This online course is presented through Pacifica Graduate Institute. Four one-hour classes will be offered from Noon to 1:00 PM PDT on February 7, 14, 21, 28.  Continuing education credits for licensure are available.

 

            Throughout his long life, Carl Jung wrote extensively on the Christian tradition and the Christ-image, which he saw as the primary symbol of the Self in Western culture.  However, this crucial dimension of his work is largely absent from contemporary Jungian discourse.  At the same time, there is much interest in Jung in progressive Christian circles and the Christian spiritual direction literature, with limited understanding of his work and ways it stands in tension with traditional Christian belief.  This course will bring those two perspectives into dialogue while exploring Jung complicated relationship with the Christian tradition.  We will examine alignment and divergence between these two visions of the spiritual path in the context of major Jungian concepts like the shadow, the inner other or anima/animus, and the Self.  The discussion will be informed by the Christian mystical tradition and Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which can be viewed as a Christian active imagination.