Pacifica Graduate Institute and
The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture
present

The Myth in Politics
The Politics in Myth

a three-day conference with
Larry Allums, Tess Castleman,
Ginette Paris, Glen Slater,
Dennis Patrick Slattery,
and Frederick Turner

at Hotel Mar Monte
Santa Barbara, California

Friday, May 2, 7:00–9:00pm
Saturday, May 3, 9:00am–5:30pm
Sunday, May 4, 9:00am–12:30pm

$375 General Admission
$325 Special Admission
(Full-Time Students, Pacifica Alumni, Seniors, and Active Dallas Institute Members)
$300 Active Pacifica Students
(Fees include Saturday Continental Breakfast, &
Lunch, and dinner; Sunday Continental Breakfast)

Registration Form

A national election year opens up a wide range of mythic possibilities as the nation undergoes a transformation from one reign of leadership to another that will shift the values for the next four and perhaps eight years. This conference, cosponsored by Pacifica Graduate Institute and The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, will engage in part an historical perspective to recalibrate our own movement as a nation as well as envision our political future in the spirit of hope. An election year makes possible the arousal of hope, of promise, of possibility, a new fertile ground for renewing the images of justice, freedom, and citizenship through a series of core concerns that define us in our ideal form, as a nation. As the national election approaches, large shards of the myth of America are forced to the surface. It is a rich opportunity to revision the myth as well as the imagination that guides this nation and that gives coherent form to these values and beliefs.

The conference will ask some fundamental questions imbedded in the process of electing new leadership:

• What does a national election mask, hide, or insist stays below the surface of awareness?
  
• What wishes to be born through this same event?
  
• What lies beneath the surface language of campaigns?
  
• What myth rather than what person seeks election?
  
• More broadly, what is to be preserved, what is to be discarded at such a threshold crossing?
  
• What values rise to the surface in times of change?
  
• What is the nature of leadership itself?
  
• What gods and goddesses are active in the polis, the state, and the nation in times of national transition?
  
• What wounds must be healed in times of national transition?

We have gathered a series of presenters from a range of disciplines to address some of the above topics as well as others. The speakers will explore the more profound presences that myths engender in the collective psyche. They will imagine in fresh ways, with audience participation, the politics of myth as well as the myths of the polis in order to discern the essential need to understand the mythologies that govern our lives daily in the form of public policy.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

We, the People
Memory, Myth, and the Ideals of American Politics
Larry Allums
The arena of American politics seems at first glance to be shaped by the hard realities of the moment—what issues are most pressing, what angles will attract voters’ interests, what images will capture the public imagination. “Spin” is the name of the political game. Yet underneath the rough-and-tumble, too often unsavory surface of American politics reside ideals grounded in memory and myth—the twin sources of any culture’s sense of itself. The stories and texts we rarely study and scarcely know anymore—such as Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the Old Testament, Virgil’s Aeneid, our Founding Documents, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches, and many others—are still vital within our collective psyche and continue to guide us toward our destiny in largely unconscious ways.

DR. LARRY ALLUMS, PH.D., is Executive Director of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He earned his M.A. in Literature and his Ph.D. in Literature and Political Philosophy from the University of Dallas’ Institute of Philosophic Studies. He came to the Dallas Institute in 1997 from the University of Mobile, where he was Professor of English and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He has edited a volume of essays on epic poetry, The Epic Cosmos, and published articles on myth, epic poetry and tragedy, ancient Greek and Roman literature, Dante, and writers of the American Southern renascence, including William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Caroline Gordon.

Post-Modern World in Search of a Soul
Tess Castleman
In a post modern world where soul is searched for but not often discovered, politics, especially in a passionate election year, offers a curious way to re-imagine our life giving connection to one another. It is through community, synchronicity and the tribal dream that post-modern men and women can discern a way to engage in magic, mystery and the numinous, holy archetype: Eros. The body politic emerges as the warp and weave of society, human relationship and a hope for the lost and lonely current era.

Tess Castleman, M.A., L.P.C., is a former Assistant Professor of Psychology, a Diplomate Jungian Analyst, author and lecturer. Her book, Threads, Knots, Tapestries: How a Tribal Connection is Revealed through Dreams and Synchronicities is the story of her 20-year dream group experiment. From this work she has developed Dream Circle Retreats held internationally. Currently she serves on the Curatorium of the C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich, her alma mater, where she is a training analyst, faculty member and the point person stateside for the innovative English Language Block Training Program. Ms. Castleman has an analytic practice in Dallas, Texas and works in Zurich, Switzerland about 25% of the year.

Who Writes That Crap?
Politics and the Inferiority Complex of the Humanities
Ginette Paris
Cognitive approaches and neurosciences are inventing a new language to speak of values, of relationships, and of politics. While doing excellent science, they are also claiming as theirs a territory that used to belong to the humanities. What is the political impact of that ideological war between cognitive sciences and the humanities?

Ginette Paris Ph.D., is a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her books include: Pagan Grace, Pagan Meditations, and Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience.

Fundamentalism and the Political Psyche
Glen Slater
The American political psyche lives in the grip of a largely unconscious fundamentalist complex. Although most apparent in the influence of the Christian Right and in the battle with Islamic fanaticism, its deeper dynamics remain hidden—cloaked in rhetoric that sounds patriotic and principled to the attuned ear of the nation. These dynamics are characterized by idealization, rationalization, dogmatism, paranoia, and scapegoating. Whereas the political power of the Evangelical movement and the instability of the Middle East are real world phenomena, their grip on the national psyche is a deeper story. We will trace the cultural and historical roots of this fundamentalist complex, down through layers of American mythos. Along the way we will connect recent political history and the contemporary political scene to mythological patterns at work in the national psyche. We will come to see that the political power of extremism at home and the targeting of extremism abroad reflect a fundamentalist mindset that is hard to separate from normative social discourse.

Glen Slater, Ph.D., is a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute where he teaches in the Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology programs. He has a long-standing interest in the psychological and mythological background of cultural issues and has published articles on topics ranging from Titanism to gun violence. He is educated in the fields of Religious Studies and Clinical Psychology, is the editor of the third volume of James Hillman’s Uniform Edition of writings and the co-editor (with Dennis Patrick Slattery) of the forthcoming Mythological Perspectives: Essays on Religion, Psyche and Culture.

Mythos, Logos, and the Politics of Social Justice
Dennis Patrick Slattery
United States Politics and Social Justice are forms that a mythology assumes in our culture. The former has lost sight of its earlier sustaining mythos: an image of Paradise. It has also become unconscious of the earlier writings of Plato and Aristotle on the nature and structure of a virtuous society ruled by leaders of wisdom. By revisioning earlier epistemologies outlined by the ancient Greek philosophers, politics and social justice can reclaim their common origins. The conclusion outlines a series of 13 differentiations between US Politics and the currents of Social Justice.

Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., is Core Faculty, Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Author or editor of 12 books, including three volumes of poetry, he works along the grooves of the poetic psyche.

Epic Foundings
Frederick Turner
The epic is the way in which a civilization tells its most foundational stories, which encode its central moral values, political principles, and religious ideas. Epics appear all over the world and are represented in several major periods of Western history, often with strong references back to
earlier epics. Over centuries epic has evolved, revealing layers of introspection and self-reference that are at first only implicit. Plato was not the only political philosopher to use the epic narratives as a mine of examples and a source of authority. A frequent theme of epic is the founding of a nation or other human grouping, and the struggles that result, between authority and insurgency, lawful community and lawless nature, internal and external threats to autonomy, and secular and spiritual claims. How can a human being liberate himself from his own inner limitations, his fate, his enemies, even his friends? And what burdens, responsibilities, and necessary constraints come along with each new access of freedom?

Frederick Turner, Ph.D., was born in Northamptonshire, England, and spent several years in central Africa with his parents, the famed anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner. He was educated at the University of Oxford, served as editor of the Kenyon Review, and taught in California and the Midwest before settling in Dallas. He is presently Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas and a Fellow of the Dallas Institute. A prolific writer and widely known speaker, he has authored 27 books, including The Culture of Hope, Genesis, Hadean Eclogues, Shakespeare's Twenty-First Century Economics, Paradise, and Natural Religion.

This conference is co-sponsored by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture

The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture is a center of creative thought dedicated to the exploration of culture through the wisdom and imagination of the humanities. Located near downtown Dallas, the Dallas Institute accomplishes its purpose through programs for school teachers and principals, general courses of study, public and professional seminars, publications, conferences, and civic involvement.

The Dallas Institute of Humanities & Culture
2719 Routh Street, Dallas, TX 75201 tel: 214.981.8814 www.dallasinstitute.org

Conference Location and Accommodations
The conference will be held at the historic Hotel Mar Monte (formerly the Radisson Hotel), overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Just steps away from Santa Barbara’s famous East Beach, the extensive beachway allows for walking, jogging, and cycling. The hotel houses an outdoor heated pool, a spa, and a fitness center. The main hotel is at the ocean on Cabrillo Boulevard. The Parkside Inn is one block from the ocean.

A limited number of rooms have been reserved for participants at special rates.

Rates for Sunday through Thursday evenings are:
Main Hotel $139 (one bed)/$149 (two beds) per night (Oceanview surcharge $50)
Parkside Inn $99 (one bed)/$99 (two beds) per night

Rates for Friday and Saturday evenings are:
Main Hotel $189 (one bed)/$209 (two beds) per night (Oceanview surcharge $50)
Parkside Inn $139 (one bed)/$139 (two beds) per night

Registration and Cancellation
Space is limited, register early!
To register, please complete the form and return it to Pacifica Graduate Institute, Public Programs, 249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria, CA 93013; fax to 805.565.5796; publicprograms@pacifica.edu; call 805.969.3626, ext. 103, or click here to register online.

A limited number of partial scholarships are available to those who find it prohibitive to pay the full cost of the workshop. To apply, send a letter of request with your registration and payment. Please be specific regarding your financial circumstances. If accepted, you will be contacted to approve processing payment.

To obtain a refund on your registration fee, send a written cancellation request postmarked no later than April 2, 2008. Tuition less a $50 processing fee will be refunded. No exceptions will be made.

Travel
Major airlines provide service into the Los Angeles International Airport located 90 miles south of Santa Barbara and into the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport, approximately 18 miles from the Campus. Both airports have shuttle service and/or taxi service between the airport and Santa Barbara. Information on ground transportation will be included with your confirmation letter.    

Continuing Education Credit
10 hours of continuing education credit are available for RNs through the California Board of Registered Nurses (provider #CEP 7177), for MFTs and LCSWs (provider #PCE 2278) through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, and for National Certified Counselors (provider #5436), through the National Board of Certified Counselors. Pacifica adheres to NBCC continuing education guidelines. A $15 processing fee will be charged for each certificate requested.