This program will not be recorded due to inclusion of clinical material.
Individuation means detaching from the things you were before, from the culture and history around you, and becoming who you really are.
— C. G. Jung
This talk explores images of androgyny in the dreams of various male analysands who wrestle with their sexual orientation and find meaning in grief and depression through a relationship with the collective unconscious. The dream images suggest that while outer life is concerned with the binaries of male/female and gay/straight, the unconscious, where opposites potentially exist as a totality, seems to have little vested interest in such binary differentiations.
The mysteries of the masculine and feminine principles require an intimacy with both sides. As in alchemy, this could lead to an emergence of a psychological androgyny or to the seeking of wholeness.
Lynne Radomsky, PhD, Diplomate Jungian Analyst, is a clinical psychologist, author and international lecturer in Cape Town, South Africa. For over thirty years her professional focus has included private practice, post-graduate clinical training and professional supervision. She has a life-long interest in the aspects of the objective psyche according to C. G. Jung, alchemy, Kabbalah and indigenous cultures. She has published widely on these topics, including her book Where Dreams Come Alive: The Alchemy of the African Healer.
email: [email protected]
Learning objectives:
- Compare and contrast the outer life’s concern with binary gender and sexual orientation distinctions to the focus on totalities in the unconscious.
- Apply the Jungian concept of the “tension of the opposites” to images of androgyny that appear in dreams.
