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Depth psychologists are interdisciplinary scholars, turning to literature, myth, art, spirituality, and cultural studies to understand psychological experience.
Introduction
to Depth Psychology
DP
730........
2 Units
The term "depth psychology" evokes many associations and images yet is often difficult to define. In this course
we formulate a definition of our field by investigating
historical, cultural, and conceptual traditions that shape its identity. Topics include ancient approaches to healing, encounters with the unconscious, and soul-making through literature and mythology.
Depth
Psychology and Cultural Issues I
DP
731........
2 Units
The goal of this course is to initiate the student into the practice of seeing culture and cultural variation through a depth psychological lens, and into the practice of seeing depth psychology as a cultural phenomenon in itself. Various cultural phenomena are examined and critiqued.
Depth Psychology and Cultural Issues II
DP 830........ 2 Units
Although depth psychology began in the therapy room as a method of treatment, its telos has always been a therapy of culture. In this course, attention is focused on the social, political, and economic contexts of psychological life and work. The body-politic in its social and economic arrangements is a place where soul reveals and conceals itself.
Depth Psychology and the Mythic Tradition
DP 921........ 2 Units
In this course we learn how mythic images may be used to explore psychic process, see more deeply into contemporary issues, and apprehend archetypal realities. These skills are central to the depth psychologist’s work. Through reading, research, discussion, and enactment, students work with sacred tales from various cultures which open portals into mythic ways of seeing.
Depth Psychology and the Sacred
DP 920........ 2 Units
When Jung said that all psychological problems essentially are religious problems, he was calling attention to the spiritual function of the psyche. In this course we examine the psyche’s capacity for sacred experience as it finds expression in religion, ritual, encounters with the numinosum.
Alchemy and the Mystery Traditions
DP 833........ 2 Units
Jungian and archetypal psychologists have turned to alchemy and mystery traditions from many cultures to explore movements that ushered consciousness into hidden realms beyond the ego. Individuation, a Jungian concept, allows us to learn about analogous rituals and process from past and contemporary cultures. As students of psyche, we will explore how a comparative study of ritual, alchemy and the mystery traditions enrich our understanding and imagination of transformation in psychological work.
Collective Trauma
DP 923........ 2 Units
The ever-enlarging literature on personal and community trauma will be reviewed. The trauma literature will be linked to the social and cultural environments that historically produced depth psychologies as well as our own contemporary perspectives. We will explore the roles of victim, oppressor, collaborator, bystander, witness, and ally in relations to traumatic events. Approaches to the healing of collective trauma will be discussed.
Literary Genres and the Landscape of Culture
DP 831........ 2 Units
Literature opens up landscapes that expand our relationship with personal and collective realities. Through selected reading in lyric, epic, comic, and tragic genres of literature, we further cultivate the imaginal domains of psychic life. This course brings special emphasis to the shaping influence of culture and society on the self.
Ecopsychology
DP
732........
2 Units
The manner in which we experience our relationship with Nature deeply shapes our human identity. Similarly, conceptions of selfhood and otherness powerfully influence our treatment of Nature. The complexity, mystery, and diversity of systems described by natural science and the dynamics of Psyche described by depth psychology often mirror one another. As distinct from 20th century psychologies that pause at a separate self, ecopsychology imagines the self as in-relation to an interconnected and interdependent world. Ecopsychology considers individuation as rooted in a process of symbiotic connection to Nature and the human community. Depth perspectives on the ecology of soul are informed by new science, deep ecology, shamanism, wildness, indigenous cultures, animism, evolutionary psychiatry, somatic psychology, and various creative arts. However, the primary guides and texts for this course are the transformative voices, images, and powers of Nature itself.
Ecopsychology II
DP 847........ 2 units
Psyche, culture and nature places human being within the larger context of the natural world. How does the natural world, its places and creatures, affect our images, metaphors, myths, understandings of ourselves, and our well-being? How have evolving cultural constructions of nature and of "the self" affected how we experience the natural world and how we have treated it? Turning to ecopsychologists from various cultures, this course will work at the interface between nature, culture, and psyche, seeking to address critical environmental issues, as well as archetypal, mythical and spiritual dimensions of human-nature relationships.
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