Events
Jung at the Movies: A Cinematic Exploration of the Individuation Process
An Exploration of the theme of Individuation through: The Remains of the Day (James Ivory, 1993), A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977)) and Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025).
September 6: In The Remains of the Day, Individuation appears as a tragic failure: Stevens, the butler, suppresses his emotional self so completely in service to duty, social role and class identity that he reaches old age alienated from his own desires and capacity for intimacy. Link to Purchase
September 13: In A Special Day, Individuation emerges through a brief but transformative encounter in which two socially marginalized people momentarily recognize their authentic selves outside the oppressive roles imposed by fascist society and gender expectations. Link to Purchase
September 27: In Sentimental Value, Individuation is portrayed as the painful work of confronting inherited family wounds and recovering a personal identity that is not entirely defined by memory, parental absence, or the emotional scripts of the past. Link to Purchase
Performance Without Fear
We all “perform” in life. Whether we are preparing for a concert, a thesis defense, a big meeting, a public talk or even an encounter with a difficult member of our family: we step on stage.
Drawing on the psychology of performance and the creative process, the four-part seminar series will explore what it means to perform authentically, viewing the stage not as a place of judgment but as an opportunity for engagement, vulnerability and self-expression.
Women Who Run With The Wolves
First published in 1992, Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés has become one of the most influential and widely read works bringing Jungian thought into conversation with myth, folklore, storytelling, and feminine psychological experience. Drawing on fairy tales, legends, myths, and oral traditions from many cultures, Clara Pinkola Estés approaches these narratives not simply as stories, but as symbolic expressions of deep psychic realities.
This series is conceived as a thoughtful and relaxed space for reflection, conversation, and shared interpretation. Together we will examine the imagery, themes, and psychological insights woven throughout the text, while allowing room for personal resonance and collective exploration.
Jung at the Movies: “The Shape of Water” (Guillermo del Toro, 2017) or Beauty and the Beast revisited
Past Event. In “The Shape of Water”, a 2017 film directed by Guillermo del Toro, Elisa, a mute cleaner at a high security government laboratory falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature and decides to help him escape from death at the hands of an evil colonel.
The Daughter’s Individuation Quest: An Exploration of Three Fairy Tales
Past Event. In the fairy tales Beauty and the Beast, Donkey Skin, and The Courageous Girl the father’s actions have important consequences for his daughter's destiny.
Exploration of the Shadow - Part 2, with Jungian Analyst David Pressault
Past Event. The workshop will propose an immersive exploration into one’s own shadow world.
Through self reflection, journaling and inquiry, we will invite participants to explore their shadow.
In the first workshop we will look briefly at Jung’s theory and then turn the light to ourselves. We will question our personal conscious point of view as well as our persona, family values and ways in which we have unconsciously adapted. We will consider what is disliked, detested, even hated: what we do not allow in ourselves and not permit in others.
Exploration of the Shadow - Part 1, with Jungian Analyst David Pressault
Past Event. The workshop will propose an immersive exploration into one’s own shadow world.
Through self reflection, journaling and inquiry, we will invite participants to explore their shadow.
In the first workshop we will look briefly at Jung’s theory and then turn the light to ourselves. We will question our personal conscious point of view as well as our persona, family values and ways in which we have unconsciously adapted. We will consider what is disliked, detested, even hated: what we do not allow in ourselves and not permit in others.
Jung at the Movies
Past Event. He sits like a man taking a hearing test, big headphones clamped over his ears, his body and face frozen, listening for a faraway sound. His name is Gerd Wiesler, and he is a captain in the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany. The year is, appropriately, 1984, and he is Big Brother, watching. He sits in an attic day after day, night after night, spying on the people in the flat below. The flat is occupied by a playwright and his mistress, an actress. Wiesler has been trained by his life to reflect no emotion. Sometimes not even his eyes move; he is like a cat awaiting a mouse. And he begins to internalize their lives -- easy, because he has no life of his own, no lover, no hobby, no distraction from his single-minded job. Then, something happens that will change his life forever.
Jung at the Movies
Past Event. The title of this movie is borrowed from a poem by Walt Whitman “The Untold Want”:
The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
It is indeed the voyage that Charlotte Vale, a drab, quiet woman who is brutally dominated by her mother, must take. It is a voyage from rejection to love, from fear to the courage to face an abusive parent and from pain to healing.
Jung at the Movies
Past Event. Walter Vale is a widowed College economics professor who lives a fairly solitary existence. His life will change when a chance encounter with an immigrant couple forces him to face issues relating to identity, connectedness, immigration and cross-cultural communication. The story of a transformation from being a visitor to his own life to truly embracing life in all its joys and sorrows.
Jung at the Movies
Past Event. Individuation is a process rather than a final product, a journey of self-discovery rather than a final destination, a circumambulation rather than a straight trajectory. On that journey, answering the call, taking a risk and staying related in times of crisis is of primary importance.
There is no Individuation without relatedness, whether it is to others or to oneself.
We will examine a mother/son-type relationship in Central Station
(Walter Salles, 1998), exploring themes that are inseparable from the process of Individuation, including: confronting one’s shadow, remaining present to suffering, taking a risk and accepting sacrifice: finding the treasure and letting it go.
On the Path of Individuation: Answering the Call
Past Event. Individuation is a process rather than a final product, a journey of self-discovery rather than a final destination, a circumambulation rather than a straight trajectory. On that journey, answering the call, taking a risk and staying related in times of crisis is of primary importance.
There is no Individuation without relatedness, whether it is to others or to oneself.
We will examine a mother/son-type relationship in Central Station
(Walter Salles, 1998), exploring themes that are inseparable from the process of Individuation, including: confronting one’s shadow, remaining present to suffering, taking a risk and accepting sacrifice: finding the treasure and letting it go.
What is Jungian Analysis?
Past Event. Analysts and Analysands discuss introductory questions about Inner Work and the Individuation Process.
Embodying the Process of Individuation
Past Event. This two-day workshop brings together theoretical and experiential Jungian concepts and practice. Both days will begin with a voice and movement workshop where participants will be invited to be in their bodies consciously, move and sing, hum and express themselves through voice.
Session topics will include the complex and the child archetype. We will discuss also how the training program requires more than a learning of content for exams, but rather urges engagement with an individuation process through which candidates are changed from the inside out.
Seminar open to OAJA Training Candidates only.
On the Path of Individuation: Answering the Call Part 2
Past Event. As a continuation of our seminar “On the Path of Individuation: Answering the Call” we will explore the themes of risk, honesty, authenticity, sacrifice, and surrender in love and friendship in the movies Besieged (B. Bertolucci, 1998) and in The Visitor (T. McCarthy, 2007).
Seminar open to OAJA Training Candidates only.
On the Path of Individuation: Answering the Call Part 1
Past Event. Individuation is a process rather than a final product, a journey of self-discovery rather than a final destination, a circumambulation rather than a straight trajectory. On that journey, answering the call, taking a risk and staying related in times of crisis is of primary importance.
We will examine a mother/son-type relationship in Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998).
Seminar open to OAJA Training Candidates only.
Anatomy of the Animus
Past Event. What is the Animus? How does it come into being? How does it manifest in our lives, both positively and negatively? How can we dialogue with the Animus? The seminar will look at what has been written on the subject of the Animus – the writings of C. G. Jung as well as those of Jungian analysts, particularly women. We will also explore the manifestation of the Animus in art and literature.
Transforming Expression Creativity Retreat
Past Event. This two-day retreat invited participants to explore their bodies and voices as vehicles towards greater self-expression. Providing insight into creative blocks, participants discovered ways to overcome these blocks and move towards creative freedom through dream work and its potential for self-understanding.
Seminars included voice and movement workshops, finding one’s Inner Voice, facing the Inner Critic/Judge, performance anxiety, perfectionism, the expression of creativity, the symbols of those fears and what might help us outgrow them. Also featured: a Dream seminar exploring Jungian psychology, the language of dreams and how these can give insight into self-expression.