James Hollis, Ph. D.
“Living Between Myths:
Change, Crisis, Resilience”
James Hollis, Ph.D., Zürich trained Jungian analyst in private practice in Houston, Texas, is Executive Director of the Jung Education Center and a Senior Training Analyst in the Inter Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Dr. Hollis is the author of over fifty articles and reviews, and twelve books—including The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning at Mid-Life; On This Journey We Call Our Life; The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other; Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path, and Why Good People do Bad Things.
Friday evening:
“Untune That String, and Hark What Discord Follows”
Centuries ago, Shakespeare’s character Ulysses perceived erosion in the organizing images of his time—the slippage of stabilizing myths linking persons to the gods, to nature, and to their tribe. Given that such slippage has only increased in the centuries since, what is our mythological context, and what crises or connections are available to us today? Where do we stand in relationship to the task of personal meaning?
Saturday morning:
Swamplands of the Soul/Resilience of the Soul
Even with our best efforts, the gods, the acts of others, and the consequences of our own choices will take us to swampland places from time to time. If we cannot avoid such visitations, how are we to survive them? In what way can Jungian psychology help us in those moments when we feel most alone, most bereft of possibilities?
Saturday afternon:
Gossamer Threads: The Necessity of Private Myth
Are we not all comrades of Walt Whitman still, the good grey poet who observed a “noiseless patient spider” fling forth from within his filaments in search of connection, hoping that “the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.” How does one discern the private myth, sort through the debris of messages, both outer and inner, in finding one’s path through the tangled skein of modernism? What was Jung’s myth; what was Jung’s myth for us; what, then, is our myth?
