Frank N. McMillan III on the McMillan Institute
Every night as they have for over 100 million years, gifted as a legacy from our evolutionary forbearers, dreams emerge from the unconscious depths bearing clues to unlocking the labyrinth that is our waking existence.
Understanding them to be spontaneous products of nature, the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung viewed dreams as creative and healthy messages that employ symbolic images to help guide us along our path of self-realization.
As a boy growing up in depression-era Texas, my late father experienced his own numinous encounter with a majestic dream lion that came to him in the night and inspired by this powerful summons from the unconscious, and true to the promptings of his own intellectual integrity, as an adult he set out on a spiritual quest that soon transcended the limited cultural horizons of his traditional rural upbringing. Somewhere along the way, however, he became lost and fell into an existential crisis. And then, on the very edge of the abyss, in an uncanny meeting with an eccentric stranger in a moment of synchronicity at a cross-roads cafe that was too magical to be anything but true, he heard the name Carl Jung for the first time. As a consequence, he was psychologically reborn in every possible dimension he could be and his life path was guided towards that far horizon where meaning beckons. He put it best in his own words: “Jung saved my life.” This renewed inner journey soon led him to the door of The Jung Center in Houston, Texas.
The Frank N. McMillan Jr. Institute for Jungian Studies is the culmination of my father’s vision that individuals from around the world, seekers from every nationality, age, ethnicity, gender, orientation, and spiritual tradition, may find a safe and intellectually nourishing place that nurtures and supports their own inner explorations through the provision of resources, materials, and space for meaningful personal encounters that will prepare, enlighten and encourage them for their ongoing voyage into that last great wilderness, the inner universe of the psyche. In my opinion, there is no better spot to experience this most significant of journeys than The Jung Center. May the consciousness that is created here forever enable our own dreams to walk the earth as we seek to heal both the planet and ourselves.
- Frank N. McMillan III