A Jungian Guide to Discovering the Transformative Power in Complexes

Checkout — Item successfully added to your cart.

Lecture

The continuing attraction to Jungian psychology rests on Jung’s focus on the healthy personality… suffering and struggle are not pathological.  They are meaningful parts of life that when understood initiate us into a more profound sense of being and satisfaction.  Complexes, the centerpiece of Jung’s work, are not signs of pathology unless we insist on repressing them and turning them into enemies.

Complexes are both energy fields and the building blocks of our psychic structure.  When they are realized and integrated they become the architecture of a fulfilled life.  Like the stone the builder rejected, our most devilish and frustrating complexes hold the greatest promise for expanding our personalities and our lives.  When repressed and battled they drain our energy like a chronic disease, souring our relationship with ourselves and everyone around us.  But, every complex holds an inspiring challenge and the promise of transformation.

Learning how to face these challenges and unleash their transformative powers renews our energy, reconnects us to its source and enables this transformed complex to become the cornerstone in a more creative life.

In this lecture we will focus on the spirit of individuation which teaches us how to see some of our most frustrating characteristics as a source of new life.  We will look at how we can strengthen our personality for this work and explore the seven steps in transforming a complex from life-draining to life-empowering.  And, we will look into how this process frees us from our history, inner conflicts and helps us live in partnership with out Self and the Divine within us.

In this workshop, Dr. Harris will describe some of the major complexes that influence our lives personally and culturally.  We will explore together how the Self and individuation are trying to work through these complexes.  Stories, dreams and fairytales will be used to help us understand the options of growth or regression, of transformation or destruction that complexes present to us.  In addition, we will carefully examine how we can become aware of our central complexes.  The workshop will combine a lecture, seminar and small group approach to developing and understanding the material. Dr. Jung thought that complexes are so important that he almost named his work “Complex Psychology.”  We will leave this lecture and workshop with a new understanding of the importance of facing and growing through and beyond whatever struggles we have instead of pathologizing them.