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30th Anniversary Summer Seminar Series JUNG on the HUDSON Live Online Programs Weeklong Seminar: July 16-20 Weekend Workshop: July 21-22

July 16 - July 20

Jung on Hudson online July 2023

 

Weeklong Online Seminar | July 16-20, 2023

The Pursuit of Happiness: Myth or Meaning?

Happiness…is such a remarkable reality that there is nobody who does not long for it, and yet there is not a single objective criterion which would prove beyond all doubt that this condition necessarily exists.

— C.G. Jung

Seminar Overview

And they lived happily ever after…

Without giving much thought to it, we go through life searching for this elusive happiness in our relationships, our work, and in the things we acquire. Even the Declaration of Independence guarantees the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Living in a culture that puts so much emphasis on happiness, we must ask, just what is happiness and is it even attainable?

Joseph Campbell is known for saying follow your bliss. To put Campbell’s by now famous phrase in a Jungian perspective, James Hollis says happiness is not a steady state, not a permanent condition — it is a byproduct of being in right relationship to our souls. In this context, a principal goal in Jungian analysis is to know ourselves better, to find meaning in our lives, and to help us deal with the vicissitudes of life. However, there is no assurance of happiness. For example, even after one is wed or committed to a loving relationship, there is no guarantee of living happily ever after.

For those of us who honor our inner work alongside the daily demand of life, work, and family, we know that the pursuit of happiness is a deceptive path — an external construct that more often ends in disappointment. In this regard, Jung understood that rather than the external, the truly important things are within. Jung points us to the process of individuation as the most important goal in life and believes that ultimately this process is what will bring lasting satisfaction to a person. The goal of the Individuation process is not to transport us to what is an impossible state of perpetual happiness, but to help us acquire steadfastness and meaning in our outer and inner lives.In this regard, from a Jungian viewpoint, the goal of life is not happiness but meaning which abides as a drive within us all. It is this quest to understand ourselves, discover our soul’s purpose, and find our place in the world where we can perhaps find deep meaning and a sense of fulfillment and contentment. Through presentations by Jungian analysts and authors, we will explore this complex theme together during the course of our program.

Program Details

July 16-20, 2023

The Pursuit of Happiness: Myth or Meaning?

A weeklong seminar with keynote speaker Jim Hollis, and Ashok Bedi, Safron Rossi, Dennis Patrick Slattery, and Ann Belford Ulanov

Tuition: $395

July 21-22, 2023

A New Myth of God: Jung’s Approach to Spirituality and Religion 

A weekend workshop with Lionel Corbett
Tuition: $150

Register for both programs and save $50.

All seminar sessions will be recorded. In addition to making each session’s replay video available at the end of each day, all replays will be accessible through Sunday, August 6.

Continuing Education Credits available
CE credits are available for Psychologists, Social Workers, Licensed Psychoanalysts, LCSW, LPCC, LEP, LMFT, and Nurses for both programs. Find details here.

If you have questions feel free to email us anytime or call the office between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday: 845-256-0191.

Presentations

Those who have attended our programs know how carefully we prepare the daily schedules and itineraries to provide a valuable and enriching experience. This summer, our live online format, via Zoom, will provide the opportunity to hear from a notable and outstanding faculty. We are confident that participants will find the material meaningful and personally enriching.

Sunday Evening, July 16 | 6:00–8:00 p.m. ET
JIM HOLLIS
Keynote Presentation: Happiness: Find What You Love and Let It Kill You

We are, the wise tell us, but dust, albeit animated dust — that is to say, ensouled matter. One of the ideas that haunts contemporary individuals and groups is the phantasy of “happiness.” So, what is “happiness”? Can we find it? Is it really the purpose of life? How does happiness measure up to the other claims life makes upon us? If the purpose of life is not happiness, what is?

James Hollis, PhD, is a Zurich-trained Jungian analyst with a practice in Washington DC. He is the author of 16 books that have been translated into 18 languages. An internationally acclaimed analyst, he is former executive director of the Jung Educational Center of Houston, professor of Jungian Studies at Saybrook University, and vice president emeritus of the Philemon Foundation. His books include The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other; Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life; What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life; The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Mid-Life; Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives; Mythologems: Incarnations of the Invisible World; Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey; and his most recent books: Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times and Prisms: Reflections on this Journey We Call Life.

Monday, July 17 | 12:00–1:30 & 2:00–3:30 p.m. ET
SAFRON ROSSI
In Ananke’s Lap: Necessity and Grace

The root of happiness, “to happen,” implies happiness concerns contentment with what happens. This opens the door to amor fati, the love of fate. This deeper idea of happiness, the capacity to be with what happens and embrace one’s fate is also closely related to how we find meaning. This constellation of ideas is personified by the goddess Ananke, her daughters the Fates, and the three Graces. Together they invite us into considering how being graceful, supple, agile and receptive to the archetypal necessity at work in the deep patterns of the psyche contributes to the discovery of meaning, which ultimately reveals the way our lives are lived in the lap of the gods.

Safron Rossi, PhD, is Core Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies Program. Formerly she was Curator of the Joseph Campbell and James Hillman archives. Safron is the author of The Kore Goddess: A Mythology & Psychology, editor of Joseph Campbell’s Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, and co-editor of Jung on Astrology. Safron is also a consulting archetypal psychological astrologer.

Tuesday, July 18 | 12:00–1:30 & 2:00–3:30 p.m. ET
DENNIS PATRICK SLATTERY
Follow Your Bliss; Tend to Your Blisters

If we juxtapose the phrase “pursuit of happiness” to Joseph Campbell’s “follow your bliss,” we can discern in them a common quest, even an essential life goal. Whether we “pursue” or “follow” the inner voice seeking coherence, confluence and a trusted center to our pilgrimage in life, mythically, such an effort and attitude focuses on awakening the call of the heart to our own inherent wisdom. Happiness can be a central pathway to a fulfilled life even as it recognizes that suffering the obstacles, defeats and limitations in their many forms will companion and shape such a path to wholeness. Forms of happiness explored in this talk acknowledge that our human failings are always an option.

Dennis Patrick Slattery, PhD, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He had been teaching there for 27 of his 55 years in the classroom. He is author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 33 volumes, including 7 volumes of poetry as well as a co-authored novel. Dr. Slattery has also authored over 200 articles, book reviews and blogs on cultural topics. His most recent book is The Fictions in Our Convictions: Essays on the Cultural Imagination. He has also taught student inmates in a California prison for over two years using Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Wednesday, July 19 | 12:00–1:30 & 2:00–3:30 p.m. ET
ANN BELFORD ULANOV
You Cannot Keep Happiness Out Forever

Jung’s theory of individuation and the psyche’s aim to completeness show two processes going on in us simultaneously. When they meet, the flash of happiness happens. We are not in charge of those nexus points, yet we need devoted attention to their happening. This presentation will explore such meetings of finite and infinite, individual and collective, suffering and illusion and the real aliveness of joy.

Ann Belford Ulanov, MDiv, PhD, is an internationally known and practicing Jungian analyst in New York City; Professor Emerita of Psychology and Religion at Union Theological Seminary; and lecturer in the U.S. and abroad. She is the author of many books including Spiritual Aspects of Clinical Work; The Female Ancestors of Christ; Madness & Creativity; The Psychoid, Soul and Psyche: Piercing Space/Time Barrier; and Back to Basics; as well as with her late husband, Barry Ulanov, Cinderellla and Her Sisters: The Envied and the Envying; The Healing Imagination; and Transforming Sexuality: The Archetypal World of Anima and Animus. 

Thursday, July 20 | 12:00–1:30 & 2:00–3:30 p.m. ET
ASHOK BEDI
Ananda (Bliss in Sanskrit): An Analytical, Eastern and a Neuroscience Perspective

Is Happiness a real feeling or an illusion? Eastern spiritual traditions have explored this dilemma in detail. Buddhism asserts that Suffering is the destiny of the human condition, albeit it proposes a Noble Eightfold path of freedom from suffering. Hindus consider happiness as the pursuit of May or craving for Artha (wealth and power) and Kama (eros). It also proposes a path out of the trappings of Maya and its Karmic consequences via Dharma. Jung proposes that happiness is the craving of the Ego while Soul searches for meaning and teleological purposefulness as the goal of a lived life (Individuation). This presentation will explore these facets of the spectrum of Ananda from Jungian, Hindu, Buddhist and Neuroscience perspectives.

Ashok Bedi, MD, Jungian psychoanalyst, and board-certified psychiatrist is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and Clinical Professor in psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. A training analyst at, and former President of, the Jung Institute of Chicago, Dr. Bedi is also in private practice in Milwaukee. The author of many books and articles, he and his wife Usha lead annual study groups to India. His publications include Awaken the Slumbering Goddess; Retire Your Family Karma; Path to the Soul; The Spiritual Paradox of Addiction; Crossing the Healing Zone and In the Eye of the Storm: Staying Centered in Personal and Collective Crisis.

Details

Start:
July 16
End:
July 20
Website:
https://nyjungcenter.org/trip/joh23/#