Eros and the Value of Relatedness:
Jung and Ochwiay Biano
and the Lineage of an Enduring Friendship
Presented by
Willow Young, LMFT
Sunday, December 13, 2020, 4:00 – 6:00 pm PT
Jung’s journey in December 1925 to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico and his meeting of Ochwiay Biano, member of the Taos Pueblo Tribal Council, demonstrated a characteristic relational capacity for which Jung and analytical psychology is noted. This initial encounter began a lineage of engagement, an ethical thread of authentic friendship, which has endured beyond Jung’s death, carried by Jungian analysts James Kirsch of Los Angeles, and William and Katie Sanford of Del Mar. Jung’s grandson, analyst Dieter Baumann, who visited Taos Pueblo in 1963, meeting with Biano’s granddaughter, carried on the lineage as well.
This presentation explores the experience of encounter and the necessary fundamental respect for and interest in an “Other,” in this case a person whose being and culture differ greatly from one’s own. Through the lens of the Jung/Ochwiay encounter and ensuing friendship, which greatly impacted Jung’s consideration of the psyche and the archetypes of the collective unconscious, we will expand upon the ethical response demonstrated by Jung to the reality of cultural and philosophical difference. In contemporary experience, we are engaged in encounters with the Other on a global scale and are asked to become conscious of the lived experience of others who are personally very different from ourselves and from each other. The tension of the opposites is pulled tight and the center point, at times, seems unable to endure the tension.
The tradition and practice of analytical psychology may offer a way to host an experience and encounter with the Other. The foundational practice of dream work and active imagination (with engaged attention to and relationship with dream figures, themselves often quite different from our outer world lived reality) may serve to support encounters of difference experienced in the outer world and make possible ensuing dialog, deep understanding, and reparation, holding as they do the seeds of potential mutual transformation and deep relatedness.
Learning objectives:
Explain what Jung meant by the “Golden Thread of Relationship” and the importance of a relational capacity in the practice of analytical psychology.
Give clinical examples of how encounters with the “Other” can bring value and foster transformation of our individual and community relationships.
Describe Jung’s concept of the archetypes of the collective unconscious and identify the archetypal motif discussed by Jung and Biano.
Willow Young, LMFT, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Santa Barbara, and Ventura, CA. She is a training analyst at the C.G. Jung Study Center of Southern California and serves as an analytic supervisor. Retired from service as Distinguished Core Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Willow continues to teach as Adjunct Faculty. Additionally, she pursues her analytic studies at the Research and Training Centre for Depth Psychology According to C.G. Jung and Marie Louise von Franz in Switzerland.