephants have evoked across time. I
will reflect on one South African folk tale, an Nguni isiXhosa intsomi. In this story, a mother, her
children, and the community find redemption through entering an African elephant's being. This
encounter becomes a gathering which invokes and activates a widened and deepened consciousness and
invites engaged participation in a transformed and expanded humanness.
References
Abram, D. (2010). Becoming Animal. New York: Vintage Books.
Brooke, R. (2009). The self, the psyche, and the world: a phenomenological interpretation. Journal of
Analytical Psychology, 54, 601 - 618.
Coleman, W. (2008). On being, knowing and having a self. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 53, 351 -
366.
McCullum, I. (2005/2008). Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature. Colorado:
Fulcrum.
Peterson, B. (2019). The Art of Personhood: kinship and its social challenges. In James Ogude (Ed.),
Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gwenda Euvrard, MA, has practised for over 20 years as a clinical psychologist and Jungian
psychotherapist in Makhanda, a vibrant university town and arts and cultural centre in the Eastern Cape of
South Africa. Her practice room has views across her large secluded garden to the veld. She is fortunate
to spend a lot of time in various South African wilderness areas, frequently among the African elephants
in nearby Addo, and has long had an interest in how our wilderness encounters bring us into deepened
and expanded living.
The science of interpretation: analysis and hermeneutics
Stephen Farah
In this paper I consider the question and challenge of interpretation in analysis. I draw on the
quintessential human science of hermeneutics and consider how hermeneutics constitutes an analogue and
lens through with to usefully examine the practice of interpretation in psychoanalysis. I reflect on the
manner in which the analyst acts as hermeneutician in reading the ‘text’ or codification of the other and of
the psyche, both in its subjective and objective or personal and transpersonal dimensions. I consider the
challenges for interpretation in analysis posed by the juxtaposition of different schools of thought in
hermeneutics. I focus specifically on differences in interpretation between reading a ‘text’ prima facie and
the meaning it explicitly and objectively communicates contrasted with the interpretive strategies
typically employed in a psychoanalytic encounter: the lens of meaning that the analyst sees the other
through and makes meaning from, issues such a as subjectively, context and the transference. I am
interested in and attempt to tease out ways in which these two human sciences mirror, challenge and can
inform each other.References
George, Theodore, "Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/hermeneutics/
‘Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics’, by Jean Grondin, trans. Joel Weinsheimer, 1994, Yale
University Press
Steele, R. (1982). Freud and Jung: Conflicts of interpretation. London and New York: Routledge.
Stephen Anthony Farah, MA, holds an honours degree in analytical philosophy, from the University of
the Witwatersrand and a master’s degree in Jungian and Post Jungian Studies, from the University of Essex.
He is the co-founder and head of learning for The Centre for Applied Jungian Studies South Africa and an
executive member of the International Association of Jungian Studies. Stephen co-chaired the IAJS
conference The Spectre of the Other in Jungian Psychology in Cape Town in 2017. He published True
Detective and Jung’s Four stages of Transformation in The Routledge International Handbook of Jungian
film Studies, (2018) and co-edited a journal of the International Journal of Jungian Studies of papers from
the 2017 IAJS conference. Stephen is a pioneer in the field of Applied Jungian Psychology and has
developed many programmes both online and real world for the dissemination of Jungian psychology
outside of its traditional structures.
Transhumanism and the heroic ego
Diana Faydysh
This presentation will examine the philosophical and psychological foundations behind the rapidly
developing idea of transhumanism and its effects on the body and society. Transhumanism (H+),
translated as “through humans” or “post-humans,” strives for the transformation of the human condition
by developing widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance the human intellect and
body to eliminate illnesses and imperfections, with an end goal to overcome death. This movement is not
just a technocratic version of humanity’s quest for immortality but the resulting trajectory of the
Modernist era that gave rise to self-contained individualism and Heroic ego development. This leads to an
object-oriented ontology in which humanity worships progress and evolution to achieve a united,
technocratic, pleasure-seeking, soulless world. Thus, transhumanism not only alters human anthropology
but also becomes an ideology that destroys cultures in the name of globalization.
The question is: Where does this ideology lead us? The negative consequences of the
individualistic, pleasure-focused attitude can not only be examined in society but also inside the human
body. Reviewed in scholarship created within a deep psychological tradition, the oncological illness will
be examined as a phenomenon to identify patterns in modern experience. During oncological illness, a
cell behaves exactly the way modern society’s ideologues assume society to function. Unlike healthy
cells, cancer cells do not stop growing and dividing; they do not share life energy with the rest of the
body, instead of keeping it all to themselves. This is individualism, a pleasure-focused outlook, and
striving for immortality on a cellular level. Cancer cell immortality is an internal failure and false goal
setting that leads to tragic death. Yet naively, Western civilization acts as if, when the same attitude is
applied to all society rather than the body, the outcome will be different.
References
Cushman, P. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated social psychology. American
Psychologist, 45(5), 599–611.
Romanyshyn, R. (1989). Technology as Symptom and Dream. New York, NY: Routledge.
Sipiora, M. (2019). [Class]. Carpentaria, California: Pacifica Graduate Institute, CP 840 ArchetypalPsychology.
Diana Faydysh, an international student from Russia and Switzerland, is currently pursuing her doctoral
degree in clinical psychology with an emphasis on depth psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute,
California. She is at the practicum at the Valley Community Counseling clinic, which offers long-term
psychoanalytic therapy. She received her MA in counseling psychology with an emphasis on depth
psychology from the same institution. In her MA thesis, Diana explored how the death drive can manifest
thought the Female Orgasmic Dysfunction. Currently her research focus continues to be on revising death
drive, and also inquires into the development of psychologies and its effect on people when influenced by
radical socio-political changes. In 2019, Diana won the American Psychological Association's Division
39 International Scholar Award.
Archetypes, unconscious and individuation:
basic concepts of Jungian psychology from the Buddhist perspective
Alexandra Fialkovskaya
The interpretation of Jungian archetypes through the prism of the Buddhist tradition is a part of the broader
topic of the relationship of Jung with the East. If we seek to understand why Chinese scholars are interested
in studying Jung in the first place, then we should find out what catches their attention and why.
The primary objective of this paper is to investigate how Chinese scholars interpret the connection
between the basic concepts of Jungian psychology and the Buddhist teaching. Are the concepts of Jungian
archetypes and Buddhist seeds (種子 zhongzi) similar? What is the connection between Jung’s idea of
unconscious and Buddhist idea of Ālaya-vijñāna 阿賴耶識? Does the Jungian notion of “Self” have a
prototype in Buddhism? These questions are in the focus of the present paper.
The study is based on the meticulous work with the Chinese sources. The main arguments in articles
and monographs are outlined and then analyzed so that we can see if the connections between Jungian and
Buddhist concepts can actually be established. As a result, three possible outcomes of such comparisons
have been discovered: 1) comparisons contribute to understanding of both Buddhist and Jungian
terminology; 2) such comparisons are far-fetched or have no real solid argumentation basis beneath them.
This paper contributes to the literature by showing that modern Chinese scholars have a profound
interest in establishing links between Jungian psychology and traditional Chinese culture, Buddhism being
one of its integral parts. Although there are not many studies in this field yet, this is one of the topics that
sparks genuine interest in the Chinese academic circles.
References
1. Liu Yaozhong 劉耀中 and Li Yihong 李以洪. Rongge xinlixue yu fojiao 榮格心理學與佛教 (Jungian
Psychology and Buddhism). Dongfang chubanshe, 2004.
2. Lin Guoliang, 林國良, and 管文仙 Guan Wenxian. ‘Rongge xinlixue yu fojiao weishixue sixiang zhi
yitong 榮格心理學與佛教唯識學思想之異同 (The Similarities and Differences between Jungian
Psychology and Buddhist Thought of Consciousness-Only School)’. Journal of Shanghai University
(Social Sciences) 上海大學學報 （社會科學版）, vol. 15, no. 3, 2008.
3. Zhang, Haibin 張海濱. ‘Rongge fenxi xinlixue yu fojiao Weishixue de bijiao yanjiu 榮格分析心理學
與佛教唯識學的比較研究 (Comparative Research on Jungian Psychology and Consciousness-Only
School of Buddhism)’. Psychology of Religion 宗教心理學, vol. 3, Mar. 2017, pp. 167–219.
Alexandra Fialkovskaya, Ph.D. Candidate, International Consortium for Research in the Humanities,
Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, alexandra.fialkovskaya@fau.deThe Jungian subject in psychosocial research: which contribution can Jung offer to investigate
psychosocial phenomena?
Camilla Giambonini
In contemporary psychosocial literature a fundamental debate concerns the role of the reflexive subject in
moving away from the unitary rational subject of traditional cognitive psychology. Depth psychology is
often introduced in psychosocial literature to theorise a reflexive subject that is not fully rational, but
complex, anxious, defended and who searches for meaning when faced with social issues such as crime,
financial insecurity or political conflict. Through a review of the current debates concerning the reflexive
subject and its fundamental features in qualitative psychosocial research, this presentation argues for the
contribution of a Jungian subject in psychosocial enquiries by discussing the critical appraisal of Jung’s
Flying saucers: a modern myth of things seen in the skies by Serge Moscovici (1961). The purpose of such
discussion is twofold. It helps reclaim the position of Jung’s psychology in a field of academic research
where it has often been overlooked and it addresses some problematic theoretical assumptions of Jungian
psychology, which reduce its applicability in contemporary primary research. The latter comprise the well-
known equivalence between inner collective unconscious and outer collective representations, which had
first been postulated by Ira Progoff in 1953 and survives today in applications of Jungian psychology to
social phenomena, which neglect the contribution of social interaction to socially construct collective
representations. Examples to illustrate the interpretive contribution of Jung’s psychology to a psychosocial
enquiry will be drawn from a primary research project that investigates the meaning of sexting for teenagers
in Switzerland, where numerous ideological discourses contrast with the shared representations that
teenagers themselves develop to make sense of their virtual interactions, often resulting in a gender dynamic
that is particularly harmful for girls.
References
Jung, C.G. (1959). Flying saucers: a modern myth of things seen in the skies. London: Routledge & Paul.
Moscovici, S. (1961). Jung, Carl G., Un mythe moderne. Des “singes du ciel”, Revue Française de
Sociologie, 2(4), 330-331.
Holloway, W. (2011). Through discursive psychology to a psycho-social approach. In N. Bozatzis & T.
Dragonas (Eds.), Social psychology: the turn to discourse. (pp. 209-240). Athens: Metaixmio.
Progoff, I. (1953). Jung’s psychology and its social meaning. Oxon: Routledge.
Voelklein, C. & Howarth, C. (2005). A review of controversies about social representations theory: A
British debate. Culture and psychology, 11(4), 431-454.
Camilla Giambonini, Ph.D., is a psychologist, currently completing a Ph.D. in Jungian and post Jungian
studies at the University of Essex, UK. I have lectured extensively in social sciences on subjects ranging
from psychosocial perspectives, Jungian and post Jungian studies, criminology, forensic psychology and
ethics. Previously, I worked as probation officer, particularly with migrant populations and sex offenders.
My research focuses on psychosocial perspectives based on depth psychology, with particular interest in
adolescence, sexuality and gender. I am a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association
for Jungian Studies and a trainee psychodynamic psychotherapist at the Society of Analytical Psychology.
Integrating genome and psyche: toward a theory of the Self’s ancestral memory
Erik Goodwyn
Throughout his career, Jung felt the psyche had “ancestral layers” that contained elements of an individual’s
cultural and biological history, and clinical experience has shown that this idea can be a powerful aid topsychological healing and emotional well-being. It is the aim of this paper to ask whether or not this idea
is more than simply a useful theoretical construct and to assess whether or not progress in evolutionary
neuroscience and genetics can inform and refine Jungian thought. In the early 2000s, several attempts were
made along these lines, and it was concluded that the genome was "too impoverished" to encode symbolic
information. These formulations, however, were plagued by a number of serious misunderstandings about
how genetics works. Unfortunately the idea has nonetheless persisted. In this paper, we will correct these
errors and find that, when combined with newer research in evolutionary neurogenetics, we find a genome
that is not impoverished, but containing the capacity to encode a huge amount of symbolic information.
Furthermore, the psychological content mediated by the genome can be seen to contain traces of our
evolutionary history from the very beginnings of chordate life up through our reptile and mammal ancestors,
to the hominins, and even into one's cultural history and even (through epigenetic transfer) the last few
generations of one's ancestors. Not impoverished, but densely rich with our biological heritage, the genome
appears to encode a kind of "ancestral memory" of the Self that consists of an array of constraints and biases
on emotion, perception and cognition, many of which are reviewed to provide concrete examples.
References
Alcaro, A., Carta, S., & Panksepp, J. (2017). The affective core of the self: a neuro-archetypical perspective
on the foundations of human (and animal) subjectivity. Frontiers in Psychology 8, 1424. Doi:
10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01424.
Blasi, D.E., Wichmann, S., Hammarström, H., Stadler, P.F., & Christiansen, M.H. (2016). Sound-meaning
association biases evidence across thousands of languages. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 113(39), 10818-10823.
Fiore, V.G., Dolan, R.J., Strausfeld, N.J., & Hirth, F. (2015). Evolutionarily conserved mechanisms for the
selection and maintenance of behavioral activity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
B 370: 20150053.
Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J. & Myles, S. (2010). How culture shaped the human genome: bringing
genetics and the human sciences together. Nature Reviews Genetics, 11, 137-148.
Tononi, G. (2012). Integrated information theory of consciousness: an updated account. Archives
Italiennes de Biologie, 150, 56-90.
Erik Goodwyn, MD, holds bachelor’s degrees in physics and mathematics, a master’s in anatomy and
neurobiology, and a medical degree from the University of Cincinnati. Currently the director of
psychotherapy training at the University of Louisville in the Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Goodwyn is the
author of The Neurobiology of the Gods, Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy, and Understanding Dreams
and Other Spontaneous Images . An officer in the US Air Force for seven years, he has researched and
written about the dreams of soldiers in combat zones, as well as authored articles combining archetypal
theory with cognitive anthropology and evolutionary psychology. He is also the co-editor in chief of the
International Journal of Jungian Studies and has presented and attended panels at Jungian conferences at
many locations in the United States and Europe.
Medard Boss, and his institution of Heideggerian Daseins-analysis or:
C.G. Jung's uncomfortable role within Swiss psychotherapeutic training after WWII
Angela Graf-Nold
Due to his numerous organizational activities between the foundation of the Psychological Club in 1916
and the foundation of the C.G. Jung-Institute in 1948 Jung played a major role in the professionalization
and institutionalization of psychotherpapy in Switzerland. His dominant position always stood in the
tension of an admired mentor and an alleged preacher of his own doctrine, - a position he often decisively
denied.During the time of WWII (1939-45) Jung invited a group of medical colleagues to discuss their
cases every fortnight in his house in Küsnacht. When Medard Boss (1903-1990), a longtime member of
this circle, showed him his long thesis (habilitation) for his position as lecturer at the University Zurich
(Sinn und Gehalt der sexuellen Perversionen), the conflict broke out. Boss had built his theoretical
argumentation on Heideggerian philosophy without mentioning the well known Jungian terms and
concepts. Jung complained that he had replaced psychoanalytic concepts with “philosophical phantasies,”
by constantly having prevented and escaped a fruitful discussion within the group.
A new similar version of the controversy took place some years later, and became known as the
Boss-Mitscherlich controversy. Mitscherlich the leading figure of post war psychoanalysis in Germany,
critized in a review a (transgender) case study which Boss had presented at a Congress. Since Boss felt
insulted and misunderstood Mitscherlich collected the statements of more than 20 of Boss’colleagues (C.G.
Jung, Ludwig Binswanger e..a. ) about the adequacy of Boss’ treatment. Jung again complained about
Boss “philosophical bombast“ which would not be of relevance for the decided measures.
In his judgement Jung obviously felt confirmed by an article , which Anna Tumarkin (1875-
1951), the (native Russian) renowned female professor of philosophy at the university of Bern,
“Heidegger’s Existenzphilosophy,” had published (1944) in the Schweizer Zeitschrift für Psychologie on
request of himself and the other editors (J. Piaget and W. Morgenthaler). Tumarkin cautiously and
thoroughly analyzed the characteristics of Heidegger’s philosophy and finally denied the relevance for
psychotherapeutic purposes.
Boss, however, moved forward making Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) his personal mentor, and
establishing specific institutionalized psychoanalytic school of “Daseinsanalysis.” After his death the
School declined and closed in 2000. In a reorganized form the school again exists (GAD/DaS) as one a
5 licensed psychoanalytic institutions for psychotherapeutic education in Switzerland.
References
Boss, M. (19471). Sinn und Gehalt sexueller Perversionen. Bern: Huber .
Boss, M. (1987). Martin Heideggers Zollikoner Seminare : Frankfurt: Frommann-holzboog.
Heidegger, M. (19261). Sein und Zeit, Halle(Saale): Niemeyer.
Sonderheft über Sein und Zeit (1928) Philosophische Hefte , Vol.1 /11(July 1928) Berlin.
Tumarkin, A. (1943). Heideggers Existenzialphilosophie, in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie
und ihre Anwendungen /Revue Suisse de Psychologie, 2(2), 145-158.
Töpfer, F. (Ed.) (2012) Verstümmelung oder Selbstverwirklichung? Die Boss-Mitscherlich-Kontroverse
(mutilation or self-realization? The Boss-Mitscherlich controversy) Stuttgart: frommann-holzboog.
Angela Graf-Nold, PhD, is historian of psychology and psychotherapy and psychotherapist in private
practice in Zurich. She held several research positions at various departments at the University of Zurich,
including the Department for Child Psychiatry (on the history of psychotherapy of children), and the
Psychiatric Clinic of the University (Burghölzli) on epidemiology and archival studies and published in
these fields. From 2004 – 2010 she worked as research fellow and Philemon senior scholar at the Institute
for Medical History on the edition of C.G. Jung‘s lectures at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute) Zurich.
Anatomy of a Vision:
A Psychological Approach To The Papua New Guinea UFO Sightings, June 26-27th, 1959
David J. Halperin
On the nights of June 26 and 27, 1959, on the coast of Papua New Guinea, a young Anglican priest named
William Booth Gill and twenty-five of his Papuan parishioners had what they perceived as a close encounter
with multiple UFOs hovering at low altitude, and with man-like beings that moved about the upper surfaceof one disk-shaped craft and made attempts to communicate with the observers. The external stimulus for
the experience has been persuasively identified as a group of unusually bright planets and stars, viewed
through alternately gathering and dispersing clouds. The psychic projections by which these witnesses
came collectively to “see” things so different from what was physically present remain to be clarified.
Following the lead of Jung’s landmark study, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in
the Skies (1959), it’s possible to approach this “sighting” as what it essentially is: a religious vision, in
which the archetypes of quaternity and mandala function together to “unit[e] apparently irreconcilable
opposites” and resolve the tensions between the European priest and his Papuan congregants. “No doubt
they are human,” Gill testified of the UFO’s occupants. Yet they were also self-luminous, as angels might
be expected to be, and the paradox that they were both human and more than human must be allowed to
stand. They have overtones of Abraham’s visitors in Genesis 18 (called simply “men” in the Bible story),
as well as indigenous Papuan beliefs about sky-beings who descend to earth in human form. In the skies
over Papua New Guinea sixty years ago, this amalgam of religious traditions, shared yearning for
wholeness, and innate psychic patterning took on visible form suited to the technology of the mid-twentieth
century. The real mystery of the incident: by what processes in the human psyche did this come to be?
References
Clark, J. (2018) Gill CE3 [close encounter of the third kind] In The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon
from the Beginning (3rd edition; Detroit: Omnigraphics), vol. 1, pp. 533-36.
Jung, C.G. (1959). Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Kottmeyer, M. S. (2007). The Astronomical Solution to Father William Gill’s Position Sketches of 5 UFOs
Seen over Papua, New Guinea on the evening of June 26, 1959, The REALL News 15, no. 5. pp. 1,
4-9.
Menzel, D. H. (1972). UFO’s--The Modern Myth, Appendix 1, in UFO’s--A Scientific Debate. (Sagan, C.
& Page, T. Eds.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 146-53.
Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, The Reverend William B. Gill’s Reports of UFO Activity over
Boianai Anglican Mission and Vicinity, Papua-New Guinea, 1959, unpublished typescript,
November 1959.
David J. Halperin, Ph.D., received his BA in Semitic Studies from Cornell University and his PhD in Near
Eastern Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. From 1976 until his retirement in 2000, he
taught Judaic studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill, where he was repeatedly recognized for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He is the author of five
books and numerous articles on Jewish mysticism and messianism, and of a novel, Journal of a UFO
Investigator, published in 2011 by Viking Press and translated into Spanish, Italian, and German. His non-
fiction book Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO, which approaches the religious meaning of the
UFO from a perspective informed by Jungian thought, was published in 2020 by Stanford University Press.
He blogs at www.davidhalperin.net.
The Screen and The Soul. Virtual Reality, Real Reality and How Things Are
Christopher Hauke
The Covid pandemic has required us all to keep social distance from one another, which for
psychotherapists and their clients should be less of a problem. With reliable broadband making “virtual”
sessions online possible, why do so many people still find the virtual session falls so far short of the
“real” meeting in person? Maybe our assumption that there is a “real” version and there is an inferior
“virtual” version is wrong to begin with. I would like to lay out three approaches to this question.You can also read
