M.A./Ph.D. in Mythological Studies
Depth Psychology and Culture
Depth psychology is an important resource for the study of myth, literature, religious traditions, and culture. These courses draw substantially on the work of Freud, Jung, and Hillman and provide hermeneutical approaches that complement methods used in other disciplines such as religious studies and literature.
Jungian Depth Psychology
MS 511........ 2 Units
Key Jungian concepts such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, and the individuation process are surveyed with attention to the evolution of these theoretical constructs. The influence of Jung’s ideas on the arts, literature, and religious thought is explored.
Dreams, Visions, Myths
MS 521........ 2 Units
Examination of dreams arises out of certain assumptions: that psyche is nature revealing herself in images, that psyche is multidimensional, and that the images of dreams give form to the various expressions of psychological life. The focus is on dream theory and amplification methods. Pass/No Pass
Archetypal Psychology
MS 611........ 3 Units
The depth psychology of C.G. Jung and his successors enables us to see how mythology expresses psychology and how psychology may be understood as mythology. Special attention is given to insights from James Hillman's archetypal psychology, including the notions of personifying, pathologizing, psychologizing, and de-humanizing. The works of other post-Jungian writers are also examined to exemplify selected aspects of the archetypal approach.
Psyche and Nature
MS 615........ 2 Units each
Geographies of paradise, wilderness, frontier, desert, and ocean are mythic interior landscapes as well as external habitations of divinities and demons, where the individual experiences tests, revelations, and illuminations. This course explores external landscapes and their (archetypal) analogues as mythopoetic spaces to discern how mythic consciousness is rooted in the poetry of landscapes.
Mythic Motifs in Cinema
MS 626........ 2 Units
An application of the concepts of depth psychology to the analysis of film. Using the archetypal method, the instructor presents selected portions of films to disclose underlying themes and archetypal patterns, in an effort to illustrate as wide a range of archetypal characters as possible. Television fiction series may occasionally be included.
The God Complex
MS 711........ 2 Units
Nietzsche's announcement of the "death of God" still ripples though the Western psyche. In its wake lies both a decline of religiosity and the emergence of new God images. Alongside these trends we may place Jung's notion that lost divinities return as symptom. Against the backdrop of individual and culture dependence on a fundamental mythos, this course examines our "God-complex" from a depth psychological and mythological perspective.
