A meeting between C. G. Jung and Rabbi Leo Baeck took place in Zurich in October 1946 at the Savoy Hotel Baur en Ville. Very little is actually known about this meeting. There are no extant notes or reports from the principals indicating what was said or discussed. There was no secretary present taking down minutes of the conversation. What is known from the few documents attesting to this meeting is that it took place at Jung’s request and that Baeck did not wish to meet with Jung. The play is an imaginative construction of what might have happened in this historic meeting of two great men.
Murray Stein, Ph.D., studied as an undergraduate at Yale University (B.A. in English) and attended graduate student at Yale Divinity School (M.Div.) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. in Religion and Psychological Studies). He trained as a Jungian psychoanalyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of Zurich. From 1976 to 2003 he was a training analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago, of which he was a founding member and President from 1980 to 1985. In 1989 he joined the Executive Committee of IAAP as Honorary Secretary for Dr. Thomas Kirsch as President (1989-1995) and served as President of the IAAP from 2001 to 2004. He was president of ISAP Zurich 2008-2012 and is presently a training and supervising analyst there. He resides in Goldiwil (Thun), Switzerland.His special interests are psychotherapy and spirituality, methods of Jungian psychoanalytic treatment, and the individuation process. Major publications include In Midlife, Jung’s Map of the Soul, Minding the Self, Soul: Retrieval and Treatment, Transformation: Emergence of the Self, Outside, Inside and All Around, and The Bible as Dream: A Jungian Interpretation.
Henry Abramovitch Ph.D., is training analyst and founding President of Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology. He is Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University Medical School and former President of Israel Anthropology Association.
He is the author of Brothers and Sisters: Myth and Reality, Why Odysseus Came Home as a Stranger and other Puzzling Moments in the Life of Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Abraham, and other Great Individuals, as well as numerous articles and book chapters. He lives and practices in Jerusalem.
Join Dr. Steve Buser, publisher of Chiron Publications, as he shares an overview of von Franz’s life and work; a history and overview of the evolving project of her collected works; a deep dive into her work on fairytales, particularly her early writings; the four primary archetypal figures in fairytales; primary male and female tetralogies; the hero’s journey in fairytales; and the feminine journey in fairytales. This seminar will be based on her newly published collected works, volumes 1, 2 & 3.
At the age of eighteen, while still in high school, Marie-Louise von Franz met Carl Jung at his Bollingen Tower. She later described this as the most decisive encounter of her life. She entered into analysis with him months later, completed her doctorate in classical philology and began seeing her first analysands soon after. She was wholeheartedly dedicated to the unconscious, both in her own life and that of her analysands. She developed a far-reaching expertise in fairytales, alchemy, synchronicity and numbers. She is estimated to have personally analyzed over 65,000 dreams. She was a prolific writer and a highly sought-after teacher.
The Collected works of Marie-Louise von Franz is a 28 volume Magnum Opus from one of the leading minds in Jungian Psychology. The first volume, Archetypal Symbols in Fairytales: The Profane and Magical Worlds, released on her 106th birthday, January 4, 2021 and is to be followed by 27 more volumes over the next 10 years. Volume 2 looks at the hero’s journey and released on June 1, 2021. Volume 3 explores the maiden’s quest and releases in late summer of 2021. Steven Buser is one of two General Editors in The Collected Works of Marie-Louise von Franz. He will take us through a history of the project, an overview of von Franz’s life and work, as well as a deep dive into the first three volumes of this foundational material.
Areas covered in the seminar will include: An overview of von Franz’s life and work; a history and overview of the evolving project of her collected works; a deep dive into her work on fairytales, particularly her early writings; the four primary archetypal figures in fairytales; primary male and female tetralogies; the hero’s journey in fairytales; and the feminine journey in fairytales.
STEVEN BUSER, M.D. trained in medicine at Duke University and served 12 years as a physician in the U.S. Air Force. He is a graduate of the Clinical Training Program at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and is the co-founder of the Asheville Jung Center.
The Best of James Hollis: Wisdom for the Inner Journey is a collection of excerpts from the writings of James Hollis, PhD, Jungian psychotherapist and author. These selections, compiled by editor Logan Jones, span across his body of work from TheMiddle Passage (1993) to Prisms (2021) organized into different topics ranging from the psychological concepts of Carl Jung to the everyday tasks of our living and callings.
Hollis’s wisdom will challenge readers to find their own path, to be who they are called to be, to take the risks to trust their soul, and thus live a life worthy of their unique gifts. Hollis’s writings ask us to live a deeper and more authentic life
“The sense of journey—our life as a journey—
is intricately woven throughout Hollis’s body of work. It is
one of the major themes that I found so engaging and
provocative. The unfolding of our lives is not so much
arriving at a place as it is awakening to the journey we all
are summoned to travel. Our journey is our never-ending
search for meaning. It unfolds as we wrestle with the
questions posed to us by life so we can become our unique
selves. In essence, the journey is found in the courage to
become who we are meant to become. This living the
journey, then, represents the considered life, the examined
life.” ~From the Foreword to Wisdom for the Inner Journey
Announcing the forthcoming Psychreative session on Sunday, September 19th, at 6:00 pm (London time). As usual, the session will start with an opening talk, followed by a series of creative presentations by various poets, writers, and artists.
The opening talk, “Playing in the imaginal realm: collaborative imaginative engagement as a Jungian arts-based research method”, will be given by Louise Austin, who will introduce her method of collaborative imaginative engagement as a contribution to the nascent field of Jungian arts-based research. Louise is a PhD student at the University of Essex and is utilizing this method to investigate the unconscious intersubjective dynamics between educator and learner. The qualitative method of collaborative imaginative engagement revisions Jung’s active imagination and is set within a collaborative inquiry. During this talk Louise will invite you to play in the imaginal realm and experience her approach to working with images.
Following Louise’s talk, there will be a series of creative presentations. If you are interested in sharing your art, music, poetry, or any other forms of writing, please let me know as soon as possible so we can secure a 5-10 minute slot for you.
Aging—what it is and how it happens—is one of today’s most pressing topics. Most people are either curious or concerned about growing older and how to do it successfully. We need to better understand how to navigate the second half of life in ways that are productive and satisfying, and Jungian psychology, with its focus on the discovery of meaning and continuous development of the personality is especially helpful for addressing the concerns of aging.
In March 2012, the Library of Congress and the Jung Society of Washington convened the first Jung and Aging Symposium. Sponsored by the AARP Foundation, the symposium brought together depth psychologists and specialists in gerontology and spirituality to explore the second half of life in light of current best practices in the field of aging. Featuring essays by James Hollis and Lionel Corbett, this volume presents the results of the day’s discussion, with supplementary perspectives from additional experts, and suggests some practical tools for optimizing the second half of life.
James Hollis offers a challenging perspective on self-examination in chapter 12, “For Every Tatter in Our Mortal Dress: Stayin’ Alive at the Front of the Mortal Parade.” Starting with a quote from Yeats, he focuses on five paradoxes about the “problematics of aging”: the fullness of life versus the necessity of loss, our inability to fully imagine the future as an aging person, our desire to retain youth and health, our inability to live in the face of our mortality, and the role of the “fool” in old age. He then offers some ideas about aging: embracing curiosity, asking the right questions, and recovering “personal authority.” He concludes with important questions that, when asked, enlarge our perspective and help redefine meaning.
The Best of James Hollis: Wisdom for the Inner Journey
is a collection of excerpts from the writings of James Hollis, PhD, Jungian psychotherapist and author. These selections, compiled by editor Logan Jones, span across his body of work from The Middle Passage (1993) to Prisms (2021) organized into different topics ranging from the psychological concepts of Carl Jung to the everyday tasks of our living and callings.
Hollis’s wisdom will challenge readers to find their own path, to be who they are called to be, to take the risks to trust their soul, and thus live a life worthy of their unique gifts. Hollis’s writings ask us to live a deeper and more authentic life.
Prisms: Reflections on the Journey We Call Lifesummarizes a lifetime of observing, engaging, and exploring why we are here, in service to what, and what life asks of us. These eleven essays, all written recently, examine how we understand ourselves, and often we have to reframe that understanding, the nature and gift of comedy, the imagination, desire, as well as our encounters with narcissism, and aging.
Hollis, a Jungian Analyst in Washington, D.C., explores the roadblocks we encounter and our on-going challenge to live our brief journey with as much courage, insight, and resolve as we can bring to the table.
In Hauntings, James Hollis considers one’s transformation through the invisible world—how we are all governed by the presence of invisible forms—spirits, ghosts, ancestral and parental influences, inner voices, dreams, impulses, untold stories, complexes, synchronicities, and mysteries—which move through us, and through history. He offers a way to understand them psychologically, examining the persistence of the past in influencing our present, conscious lives and noting that engagement with mystery is what life asks of each of us. From such engagements, a deeper, more thoughtful, more considered life may come.
James Hollis, Ph.D. is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Washington, DC. Originally a Professor of Humanities, he is the former Director of the Houston Jung Center and the Washington, D.C. Jung Society.
He is Vice-President emeritus of the Philemon Foundation, author of seventeen books, and a frequent public speaker. He lives with his wife Jill, a retired therapist and painter, and together they have three living children.
enry Abramovitch Ph.D., is training analyst and founding President of Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology. He is Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University Medical School and former President of Israel Anthropology Association. 
investigate the unconscious intersubjective dynamics between educator and learner. The qualitative method of collaborative imaginative engagement revisions Jung’s active imagination and is set within a collaborative inquiry. During this talk Louise will invite you to play in the imaginal realm and experience her approach to working with images.
essays, all written recently, examine how we understand ourselves, and often we have to reframe that understanding, the nature and gift of comedy, the imagination, desire, as well as our encounters with narcissism, and aging. 
influences, inner voices, dreams, impulses, untold stories, complexes, synchronicities, and mysteries—which move through us, and through history. He offers a way to understand them psychologically, examining the persistence of the past in influencing our present, conscious lives and noting that engagement with mystery is what life asks of each of us. From such engagements, a deeper, more thoughtful, more considered life may come.
