At our Annual General Meeting in January, a new Program Management Committee was formed. Frank Penkala, one of last year’s Membership Coordinators now fills the position of Vice-President of the Society and Program Planning Chair. Teaming up with the Calgary analysts, Judith Slimmon, Mae Stolte and Zeljko Matijevic in an advisory role and other committee members, we are pleased to be offering an excellent line-up of lectures and workshops for the Fall 2011 and Winter 2012 programming year.
As is customary for the Calgary Jung Society, all our presenters are accredited members of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) except for the annual Fred Miles event, which is dedicated, in memoriam, to one of our society’s founding members and reserved for an individual whose scholarly background is affiliated with Jungian thought in some way. We are very fortunate to have these distinguished speakers come to Calgary to share their knowledge with us and hope that you will join us in what is looking to be a wonderful year of opportunities for personal growth.
October 28, 2011 - Mae Stolte
 Emily Carr, Red Cedar, 1931, oil on canvas, 111.0 x 68.5 cm, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery,
Gift of Mrs. J. P. Fell, Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery
Mae Stolte is a Jungian analyst, having completed a Diploma in Analytical Psychology at the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich in 1990. She has been in private practice in Calgary since that time. She has given many lectures, seminars, and workshops related to Jungian psychology and has a special interest in the interrelatedness of Spirit and Nature.
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Art of the Life of Emily Carr
Emily Carr, painter, writer, international traveler, explorer, lover of Mother Earth. Our own West Coast artist so unknown and unacknowledged until recently. Emily Carr was a talented, creative woman ahead of her time, entering realms into which few people, particularly women, would go.
She challenged the current thinking of her time about art, about women, about Nature, about native peoples, and about our sense of reality as she sought in her painting for that unity and harmony of Life that she experienced so vividly in Nature, the unity of Spirit and Nature.
Her life was a courageous expression of the inner journey of the Self, seeking to go beyond the conscious world of the ego to the deeper essence of the Mystery of Life. She remained true to her calling to the end of her life ‘always doing’, never ‘done’.
This lecture is about the art in and of the life of Emily Carr - her growing pains, her struggles, her joys and triumphs, and in the end perhaps a peace of mind knowing she had been faithful to what Life had asked of her. It is a heroine’s journey, a very human journey with which we can all identify and one which inspires us to live out our own calling in life with courage and determination.
"Look at the earth crowded with growth, new and old bursting from their strong roots hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed according to its own kind... each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights on the earth... So, artist, you too from the deeps of your soul... let your roots creep forth, gaining strength."
~ Emily Carr
Painting by Emily Carr - 'Red Cedar'. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
November 25 & 26, 2011 - Inge Missmahl
 Inge Missmahl is a graduate of the C.G Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland and is based in Konstanz Germany. Since 2004, she has employed her training in analytical psychology to the field of humanitarian aid by developing psychosocial concepts, programs and projects in Afghanistan, China, Sri Lanka and Haiti. Her experience also includes thirty years as a professional dancer and choreographer.
Friday, November 25th, 2011
“Psychosocial Counselling: A Contribution to Peace and Reconciliation in Afghanistan”
After 30 years of war, the mental health burden of the Afghan population is enormous. The short and long term symptoms resulting from victimization and trauma change family interactions and increase the collective readiness for violence. During the last seven years, Inge has developed and exercised a psychosocial counselling approach based on Jungian psychology. She will discuss her approach and share her on-site experience with us.
Saturday, November 26th, 2011
“Dance, Dream and the Body: Blending Movement with Jungian Psychology”
For this workshop, space is limited so participants will have enough space to practice the movement techniques that Inge will present and facilitate in conjunction with dream work. No experience in dance is necessary. Register early to guarantee a place.
This event had originally been scheduled for April 1st and 2nd, but as many of you know, Inge unexpectedly, but fortunately, had the opportunity to return to Afghanistan having secured government funding to establish seven new centres. She will bring to her lecture the most current news from her recent work in that country.
“...because you have felt me, I can feel myself again and I want to participate again in my family life.”
~ an Afghan woman during a counselling session.
“The key is empathy. Somebody has to be a witness to what has happened to you. Somebody has to see you and listen to you. Everybody must be able to know what he or she has experienced is true.” ~ Inge Missmahl from the TED talk. To watch the video click here.
Friday, January 27, 2012 - Annual General Meeting and “Dancing In The Flames”
 Following a brief report from the 2011 Executive Committee Members and the election of the 2012 Executive Committee Members, there will be a viewing of "Dancing In The Flames", a film chronicling the life of renowned Jungian analyst and author, Marion Woodman, celebrated for her work on feminine psychology and addiction.
This invocative and insightful film explores "the inspiring life and many 'deaths‘ of one of the western world‘s most important wisdom keepers, and sends a clarion call to a planet in the midst of "a shedding of its outworn skin".
Andrew Harvey serves as guide, exploring the mysteries of her soul‘s journey, the many 'deaths‘ and 'rebirths‘ that have informed her very lived life: her battle with an eating disorder, her ever evolving marriage, to her revelatory experiences in India and her 'dance‘ with cancer. "Marion has 'died into life‘ and thus is a perfect teacher and mid-wife for this critical period in our history".
More detailed information regarding this free event will be made available on the website early in the new year. This is a feature length documentary (83 minutes). The venue for this evening will be Self Connection Books in Montgomery.
A door prize of The Red Book will be available for one lucky attendee.
February 17 & 18, 2012 - David Miller
David L. Miller, Ph.D., is the Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion, Emeritus, at Syracuse University and is a retired core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. Since 1963, Dr. Miller has worked at the intersections of religions and mythologies, literature and literary theory, and depth psychology. He is the author of the trilogy Christs: Meditations on Archetypal Images in Christian Theol-ogy, Three Faces of God: Traces of the Trinity in Lit-erature and Life, and Hells and Holy Ghosts: A Theo-poetics of Christian Belief. More information about him, his lectures, and his publications, can be found at his website www.dlmiller.mysite.syr.edu
 Friday, February 17th, 2012
Happy Ending? Three Archetypal Images
When he was seventy years old, C. G. Jung wrote: "... the united personality will never quite lose the painful sense of innate discord. Complete redemption from the sufferings of this world is and must remain an illusion." Jung seems both to affirm the possibility of achieving psychic integration and at the same time to deny a superficial sense of happiness in the face of our various endings.
This presentation will explore human fantasies of endings and of happiness. It will explore the possibility that these fantasies may themselves be illusions contributing to our psychological discord and suffering. Three different archetypal images of "happy ending" will be demonstrated - from myth, from fairy tale, and from religion - together with their implications for the care of the soul in everyday life.
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
The Death of the Clown!
Archetypal Images of the Comic Soul
Aristophanes, the grand comic genius of ancient Greece, once wrote: "Comedy also knows the truth!" It will be the assumption of this workshop that comedy and clowns can teach us truths about the depths of psychological life. The work-shop will explore four tensions important to dramatic comedy and to comedians—low/high, comic/ironic, wit/humor, and clown/fool.
Each of these will be demonstrated with examples and each will be interpreted as a different image of a complex of opposites within the self. It is as Charlie Chaplain once said: "I wanted everything a contradiction", and as the Book of Proverbs in the Bible put it: "Even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief."
By way of discussion, the workshop will aim at a psychological sense of the comic soul deep within each person, what Jung called a coniunctio oppositorum, a "marriage of opposites".
Fred Miles Event
March 9, 2012 - Judith Slimmon
Judith Slimmon is a Jungian analyst who lives in Calgary, Alberta and has had a private practice in Analytical Psychology for the past ten years. She brings to her work as an analyst a diverse background including outplacement consulting, teaching secondary school and at ACAD, as well as a number of years as a professional studio potter. Judith did her analytic training in Zurich, Switzerland and has lectured and conducted workshops across Canada, in the U.S. and in Europe.
Friday, March 9th, 2012
“I Saw A Whooping Crane, Crowned in Crimson”
This lecture explores the archetypal world and its manifestation in the archetypal image of the winged bird and of flight in general. It is designed as a companion piece to an earlier lecture by Judith Slimmon on instinctual life. The lecture will begin with a broad view of human perception of flight, exploring relevant imagery and mythology, as well as dreams and case material. It will then glide into an exploration of the meaning of bird imagery, landing gradually on the image of the majestic crane. Using images from Canada’s Robert Bateman, Judith will flesh out the archetypal energy that has coalesced around North America’s largest bird, saving it from almost certain extinction. If the power of the archetype can save the crane, how, we may speculate, can it save you?
March 30 & 31, 2012 - Guy Corneau
 Guy Corneau is the best-selling author of several books on the subject of personal development. He travels regularly to Europe where he gives conferences and workshops. Guy graduated from the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich in 1981 and had a private practice for years in Montreal before embarking on his inter-national speaking career. A local television “vedette” with several shows to his credit, Guy is also a social innovator who founded two networks, Réseau Hom-mes Québec et Réseau Femmes Québec. His Productions Coeur.com has worked to unite psychological understanding with creative expression, focusing on the opening of the heart. Guy Corneau‟s previous best-sellers include Absent Fathers, Lost Sons (1989) and Le meilleur de soi (2007). His latest book, Revivre !, on his experience with cancer, was launched in October (Editions de l‟Homme).
Friday, March 30th, 2012
To Live Again!
After being diagnosed with a grave illness, one is greatly tempted to close down or to become completely identified with the disease. In my presentation I want to talk about my own experience of Stage Four Cancer. I will discuss the meanings of the disease on the physiological, psychological and spiritual levels, as well as a way to dialogue with the diseased elements from a psychological perspective. I will also address some concrete ways to alter our interior states through this ordeal since these states strongly open us to joy and interior renewal, in their influence on our day-to-day lives. I will comment on my preference for a holistic approach that combines words of Dr Matthew Budd : "Cancer is too good an opportunity for transformation to waste it".
Saturday, March 31st, 2012
Living Healthy
This day workshop is dedicated to learning concrete methods of self-regulation and self-healing.
It centers around three objectives:
1. Transform and pacify inner states through creative imagery (in order to connect again with the natural state of joy already present in us)
2. Dialogue with one’s own cells and organs (in order to transform degenerative cellular processes and stimulate regeneration)
3. Intensify one’s own flow of energy through meditation (to free oneself from constricting mental forms and experience a vaster reality)
This day workshop is open to both healthy people who want to learn methods of preventing and enhancing their health capital through the use of energetic methods, as well as to people suffering from a poor health condition.
The advantage of these energetic methods is that everyone has free access to them all of the time. They complete without interfering other forms of treatment and medical approaches.
May 4 & 5, 2012 - Michael Conforti
Michael Conforti, Ph.D. is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and founder and director of the Assisi Institute in Italy and Vermont. His work has resulted not only in a training institute based on his discoveries, but also the development of a new discipline, Archetypal Pattern Analysis. He has been a faculty member at the C.G. Jung Institute-Boston, the C.G. Jung Foundation-New York, and Antioch New England Graduate School. He lectures internationally and applies his insights as a sought-after consultant to businesses, government institutions, and the film industry. He maintains a private practice in Vermont. Dr. Conforti is the author of Threshold Experiences: The Archetype of Beginnings and Field, Form and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature and Psyche. His articles have appeared in Psychological Perspectives, San Francisco Jung Library Journal, Roundtable Press, World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, and Spring.
Friday, May 4th, 2012
Dream Imagery Language of the Self
It has been said that there is a story to our lives and from time immemorial humanity has sought access to this wisdom. We have looked outward toward the stars and inward toward the soul to learn about life. The search within leads us to the dream as a keeper of our stories. Dreams reveal the truth about our past, who we are today, and intimations of our future, of a destiny waiting to guide us to what we are meant to be. Sages and wise ones knew that dreams are not simply repositories of past experiences, but also contain an awareness of a life waiting and needing to be lived. Dreams contain knowledge of how to shape our current life in order to prepare for this future. Like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel‘s poetic vision of preparations for the Sabbath as a way of readying his home for the arrival of a bride, la soror mystica, we too need to take an active role in translating the images from our dreams, to till and work the soil in preparation for this new life. In this lecture, Michael Conforti, founder of the field of Archetypal Pattern Analysis, will discuss ways of recognizing the presence and meaning of archetypal motifs in dreams and present ways of working with the personal and archetypal nature of the symbolic imagery emerging from our dreams. Using dream illustrations from clinical practice and dreams presented in the Bible and other spiritual texts, Dr. Conforti will explore the art, discipline, and expertise needed to grasp the universal, archetypal nature of dreams, with special emphasis on working with dreams in psychotherapy and analysis.
Saturday, May 5th, 2012
Dreams: Learning to Translate the Souls Wisdom
The sacred, the eternal and the wisdom of the dream exist in a domain which transcends conscious perception and awareness. We can‘t really see or touch the dream, yet find that it silently and at times not so silently moves our life in dramatic ways. While we seek to understand these mysteries through the lens of conscious percep-tion unfortunately a very different lens is needed – one that can infer the eternal from the temporal and the archetypal from everyday occurrences. Jung understood this dilemma of modern time, and saw that with the dismissal of the Gods came an estrangement from Self and Psyche.
In the Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaks of his preparations for the Sabbath meal, and his joy in preparing the home and making it beautiful for the arrival of the Sabbath – the Queen. We too, do well to heed Heschel‘s wisdom as we prepare ourselves to understand the profound arrival and meaning of dreams, as like the Sabbath, they bring us into a sacred time, an eternal, archetypal time.
In this day long seminar, we will be looking at dream images as eternal motifs, and learn to discern the archetypal and personal meaning of images. In addition, Dr. Conforti will discuss the objective, non-subjective meaning of dreams and ways to translate these images into meaningful messages for individual and collective life.
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