Now you can access The Jung Center’s innovative educational offerings wherever you go. We are proud to announce the launch of online classes. You can access all of our online events below, with more on the way. Stay tuned!
Many of these events will be accredited by the American Psychological Association and the Association of Social Work Boards, along with other state accrediting bodies for a range of mental health professionals (including chemical dependency counselors) and educators. Continuing education accreditation provided by R. Cassidy Seminars. For details about accreditation, click here.
We remain deeply grateful to The Houston Endowment, the family of Frank N. McMillan, Jr., Douglas Wyatt, and Carolyn Grant Fay for their support of our online classes.
Taking a course that’s available to live-stream or attend in-person? When you register, you will be emailed viewing instructions prior to the first session/event. You are welcome to take the class in-person, online, or in the combination that best suits your schedule. Please contact Mary Oleyar at moleyar@junghouston.org or 713-524-8253, extension 23, with any questions.
SUMMER 2019
LIVESTREAM Archetypal Beatles
Ronald Schenk, PhD | 3.0 CE hours | $65 ($55 Jung Center members)
Dates: Saturday, Jun 1, 10:00am-1:00pm
“Pop music” usually suggests temporary popularity, yet the appeal of the Beatles has been anything but fleeting. In fact, they revolutionized popular music, producing a discography unparalleled in quality and quantity.
The Beatles’ songs can be seen as holding archetypal meanings, reverberating with us decades after their composition. We will explore archetypes expressed in the Beatles’ canon and juxtapose their songs with pieces of classical music that dramatically illustrate the same archetypes, thereby seeing how different styles of music reflect each other not only across time but across genres. When we listen to the Beatles or to opera, we are hearing each in the other. Our classical focus will be on Richard Wagner, whose operas present stark mythic images that reflect the archetypes at play in our individual and cultural psyches.
LIVESTREAM Intimations in the Night: The Archetypal Journey of Aging
Dates: Tuesday, Jun 18, 6:00pm-7:30pm CST
Michael Conforti, PhD | 1.5 CE hours | $20 ($15 Jung Center members)
Perhaps one of the most dramatic experiences we have as we age is a sense of disorientation. So much of what our life has comprised up this point no longer carries the same importance and meaning. We will discuss how to understand this shift in orientation and discover ways of moving forward in alignment with the Self. From excerpts of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea to dreams from clinical practice, we will look at examples of this ongoing relationship between what is often an outdated ego orientation and the emergence of a new order and new way of life ushered in by the aging process.
Note: This virtual class is designed for online participation ONLY.
LIVESTREAM Passion and Jung
David Rottman | 2.0 CE hours | $25 ($20 Jung Center members)
Dates: Wednesday, Jun 19, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Human beings are born naturally passionate, but the “blocking of libido,” as Jung called it, can lead to feeling stuck or lost, and like life has lost its zest and joy. Jung has much to say about how we can create a new channel for passion in work and relationships in order to be creatively engaged and involved in our lives. In this talk we will explore Jung’s ideas about passion as well as the ideas of his main pupil Marie-Louise von Franz.
Note: This virtual class is designed for online participation ONLY.
LIVESTREAM The Healing Power of Masculine Eros
Robert Snellgrove | 6.0 CE hours | $135 ($125 Jung Center members)
Dates: Wednesdays, Jun 26 – Jul 24, 5:30pm-7:00pm
Eros, the Greek god of love and passion, can be understood symbolically as basic life energy — a source of life itself. But is there such a thing as masculine eros? If so, how is it important to the mental health of both men and women? Discover how creative experience can reawaken our connection to eros. We will explore the blocks to eros and investigate how we can overcome those challenges in a culture uncomfortable with self-expression, creativity, sensuality, and the shadow of human sexuality. Through storytelling, lecture, and discussion, we will discover how each of us can live more authentic and vibrant lives. This course contains mature material.
LIVESTREAM Listening for Understanding
Cherie Ray | 3.0 CE hours | $75 ($65 Jung Center members)
Dates: Saturday, Jul 20, 10:00am-1:00pm
Want better communication? What if it’s not in the speaking but in the listening? In business, love, and life, nothing supports collaboration and goodwill more than understanding. We will bring a fresh approach to listening, beyond capturing and reciting words. When we improve our listening, we move beyond repetitive conversations and the idea of taboo topics, to breaking through to new ground.
This experiential workshop is perfect for executives, professionals, partners, parents, and anyone desiring productive conversations.
LIVESTREAM Depth Psychology and Sufism: Knowledge and Love (Lecture)
Mansoor Hassan Abidi | 1.5 CE hours | $20 ($15 Jung Center members)
Dates: Friday, Jul 26, 5:45pm-7:15pm
Explore Sufism and Islamic spirituality through a depth psychological lens. We will focus on two paths – knowledge and love – and discuss the rich history of Islam and its division into Shia and Sunni sects, which influences Islamic philosophy to this day. We will delve into Sufi psychology and the contributions of Ibn al Arabi and Rumi. Their universal teachings of being and gnosis (irfān) can serve those seeking self-realization and compassion.
LIVESTREAM Introduction to Archetypes
Jose Leal | 3.0 CE hours | $65 ($55 Jung Center members)
Dates: Saturday, Aug 10, 12:00pm-3:00pm
Come explore one of the most useful ideas in Jungian psychology — the archetype. Jung used this idea to talk about the deep patterns in the human psyche, providing a framework to discuss the multiplicity of aspects we all carry within us. We will correct some common misunderstandings about the term as we explore how the concept evolved through Jung’s work. We will also discuss some of the main archetypes that appear in Jung’s writing, including the child, the trickster, the shadow, the self, and rebirth. Active imagination exercises will be performed to personalize and integrate the material.
LIVESTREAM The March from Selma to Montgomery and the Nonviolent Movement in Analysis
Renee Cunningham | 1.5 CE hours | $20 ($15 Jung Center members)
Dates: Thursday, Aug 22, 6:30pm-8:00pm
Using the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama as a frame, we will explore the development of culture through the implementation of the eightfold path of nonviolence. We will examine concepts like Gandhi’s satyagraha and ahimsa, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s six principles of nonviolence, individuation, the ego-Self axis, cultural unconscious, and cultural complex as key components of development within the individual and culture. We will explore ways in which these principles can be applied to clinical practice to avoid the potential abuse of power, exemplified by the archetypal master/slave, within the analytic relationship.
Note: This virtual class is designed for online participation ONLY.
Liz Seitz | 1.5 CE hours | $20 ($15 Jung Center members)
Dates: Wednesday, Aug 28, 7:00pm-8:30pm
Many couples avoid dealing with problems in an effort to keep the peace, but problems don’t just go away when we don’t address them. Putting off difficult or stressful conversations is a short-term fix, not a solution. Sometimes both partners are conflict-avoiders; other times, one partner periodically pleads for change but feels their complaints are ignored, dismissed, or minimized, leading to hurt, frustration, and resentment. Sadly, many don’t realize the seriousness of their partner’s concerns until confronted with divorce papers or infidelity. Why not develop healthy ways to communicate and stop enabling destructive patterns? Come develop tools to help safeguard your relationship and create healthy, sustainable change.
FALL 2019
LIVESTREAM MEMBER APPRECIATION LECTURE: Jung, Psychedelics, Spirituality, and AA
Ian McCabe | 1.5 CE hours | $75 (FREE for members)
Friday, Sept. 6, 7 – 8:30 pm
In Friday night’s lecture, trace the serendipitous beginnings of Alcoholics Anonymous and its connections to William James and Carl Jung. Discover how Jung influenced and was influenced by AA, and gain an understanding of the historical, societal, and medical forces that came together to create the organization.
Michael Conforti | 1.5 CE hours | $20 ($15 members)
Friday, Sept. 20, 7:30 – 9 pm
When entering the autumn and winter of life, we often experience a profound lack of orientation. So many meaningful accomplishments from our earlier lives now begin to lose their luster, and those aspirations and dreams which set our hearts on fire are now eclipsed by new and strange emotions and desires suddenly emerging from the shadows.
The fires and passions of youth and the middle years that once warmed our souls are now reduced to smoldering embers, and with this, the hunger for so much of what we wanted in life quickly fades into the domain of memory. Now the only intimations of this life are found in our dreams, frustrations, symptoms, and cravings for the ineffable.
We will use Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea to better understand the role of psyche and soul in the aging process. Like the old man, we are challenged to hear painful lamentations of ego and youth as we move into this later and eventually final stage of life. It is imperative to know what we love and cherish and need to preserve but also recognize those aspects of life we need to relinquish, as they no longer satisfy the mandates of the self.
LIVESTREAM Liminal Spaces: A Performance/Presentation
Ron Schenk | 3 CE hours | $65 ($55 members)
Saturday, Oct. 12, 10 am – 1 pm
Explore the archetypal theme of liminality in this special event, which will combine song, poetry, and art with psychological commentary. “Liminal” refers to any object, situation, or way of thinking that takes on the aspect of threshold, in-between space, “twilight zone,” or boundary or border crossing. We will merge traditionally distinct forms such as performance with lecture and education with art. We will explore waterways, borderlands, cityscapes, eros, and nightworld, and we will hear classical and popular music, jazz, showtunes, and poetry from Shakespeare, Eliot, and Frost.
LIVESTREAM An Introduction to Depth Psychology: He, She, We, Shadow
James Hollis | 6 CE hours | $135 ($125 members)
Mondays, Nov. 4 – 25, 5:45 – 7:15 pm
We will utilize the accessible books of Robert Johnson, who sought to bridge the gap between the arcana of Jung and the reading public through a series of short studies. These slim volumes provide an introduction to core analytic concepts and illustrate the importance of myth as a carrier of values — and the dynamic interactions of those values.
LIVESTREAM A Contemplation on Letting Go
Ginger Clarkson | $20 ($15 members)
Thursday, Dec. 5 | 5:45 – 7:15 pm
Discover the invaluable Buddhist insight that the path to freedom from suffering involves letting go of attachments. The beautiful story of Anathapindika, a man stricken with profound physical pain, offers us timeless insight into the mystery of attachment. Through lecture, discussion, and guided meditation, we will discuss ways of letting go in daily life. And we will practice noticing and releasing attachments to particular body sensations, emotions, thoughts, and sense impressions – taking an important step along the path to freedom from suffering.
LIVESTREAM May the Real Mary Magdalene Please Stand Up? An Archetypal Reflection – LECTURE
Carol Pearson | 1.5 CE hours | $20 ($15 members)
Friday, Dec. 13 | 7 – 8:30 pm
Mary Magdalene is referred to 12 times in the canonical gospels, more than any other apostle. In 1969 the Vatican honored her as the Apostle to the Apostles, rejecting the portrait of her as a prostitute. Yet, for most of the past 2,000-plus years, her true legacy was erased, putting her in the inkblot-like position of inviting projection after projection. Still, she remains viewed by many primarily as a repentant prostitute. However, in the oral tradition and in recent scholarship, she has also been imagined variously as a virgin; a wealthy funder of Jesus’s work; the mother of Jesus’s daughter and ancestor of the French Merovingian dynasty; Jesus’s spiritual and romantic partner; and the leader of the apostles, Jesus’s successor, and the original framer of the ideas in the Gospel of John.
Interest in Magdalene is now booming. Why Magdalene? Why now? What is the archetypal meaning of this history and the explosion of interest in this Biblical character? But most of all, what archetypes does Magdalene embody, and what do they mean for us?
ONGOING CLASSES
An Introduction to Jung’s Theory of Complexes | 1.5 hours | $23 ($18 Jung Center members)
Anna Guerra, JD, MA, LPC
What is a complex? We’ve all heard of the Oedipus complex, the inferiority complex, and the mother complex, but what do these ideas really mean? Jung placed great importance on the notion of the complex, which he referred to as “the architect of dreams” and “the via regia” (royal road) to the unconscious. This concept and its role in psychological distress and interpersonal conflict is explored in this lecture.
A Re-Memembered Past: The Sephardic Presence In South Texas | 1 hour | $23 ($18 Jung Center members)
Anna Guerra, JD, MA, LPC
Presenter Anna Guerra, drawing upon her own ancestry which also exists in the backgrounds of many contemporary Tejanos, will trace how Sephardic people settled in Texas following the expulsion of Jews from Spain in the fifteenth century. This lecture explores the Carvajal family, whose history includes conquistadores, Crypto- Jews, Jewish martyrs, “converso” priests, and a tragic but poignant end during the Mexican Inquisition. These fascinating historical events remind us of a narrative of intolerance and survival replayed throughout human history.
Working With Our Dreams: The Nuts and Bolts Basics of Jungian Dreamwork WITH CE | 1.75 CE hours | $28 ($23 Jung Center members)
Working With Our Dreams: The Nuts and Bolts Basics of Jungian Dreamwork WITHOUT CE | 1.75 hours | $23 ($18 Jung Center members)
Anna Guerra, JD, MA, LPC
What sense do we make of those confounding nightly visions we call dreams? Do dreams offer any practical purpose? How do we work with them? Jung offered an approach to understanding and dialoguing with dreams, whose roots lie in the “unfathomably dark recess” of the unconscious. This lecture will focus on the basics of Jungian dreamwork, and provide practical tools for understanding and working with our own dreams.
The Secret Lives of Emotions: Shame WITH CE | 1.0 CE hours | $28 ($23 Jung Center members)
The Secret Lives of Emotions: Shame WITHOUT CE | 1 hour | $23 ($18 Jung Center members)
Anna Guerra, JD, MA, LPC
Shame is the profoundly painful experience of feeling defective and unworthy of acceptance. Etymologically related to “covering up,” shame can leave us feeling disgraced and exposed. Shame is a universal emotion and not reserved for the few “unfortunate.” Despite its universality, shame lurks in the shadows, as it is a “negative” emotion that few will admit. In fact, the experience of the feeling itself constellates shame, and thus falls into what Jung called “the shadow,” making it one of the most difficult feelings to understand and manage. In this program, we will explore the meaning and value of shame to our psychological functioning, the role of shame to an individual’s socialization and development of identity, and we will distinguish the normal human emotion of shame from “toxic shame” which is shame as an identity and belief that one is flawed and defective.
The Seven Deadly Sins… and a Few Misdemeanors WITH CE | 1.0 CE hour | $28 ($23 Jung Center members)
The Seven Deadly Sins… and a Few Misdemeanors WITHOUT CE | 1 hour | $23 ($18 Jung Center members)
James Hollis, PhD, Jungian analyst and J. Pittman McGehee, DD, Jungian analyst
Think you know something about sin? In this enhanced online version of a presentation recorded Sept. 7, 2005, J. Pittman McGehee and James Hollis take a thoughtful look at our tendency to stray from the straight and narrow. How do our “sins,” these universal human behaviors, show up in both the classical and contemporary worlds? How do they affect our most important relationships — for good and ill?
The Poet as Depth Psychologist WITH CE | 6.0 CE hours | $80 ($70 Jung Center members)
The Poet as Depth Psychologist WITHOUT CE | 6 hours | $75 ($65 Jung Center members)
James Hollis, PhD, Jungian analyst
This is an enhanced online version of a class taught at The Jung Center by James Hollis in the summer of 2013. However troubled their personal lives, some poets intuitively embody profound insight into the nature and dynamics of the human psyche in their work. They are vehicles for the embodiment of the invisible world, which they render more accessible by making it visible through metaphor and image. This four week course will focus upon four who open apertures into the universal motions of the human psyche. They are: Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Mary Oliver.
C.G. Jung: A Brief Introduction
Sean Fitzpatrick, PhD | 1 hour | Free (no CE credit)
Why are experiences of meaning essential for psychological development? How does the absence of meaning maintain psychological suffering? This hour-long online presentation will introduce you to some of the key concepts, methods, and purposes of Jung’s psychological theory.
Happiness and the Pursuit of Meaning
Jill Carroll, PhD | 1 hour | $10 ($9 Jung Center members)
What is the relationship between happiness and meaning? Is there a certain kind of meaning necessary for happiness? Do those who are happiest have a higher purpose – or meaning – in their lives? Listen to this CARL Talk lecture for this, and so much more!
Jerry Ruhl, PhD | 1 hour | $23 ($18 Jung Center members)
What does it mean to be human in a chaotic world? There are times, too many to count, in which we fall back into chaotic states: of anger, fear, confusion, ignorance, meaninglessness. In moments of chaotic breakdown, of individual or collective nature, our familiar and cherished positions become unraveled. Ancient myths about chaos uniquely transcend time and culture to speak to the universal human condition and the hopes, aspirations and fears that define our humanity. This lecture explores how these mythic patterns can help to guide us in our own heroic struggles and cultivate wisdom from impermanence and uncertainty.
Spiritual but not Religious: Jung as Guru and Sage in Adult Continuing Education
Sean Fitzpatrick, PhD | 30 minutes | Free (no CE credit)
This presentation, recorded at the joint IAAP/IAJS conference at Yale University in July, 2015, explores why Jung continues to appeal to people from a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances – and some of the hazards we encounter if we are not mindful of the gaps between who Jung was and who we want him to be.
Voices of Jung: Myth, Newton, and Complexity
Ronald Schenk, PhD, Jungian analyst | 1 hour | $23 ($18 Jung Center members)
Jung’s work was born out of 19th Century scientific certainty, Romantic inclinations, and Christian sensibility, and it matured amidst 20th Century insights regarding the relativization of consciousness. Now a careful “re-visioning” of the core of his project reveals a strong underlying accord with paradoxical post-modern precepts of the predictability of uncertainty and the rational nature of chaos. This lecture will explore ways in which “Jung” can be understood as on the cutting edge of contemporary consciousness regarding our everyday lives both as individuals and as a culture.