Description
This volume ensues from the 8th Jungian Odyssey retreat, inspired by Kartause Ittingen, a former monastery founded in 1150, and lying some thirty miles from C.G. Jung’s birthplace, Kesswil. As training analysts and scholarly guests of the International School of Analytical Psychology, the authors address students, clinicians, and all others with interest in Jung. Nestled in the Thurgau lowlands, Kartause Ittingen still echoes its past as the tranquil refuge of a community of Carthusian monks. Invoking the genius loci, Lionel Corbett wryly recalls Lao Tzu’s wisdom, “Those who know don’t talk; those who talk, don’t know.” Corbett thus humbly submits, “Silence is not just an absence of sound,” but a “non-conceptual mode of knowing,” with “amazing qualities and textures.” In this volume, the authors listen for the textures of silence emanating from sources as varied as the analytic consulting room, dream, fairy tale, the music of John Cage, and the activities of wandering and rowing. Can we attune our hearts to the silence that traps the oppressed and exploited? When is silence healing? When does it divide and crush us? When is the time to speak out about what truly matters? Indeed one author begs, “make more noise!” Thus readers of this volume are invited to “. . . watch patiently the silent happenings of the soul,” realizing that, “the most and best happens when it is not regulated from outside and above.” (C.G. Jung)
