C. G. Jung Society
of the Triangle
Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Lyn Cowan, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst
Seabiscuit: The Little Horse that Could, and Did, and Still Does and
The Blue Shadows of Melancholy
- Lecture: Friday, April 15, 2005, 7:30 PM
The word "hero" in our day, when applied to so many so often, begins to lose its mythic sense. The mythic Hero is larger than life, and must accomplish impossible tasks at great risk, bringing hope and even redemption to lesser mortals.
But the Hero stands in an important relationship to the Self, and implied in the Hero's grand mission are ideas of personal responsibility and vocation, two themes we meet frequently in Jung's theory of individuation but do not often examine.
This presentation, using clips from the film, will invite a conversation about the collective psychological phenomenon that was a horse named "Seabiscuit," a true mythic Hero, and the human partners who engaged with him in a mutual process of transformation.
- Workshop: Saturday, April 16, 2005, 10:00AM – 4:00 PM
Until the mid-19th century, melancholy was imagined as an affliction from the gods, a madness characteristic of genius, and a difficult temperament. At the height of the Renaissance, Melancholy was imagined in personified form as a majestic female figure, and artists and poets looked to her as their Muse.
But in the 20th century, melancholy all but disappeared from the professional imagination, replaced by the diagnostic categories of depression.
This workshop will focus on melancholy as a matrix of creativity and seek to answer these questions:
- How can we hear the Muse in our own melancholic moments?
- What sort of expression does the Muse give us when we try to express something from a melancholy place in the psyche?
- Why is this important for our psychic health?
Participants are asked to bring paper and pen, and a snapshot of photograph that has personal meaning.
- Lyn Cowan, Ph. D., teaches at the C. G. Jung Education Center of Houston, and has a private analytic practice. She served as Director of Training of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts for six years, and was Professor of Psychology for ten years at Argosy University in Minnesota.
Her books include Tracking The White Rabbit: A Subversive View Of Modern Culture; Masochism: A Jungian View and Portrait Of The Blue Lady: The Character Of Melancholy
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