67th Annual Conference

Thursday, February 25

Afternoon Workshops

2:30 - 5:00 P.M.

Workshop 27

Analytical Psychology and Spirituality: Finding Meaning in Group Experience

Chair:                

Stephanie Fariss, JD, LCSW, CGP, Co-Director, Clinical Training Program in Analytical Psychology, C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Jung’s “sense of the sacred” in his model of the psyche is the idea that powerful spiritual energies exist in the unconscious that are beyond ego awareness and control. This workshop will explore how an experience of these energies in group therapy may lead to an expansion of consciousness and a meaningful perspective on life.

didactic-experiential-demonstration-sharing of work experiences

Learning Objectives:

The attendee will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of how spirituality, as conceptualized by Analytical Psychology, can lead to an expansion of consciousness in both the individual and group.

2. Describe how Jung’s concept of the “religious function” of the psyche and the experience of the “numinous” is critical to the process of individuation.

3. Understand how the belief in “the unbroken wholeness of the universe” as espoused by David Bohm, Wolfgang Goethe and Carl Jung is related to group experience.

Course References:

Casement, A. & Tacey, D. (Eds.) (2006). The idea of the numinous: Contemporary Jungian and psychoanalytic perspectives. New York: Routledge.

Fariss, S. (in press). The social unconscious and the collective unconscious: The Jungian perspective. In Hopper, E. & Weinberg, H. (Eds.) The social unconscious: Persons, small and large groups, families, organizations and societies. London: Karnac.

Ulanov, A.B. (2007). The unshuttered heart: Opening aliveness/deadness in the Self. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.