C.G. Jung Public Lectures, Bristol

C.G. Jung Public Lectures,
Bristol

Next Lecture - Jan

January 10th 2026

Roderick Main

Synchronicity and the foundations of our epistemology

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) developed his concept of synchronicity to address the scientific, spiritual, and social crises he saw as stemming from the one-sided rationalism and materialism of modern Western culture and its concomitant disenchantment. With the concept of synchronicity, he provided a holistic approach to knowledge that aimed to undo disenchantment by reinstating mystery, meaning, and connection to the sacred at the heart of our scientific and scholarly as well as therapeutic and creative practices. In this presentation, I shall first clarify the holistic character of Jung’s proposed epistemological contribution with his concept of synchronicity. I shall then show how this epistemology is underpinned by a dual-aspect monist and panentheistic ontology, which grounds knowledge in the sacred. Finally, I shall suggest that, with this grounding, the epistemology naturally gives rise to a re-enchanting hermeneutic methodology capable of attending equally to the homely and the high-weird.

Roderick Main, PhD, works at the University of Essex, UK, where he is a professor in the department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of the Centre for Myth Studies. His books include The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung’s Critique of Modern Western Culture (Brunner-Routledge, 2004), Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience (SUNY, 2007), and, most recently, Breaking the Spell of Disenchantment: Mystery, Meaning, and Metaphysics in the Work of C.G. Jung (Chiron Publications, 2022).

Next Film - Jan

31st January 2026 monument valley i

Mark and Susan Kidel with James Hillman

Two Films: The Architecture of the Imagination: The Door and The Staircase

1. The Architecture of the Imagination: The Door (1994)

This is poetics of the doorway – with detours through thresholds, hinges, locks and keys. A designer bolts herself up in a ground-floor London apartment that becomes a kind of prison. A heavily-built doorman incarnates the image of Janus as he stands guard outside a Piccadilly nightclub and looks right and left, two-faced like the Roman God. The guide to the Masonic Hall in London speaks of the way in which aspiring members of the Society knock on a massive brass door in order to be admitted. Others evoke the essential nature of the edge between “in“ and “out”, the sacred and the profane, the comfort of home and the dangers of the outside world. Hillman concludes by commenting on a world in which the doorway has given way to open-plan, and our need for secrecy, intimacy and containment is ignored, with a price - a loss of soul. With quotations from classics by Hitchcock, David Lean, Murnau’s Nosferatu and Cocteau’s La belle et la bête.

2. The Architecture of the Imagination: The Staircase (1994)

The staircase can evoke ascent and descent in life, whether it’s Jacob’s Ladder reaching up to Paradise or the stage on which a beautiful lady can make a graceful entrance - an image of Aphrodite descending from Heaven. It’s also a place of drama, chases, bone-shattering falls or encounters with Fate. The film follows Shell’s CEO as he climbs up over twenty floors to his office overlooking London, a daily test of his fitness as man and executive. The architect Eva Jiřičná describes a transparent steel and glass stairway she designed for a Chelsea clothes shop. Including clips from The Fallen Idol and a Chaplin slapstick classic, moments of suspense as Peter Lorre is chased down the stairs in a Fritz Lang film noir and a class in which young ladies are taught deportment and the correct way to negotiate the stairway of a country house, the film brings to life a multi-faceted image of life’s journey, seen as a matter of reaching for glorious heights or being catapulted down to failure, as in the classic game of Snakes and Ladders.

At: The Cube [off top-left of King Square], Dove Street South, Kingsdown Bristol BS2 8JD and Online, Saturday 10.30am-12.45pm

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General information

Since the early eighties, the C.G. Jung Public Lectures have played an important part in establishing and maintaining Bristol's reputation as an acknowledged centre of interest in Depth Psychology.

The monthly lectures are on current issues and topics broadly related to the field of analytical psychology and are given by a variety of professional and established speakers. They are open to everybody with an interest in depth psychology, the therapies, philosophy, religion, mythology, life and the arts.

The aim is to provide a friendly, informal space for Jung's ideas and philosophy to reach a wider public. There is time for refreshment, socialising, and networking after the lecture followed by participative discussion with the speaker in the round.

A reduced-price bookstall is sometimes provided by Bookmark, Bristol. Their website includes a good selection
of Jungian and Analytical Psychology titles (also at reduced prices)!
Tel: (0117) 9672928 www.psychologicaltherapybooks.co.uk

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