Intro to Depth Psychology Lectures
These lectures offer both a great introduction to the world of depth and nature-based psychology.
The First, "Cartography of the Human Spirit," explores how natural rhythms and directions innervate every level of our being, and how operating in tune with them leads to natural coherence and health of not just our own organism, but the entire ecosystem around us.
These lectures draw heavily on the work of Dr. Bill Plotkin and his ecopsychological models of the psyche.
In the final installation of this lecture series, "Alchemy and the Central Archetype of the Self," we explore the arcane art of alchemy and its relationship to Carl Jung's analytical psychology.
Jung was deeply fascinated by alchemy and wrote about it extensively throughout his career, culminating in his final book the Mysterium Coniunctionis.
Often considered a pseudo-science because it stupefies materialist understandings, alchemy is not the science of turning lead into gold in a material sense, but rather transforming the lead of the soul into spiritual gold.
The final product, the lapis philosophorum or philosopher's stone, is that substance which is capable of transforming all experience into gold, and it sits in the center of our hearts and is stoked by our dreams.
"The Archetypes of Birth and Death" introduces and explores the work of famed depth psychologist Stanislov Grof. Grof is a pioneer in the field of psychedelic-assisted therapy and, together with his wife Cristina, created the practice of holotropic breathwork.
We explore what Dr. Grof discovered in the tens of thousands of LSD- psychotherapy sessions he conducted and supervised. Through this incredibly intimate encounters, we can start to see the unique universals which pervade every human life, and gain tremendous context in the how and why of our own journeys.
