Moby Dick: How an American Myth Speaks to Our Times

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a uniquely American description of the encounter with our unconscious depths. In this seminar, we will examine some of the ways in which this extraordinary product of the American imagination speaks to our modern circumstances with striking relevance.  Some of the issues to be covered include the destructive and creative aspects of heroic attitudes, defensive structures that lead to splitting and work against integration, as well as the cultural attitudes which inform and influence the ways we take in and make meaning of what often feels like an increasingly chaotic world including other creatures of our world like the whale.

Steven Galipeau, M.A., M.Div., is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Woodland Hills, California, and President and Executive Director of Coldwater Counseling Center in Studio City, a Jungian oriented sliding scale nonprofit. Steve is the author of Transforming Body and  Soul: Therapeutic Wisdom in the Gospel Healing Stories and The Journey of Luke Skywalker: An Analysis of Modern Myth and Symbol as well as articles and reviews on a variety of topics related to Analytical Psychology.  He is a frequent lecturer for Public Programs.