The C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles is offering a Certificate Program in Jungian Studies for non-clinicians. This version of the Certificate Program is intended for a public interested in the in-depth study of Jung’s psychology. It is not limited to licensed mental health professionals.  The program consists of 16 sessions of 3 hours from October 2022 through June 2023. All the sessions will be on Saturdays from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm [Pacific Time]. Please check our Course Schedule below for exact dates and times.

Certificate: A Certificate in Jungian Studies will be awarded to participants after completion of the program. Participants may miss 3 sessions at most and still receive the certificate.

Registration for the 2022-2023 Program is now Closed.

The format of this program is online only. Continuing Education credits are not available for this program. 

COURSE SCHEDULE (All Times Below are Pacific Time)

A Saturday Lecture with J. Gary Sparks, B.Sc., M.Div., M.A.

Saturday, October 15, 2022; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
JUNG’S UNIQUE PSYCHOLOGY
The presentation will explore an overview of how Jung’s psychology developed over the course of his lifetime, focusing on his understanding of psychological transformation, beginning with his personal crisis (1913 –1928) through his last mature writing (1951 – 1954). In our discussion, we will address some of the ways in which Jungian psychology can facilitate healing for the individual on a personal as well as a collective level.

J. Gary Sparks, B.Sc., M.Div., M.A., is a graduate of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA; the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA; and the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. He is the author of At the Heart of Matter: Synchronicity and Jung’s Spiritual Testament (2007), Valley of Diamonds: Adventures in Number and Time with Marie-Louise von Franz (2009), Carl Jung and Arnold Toynbee: The Social Meaning Work (2017), and also co-editor of Edward F. Edinger’s Science of the Soul (2002) and Ego and Self: The Old Testament Prophets (2000). Based in Indianapolis, he is widely known for his lectures and seminars on the significance and application of Jungian psychology.

A Saturday Lecture with Stephen Kenneally, M.A., M.B.A., M.F.T.

Saturday, November 5, 2022; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
IN SEARCH OF THE SELF
Jung’s concept of the Self seeks to capture the experience of something greater in the psyche than our familiar ego consciousness. This can feel like an inspiring inner guide that facilitates and brings meaning to life, and it can feel like a tormenting fate that keeps us at odds with ourselves. How can we talk about it as a psychological concept on the one hand, and treat it with the reverence of spiritual yearning on the other? This is Jung’s great insight; we have within us dimensions that must be stood up to and understood, as well as dimensions that must be submitted to and served. The task of our consciousness is to learn how to discern the right approach. Too much rationalism cuts us off from our deeper  knowing of ourselves. Too much superstitious reverence for the inner/outer Other in our psychic field and we fall into inflations, deflations, and fundamentalism. An ethic for life emerges if we tolerate this complex notion of the Self.

 

Stephen Kenneally, M.A., M.B.A., M.F.T.is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Santa Monica, CA. He is active in the training at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and has taught for over ten years at Antioch University. Stephen has also worked at an experiential retreat center, and prior to that, worked in finance in New York City.

Two Saturday Lectures with Robert Moradi, M.D.

Saturdays, November 19 & December 3, 2022; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
DREAMS: WHY DO WE HAVE THEM AND WHAT DO THEY MEAN?
Dreams are products of the unconscious that emanate from our uniquely individual history, and yet paradoxically and simultaneously, can also serve to remind us of our oneness with everything that has ever existed.  Dreams can liberate us from our conscious mind, but also require our conscious engagement with them if we are to understand their symbolic language and decipher their meaning.  Dreams can tell us how we have been injured, personally and collectively, and sometimes even the reasons for our struggles.  More importantly, dreams can show us how to bear the pain of our suffering, and make meaning out of a challenging experience. In this seminar we will discuss different types of dreams and ways of understanding our dreams on a personal as well as a collective level.

Robert Moradi, M.D., is a Jungian analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Monica. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine. Currently, he teaches and writes on Jungian approaches to clinical practice.

 

A Saturday Lecture with Stephen Kenneally, M.A., M.B.A., M.F.T.

Saturday, December 17, 2022; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
INDIVIDUATION
Individuation is the process of living into an aspect of the innate potential of one’s personality. If we are true to our individuation, the sense of being related to something greater in the psyche (Self) emerges. While we cannot live all the potentials we are born with, and we must adapt to a demanding world, Jung’s concept of individuation helps us to bear this process of becoming who we are most “meant to be” as consciously as possible. This requires continuous differentiation of the inner and outer influences that want us to simply drift in the direction of the current. Confronting these cultural, collective, and internalized schemas requires bearing guilt and holding the “tension of the opposites”. We will explore the role of the shadow, the animus/anima, the Self, dreams, and active imagination in the process of individuation, and explore some archetypal material that illuminates this process.

Stephen Kenneally, M.A., M.B.A., M.F.T. is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Santa Monica, CA. He is active in the training at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and has taught for over ten years at Antioch University. Stephen has also worked at an experiential retreat center, and prior to that, worked in finance in New York city.

Two Saturday Lectures with Mary-Jayne Rust, B.Sc., M.A.

Saturdays, January 14 & 28, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
JUNG AND OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE
“Without my piece of earth, my life’s work would not have come into being.” (Word and Image, 1979)

Jung is one of the few psychotherapists who has written extensively about our relationship with Nature. He warned of the consequences of our separation from the nonhuman world, of taking from the earth with no reciprocity, and of our consequent loss of soul. He also describes how spending time in the natural world can be deeply healing, opening doors to imagination, synchronicity, and the numinous, inviting us to take our place once again within the sacred matrix of life.

In these two sessions, I will look at our complex and often confusing relationship with the more-than-human world. We often hear people say they love Nature; yet we all take part in a system that is destroying our environment. How did we arrive at such a perilous place? Can a Jungian way of thinking help us face our cultural shadow? This includes exploring the stories we tell ourselves about our place in our ecosystem which have developed over centuries. I will be offering some stories and dreams to help digest these complex issues. I will be suggesting that deepening our relationships with land, place, animals, plants, and the elements, as well as with ourselves as animals, is an essential step towards healing ecocide. Ecological crisis can then become an extraordinary portal of modern times.

Mary-Jayne Rust, B.Sc., M.A. is a Jungian Analyst practicing in London UK; she originally trained in art therapy. Journeys to Ladakh (on the Tibetan plateau) in the early 1990’s alerted her to the seriousness of the ecological crisis and its cultural, economic, and spiritual roots. Alongside her therapy practice, she writes, lectures, and teaches internationally about ecopsychology, a growing field of inquiry into our relationship with Nature. Her publications can be found on www.mjrust.net, including Towards an Ecopsychotherapy, Confer, London 2019. She grew up beside the sea and is wild about swimming. Now she lives and works beside ancient woodland in London, UK.

Two Saturday Lectures with John Beebe, M.D. 

Saturdays, February 4 & 18, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
INDIVIDUAL RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF COLLECTIVE TRAUMA
In both seminars, we will analyze clips from the film considered using a Jungian lens. Students are encouraged to watch the entire film on their own in advance of each session. Individual Resilience in the Face of Collective Trauma.  The films I plan to show and discuss are “The Clock” directed by Vincente Minnelli (1945) and “Roma” directed by Alfonso Cuaron (2018).

Saturday, February 4, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
FORGING A CONIUNCTIO IN WARTIME
MGM’s offbeat “The Clock” (1945) provided Judy Garland a chance to act without singing, and her husband, Vincente Minnelli, to show that he could direct a drama as well as a musical. Robert Walker plays a soldier lost in Manhattan during his last weekend before being sent to the war in Europe. The young woman he bumps into in Grand Central Station is his one piece of good luck, but the connection between them that he insists they recognize is enough to galvanize them both to take setbacks in stride and surf synchronicities to propel their inevitable union.

Saturday, February 18, 2023; 9:00 – 12:00 pm
CONSTELLATING THE PRINCIPLED FEMININE
“Roma” (2018), directed by Alfonso Cuarón, uses the political turmoil of Mexico City at the beginning of the 1970s as the staging ground for more hidden issues of class, gender, and race. These challenge the integrity of an upper middle class doctor’s household in ways that only the family’s indigenous live-in maid Cleo has the common sense and the courage to combat directly. Speaking Mixtec as well as Spanish in her first film role, Yalitza Aparicio (a preschool teacher in real life) is transcendent as Cleo. Her humanity inspires the viewer to wish that she could be the mother of us all.

John Beebe, M.D. is a Jungian analyst and past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco who has spearheaded a Jungian approach to the analysis of film. In teaching and writing, he has often used psychological type and archetype to explore both individual filmmaker creativity and the cultural and political unconscious as revealed by a moving film. Dr. Beebe’s books include Integrity in Depth and Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type. With Virginia Apperson, he has co-authored The Presence of the Feminine in Film.

Two Saturday Lectures with Maggie Gwinn, M.F.T.

Saturdays, March 4 & 18, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
THE NUMINOUS PATH OF THE TWELVE-STEP EXPERIENCE
“You see, ‘alcohol” in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.” -C. G Jung, Letter to Bill W., 1961.

 Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Carl Jung exchanged letters in 1961, and agreed that a religious experience was pivotal to achieving recovery from alcoholism. The first session of this presentation will discuss the importance of developing a relationship to that Higher Power elucidated in Twelve-Step Programs and in Jungian psychology in the form of the God Image or the Self. Discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous and its evolution will be interwoven with, and linked to, Jungian theoretical concepts, and include recordings and film clips of both Bill W. and Carl Jung. The second session will utilize the structure of a Twelve Step meeting to allow participants to experience “How it Works. ” In a stop-start progression through a meeting, attention will be paid to Jungian concepts as a foundational part of the structure of these programs. Again, film clips and recordings will amplify that material. In both sessions, there will be an emphasis on experiential sharing of one’s own encounters with the numinous in one’s Twelve-Step experience as well as one’s encounter with the numinous in other venues, such as Jungian Analysis, dreams, religion, or the arts.

Maggie Gwinn, M.F.T., is a Jungian psychoanalyst in private practice in Santa Monica. She has taught and supervised at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, Antioch University, Phillips Graduate Institute, and Maple Counseling Center. She is an American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Approved Supervisor, and has developed a specialty in working with high-conflict couples. She delights in her work with writers, actors, fine artists, and architects, as well as working with professionals in all fields to integrate creative energies that have not found an outlet.

Two Saturday Lectures with Thomas Singer, M.D. 

Saturdays, April 1 & 15, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
THE PSYCHE IN THE WORLD: HOW CULTURAL COMPLEXES CAN TAKE POSSESSION OF OUR SOULS
Differentiating the personal, group, and archetypal levels of cultural complexes is not easy but can be quite rewarding in terms of helping ourselves and the groups to which we belong see more clearly how our lives are deeply influenced by these complexes which operate at many levels of the psyche. Drawing from his research in Australia, Latin America, Europe, and East Asia, Dr. Singer will examine the basic concept of cultural complexes and ways in which they operate—in individuals and in groups—that can be based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and national identity in the emerging global community. Utilizing case material, we will look at a potent cultural complex manifested in the life of an individual. We will study some of the ways in which cultural complexes can live and function both within a group and between groups. In the second session, we will follow how an archetypal energy takes form through history in personal and cultural complexes, as developed in my essay “A Fool’s Guide to Folly.” Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to identify and share their own experiences of cultural complexes—whether it be in personal experience, clinical examples, or in the emerging national and world upheaval.

Thomas Singer, M.D. is a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco, and current president of ARAS, an archive of symbolic imagery. Author of The Vision Thing:  Myth, Politics, and Psyche in the World, he has also edited a series of books exploring cultural complexes that includes Placing Psyche (Australia), Listening to Latin America, Europe’s Many Souls, and The Cultural Complex.  The most recent books in this series include Cultural Complexes and the Soul of America and Cultural Complexes in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan: Spokes in the Wheel.

Two Saturday Lectures with Jeanne A. Lacourt, M.S., L.P.C., N.C.C., Ph.D.

Saturday, May 6, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
WE THINK WITH OUR HEARTS: READING JUNG THROUGH NATIVE EYES
This presentation will review how some of Jung’s ideas (mis)represented Native cultures. The notion of the “primitive,” participation mystique, dreams, and animals will be explored. Two psychic paradigms, dominion, and reciprocity, will point to important differences between Indigenous and Western cosmologies and may offer a path away from our current trend toward self-destruction.

Saturday, May 20, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
INDIGENOUS IDEAS OF SPIRIT AND TRANSFORMATION
This presentation will introduce participants to the Menominee origin story and the important relationship Native people have with spirit beings. Specifically, we will focus how human-animal transformation in story is integral to establishing a reciprocal relationship with land, animals, and all spirit beings.

Jeanne A. Lacourt, M.S., L.P.C., N.C.C., Ph.D., is a Professor of American Indian Studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, a faculty member of the Minnesota Seminar in Jungian Studies, and a Jungian Analyst in private practice. She has authored a book on traditional Indian Education, edited a book on racial issues in the United States, and her articles in Spring Journal focus on the intersections of Indigenous and Jungian Studies. She is most intrigued with the theme of human-animal transformation in Indigenous origin stories. Her home community is with the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

A Saturday Lecture with J. Gary Sparks, B.Sc., M.Div., M.A.

Saturday, June 3, 2023; 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
JUNG’S FIRST MANDALA: “SYSTEMA MUNDITOTIUS”

The presentation will investigate the unconscious images assaulting Jung in his night-sea journey as they are portrayed in his first painted mandala entitled “Systema Munditotius” (1916). We will appreciate the connection between Jung’s inner experience and everything we have been learning about Jungian psychology throughout the certificate studies. Familiarity with the passionate foundation of Jung’s opus reveals the link between Jung’s emotional ordeal and the creation of his psychology, deepening our understanding of both. We will likewise have a chance to discuss our own “system of the world,” if so desired, as we find possible analogies between our personal growth and our experience in the certificate program. Learning objectives will be enhanced through color slides and discussion.

J. Gary Sparks, B.Sc., M.Div., M.A., is a graduate of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA; the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA; and the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. He is the author of At the Heart of Matter: Synchronicity and Jung’s Spiritual Testament (2007), Valley of Diamonds: Adventures in Number and Time with Marie-Louise von Franz (2009), Carl Jung and Arnold Toynbee: The Social Meaning Work (2017), and also co-editor of Edward F. Edinger’s Science of the Soul (2002) and Ego and Self: The Old Testament Prophets (2000). Based in Indianapolis, he is widely known for his lectures and seminars on the significance and application of Jungian psychology.