A guest post by Jody Gentian Bower, Ph.D. The initial quote is from her book Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine Story.

"The Aletis represents a feminine archetype every bit as important as the masculine archetype of the hero. This is why people keep writing her story, trying to put down in words something felt and understood unconsciously, something important about women."

Ever since Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949, the story of the Hero’s Quest has informed the thinking and writing of countless authors, scriptwriters, folklorists, mythologists, and depth psychologists. Campbell’s work forms one of the pillars of education at Pacifica Graduate Institute and continues to be amplified by and inspire the work of many Pacifica students and faculty.

The Hero is almost always male, however, and so there has been a concurrent effort to either re-vision the Quest story from a female perspective, or to find another story that fits a woman’s journey to individuation better. Works such as The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock and The Bridge to Wholeness by Jean Benedict Raffa fall into the former category, while Christine Downing, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and Clarissa Pinkola Estés are examples of authors who have sought wisdom in myths and folktales featuring goddesses, princesses, and witches.

A guest post by Elizabeth Éowyn Nelson. The following is excerpted from her book Psyche's Knife: Archetypal Explorations of Love and Power.

1

LOST KNIFE

Simple things are always the most difficult.

—C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies

At dusk, the silence of the lonely rooms grows thick. A young woman walks down the broad stone corridor, caressing the smooth glass of the oil lamp in her hands. The viscous liquid sloshes lazily from side to side as she enters their room. She knows he won’t arrive for many hours yet, not until it is dark. It has always been this way. With trembling hands, she sets the lamp behind the luxurious bed and gently touches the cold black wick. Then she turns her attention to the knife.

We asked our Pacifica faculty for a list of films that have a Jungian theme in them and here are the top 10 movies that they came up with. I have to add that Lionel Corbett said "all movies have a Jungian theme." Tou·ché Dr. Corbett, tou·ché. 

A guest post by Dr. Aaron Kipnis, Ph.D.

For many people, a graduate degree marks one of their greatest achievements. As the first in my family to gain one, some described my journey from high school dropout to PhD as, “going for the gold.” How did high attainment come to be associated with gold? Why don’t we tell Olympic athletes to: “go for the stainless steel?” It’s shiny too—but gold prevails.

A guest post by Dr. Keiron Le Grice

Modern-day cinematic portrayals of myths old and new are etched in our collective imagination. Who can forget the 1960s film depiction of the Greek hero Jason and the crew of the Argo boldly sailing their ship between the Clashing Rocks or Luke Skywalker unmasking his father, Darth Vader, in Star Wars? And how many of us were enthralled watching Frodo Baggins accepting his fateful mission to carry the Ring of Power away from the Shire or were enchanted by the other-worldly experiences of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz? Such films comprise a set of shared cultural reference points and have inspired audiences the world over. Yet beyond their capacity to entertain and stir the imagination, mythic films also possess an instructive metaphorical significance. Skilfully interpreted, they can provide invaluable guidance for the process of deep psychospiritual transformation that Carl Jung called individuation. It is this way of reading and using myth that is the focus of my 2013 publication, The Rebirth of the Hero.

A guest post by Ginette Paris. The following is excerpted from her acclaimed book Heartbreak: New Approaches to Healing - Recovering from lost love and mourning. Read Part I and Part II.

§  Symbols are an emotional GPS

No scientist in the world can create a symbol in his lab, nor choose the symbols, values, stories, myths we live by. Yet, this is the work that the heartbroken individual must do.

In times of bows and arrows, heartbreak was often symbolized by an arrow piercing the heart; but it is also imagined as a knife sticking out, a gunshot, a ferocious animal tearing the heart from the living body. One feels stuck in quicksand, in tar pit, crucified, shunned, drowning, choking, hemorrhaging. It can be felt like an amputation, a paralysis, a trial, a snake in the bed, a spy in the kingdom, poison in the apple, arsenic in the drink. A widow may feel like an orphan, even though she lost her husband and not her parent. Another feels like a fool, or like a beggar, or like a dismissed servant, or like a defeated general. I have interviewed individuals who felt their heartbreak was an experience of ambush, a test of strength, a season in hell, a glaciation, a forest fire, a tsunami, a bankruptcy, a visitation by an evil alien, an infection of the heart… the number of possible metaphors is infinite.

A guest post by Kerry Methner, PhD / CASA Magazine, www.casasb.com. Dr. Methner's article appeared in the November 14th edition of Casa Magazine.

Pacifica on Lambert Road, Gallery

Mythic Threads: Art, Healing, & Magic in Bali

In a land where the veil between life and death and between the sacred and mundane is porous and sometimes transparent, Kansas native and local resident Pamela Bjork sought solace as she grieved her father’s passing. That land was the island of Bali where she visited for the first time in 1995. That trip was a seed, growing over the next 20 years, bearing fruit in the form of a degree from Pacifica Graduate Institute and now an exhibition that officially opens with a celebration on Saturday, November 22nd from 2 to 5pm - Mythic Threads: Art, Healing, & Magic in Bali.

“An unbidden invitation arrived in the mail one summer day shortly after my father’s death in 1995,” Bjork recalled. “It read, ‘The Healers of Bali.’” Soon she was on her way. “The busyness and warmth of the people, visits to strange and exotic healers, multitudes of offerings, vibrant colors of textiles, sacred ceremonies, and performance everywhere offered a new perspective on how to live and helped assuage my grief,” Bjork shared.

Bjork is a 2012 graduate of the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica. Her fascination with Balinese culture and mythology led her to the topic of her dissertation, Hospitality of Color: Healing Presence in Ceremonial Balinese Textiles. This exhibition follows, illustrating the living myth of a contemporary culture, allowing the viewer to follow in the footsteps of Bjork’s pilgrimage to see living stories in the images and artifacts she brought home. Bjork will talk about her experiences and learning at 2:30pm.

A guest post by Ginette Paris. The following is excerpted from her acclaimed book Heartbreak: New Approaches to Healing - Recovering from lost love and mourning. Read Part I.

§  The neuroscience of bereavement

Much of neuroscience implies ultra-specialized research in the lab which is then communicated in its specific jargon. For example, when referring to the human capacity for compassion, neuroscientists define compassion as “shared neural circuits for mentalizing about the self and others”.  I translate their jargon to explain how heartbreak messes with our brain.  I use the metaphors of crocodile, puppy and wise human to differentiate the three levels of reactions and explain how to move from one level to the other.

A guest post by Ginette Paris. The following is excerpted from her acclaimed book Heartbreak: New Approaches to Healing - Recovering from lost love and mourning.

A guest post by Dennis Patrick Slattery
Dr. Slattery's hometown of New Braunfels, Texas is experiencing drought like so many other cities around the world. Below is his commentary to community members who caution "too much development".

            While many “Letters to the Editor” of the Herald-Zeitung (New Braunfels, Texas) express a valid caution of too much development, given the immediate and longer range necessity of conserving water in Texas, they have failed to touch the deeper question: what myth is it that compels the engines of growth? Until the underlying myth that shapes the thinking of what a people value is addressed, the problem stays above ground and tends to draw to itself ways of fixing something. Fixing as solution is also a mythic structure, but it too is a limited patch work.