C.G. JUNG PUBLIC LECTURES 2024-25
Friends Meeting House
126 Hampton Rd,
Redland, Bristol BS6 6JE
There is lift access.
10.30am - 12.45pm
SPEAKERS FOR THE 2024/25 LECTURE PROGRAMME
Cost (including refreshments): £15 online and in the room; low-waged attendees can pay £10 on the door, or buy a full-price ticket online and be reimbursed on the door. (We cannot reimburse you online).
If you would like to attend but cannot afford it, please contact
Tickets can be bought on Eventbrite until 9.30am on the morning of the lecture. You will need to buy a ticket if you want to watch a recording of the lecture at a later date. Most of the talks this year will be blended: simultaneously in-house and online. We will email out the Zoom link for the lecture and full instructions on how to join.
Attendance entitles people to 2½ hrs CPD.
NOTE: Lectures are usually on the second Saturday of the month.
12 Oct 2024: Jay Griffiths
Feral Angel
In Wild, Jay Griffiths relates her personal odyssey to wildernesses of earth and ice, water and fire, listening particularly to the voices of Indigenous peoples who live in so-called 'wilderness'. A consideration of the tender connection between human society and wild lands, the book is also a journey into that greatest of uncharted lands — wild mind.
In her talk, Griffiths will consider how the call of the wild is part of our psychological health, how there are codes of wildness and kindness braided together. The dominant culture has tried for centuries to portray Nature as 'mindless', but Indigenous people do not see it that way. While the West has long-operated an intellectual apartheid, arrogantly certain that its own expertise is the only knowledge worth the name, for indigenous cultures, it is a minded world. Shamans in particular, and indigenous people in general, perceive that animals have their own ways of knowing and that some plants can teach humans. This talk will explore the words and meanings which shape our ideas and our experience of our own wildness.
Jay Griffiths is the award-winning author of Wild: An Elemental Journey, Why Rebel and Nemesis, My Friend amongst others. She has written for Radiohead, the RSC and for Mark Rylance in a short film Almost Invisible Angels. John Berger noted of her: 'If bravery itself could write, it would write like she does.' She is a wild skater, whenever the Welsh lakes freeze.
9 Nov 2024: Sarah Walton
Fig. 1. LIBER NOVUS: THE RED BOOK ‘The Way of What is to Come’
The Red Book & Active Imagination: Anchor your Vision on the Page
Follow the inner path Carl Jung took during his years of writing his The Red Book.
This workshop will take you on a journey combining Active Imagination and intuitive writing techniques. You will be guided by Dr Sarah Walton through the landscape of your unique imagination and immerse yourself in the archetypal imagery of your inner landscapes and personal archetypes. As in Jung’s journey through the desert and shifting ancient landscapes, his meeting with the characters of his inner world- the Red Rider, the Magician, the Abbot- you will be guided to meet the characters who step forth in your own journey and anchor them on the page.
Some people feel inspired to continue their journey after the workshops, and Sarah will offer some writing tips and ways to keep the journey going.
No prior experience of meditation, or creative writing, is required.
Bring pen and paper/notebook.
This workshop is facilitated by Dr Sarah Walton, who developed the Soul Writing Method after a brain injury, to help her write fiction again. Sarah is a novelist and writing coach with a PhD in Creative Writing, and has taught an MA in Creative Writing. She is the Founder of Soul Writing Coaching.
Website: https://drsarahwalton.com/
Books: Rufius (2014), Sophia’s Tale (2019), The Silk Pavilion (2022)
14 Dec 2024: Stephen Pritchard
Our Stephen’s Psychic Yuletide Gift
Following the ‘Encore’ called for in the last session, this is an opportunity to participate in a new, inclusive and fun-packed workshop.
We will be guided by the visionary concept of Antonin Artaud, who wanted an ‘Alchemical Theatre’ that would be a form of ‘soul therapy’.
Artaud’s vision, in The Theatre and its Double, asks that the theatre move away from solely expressing psychological and moral conflict through words, and to instead “express objectively certain secret truths, to bring into the light of day, by means of active gestures, certain aspects of truth that have been buried under forms in their encounters with Becoming.” This is a theatre of images and archetypes.
We invite you to participate in a series of enjoyable group activities which offer the possibility of insight and transformation. Come and play.
“One might describe the theatre, somewhat unaesthetically, as an institution for working out private complexes in public.” C. G. Jung
Stephen Pritchard has lectured and run workshops for Jungian groups in Bristol and London. He is a Committee member and sometime host for the Jung Lectures Bristol. Stephen studied and taught English Literature at Oxford and is Secretary of the Blake Society. After co-founding the WOMAD Festival with Peter Gabriel and friends, Stephen worked in the performing arts, (music, dance, theatre). As a theatre practitioner he specialises in psychophysical work through teaching and performance. Stephen has produced seven drama films for education. He has been a Drama Consultant, visiting practitioner and guest Director, running workshops in schools, universities, businesses and organisations both in the UK and abroad.
11 Jan 2025: Jason Wright
Blake’s original engraved copper for Plate 20 of the Book of Job (British Museum, photo Jason Wright)
Blake’s Illustrations for the Book of Job: A Healing Journey with Jason Wright
Blake’s experience is as relevant today as when he first articulated it, during the white heat of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. In my recently published book, I have used Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job to frame psychological and spiritual change and to articulate, particularly, our Western experience. I am wont to say Job is the story of our time, and addiction the symptom. In this event we will explore Blake’s work together in the context of psychic and spiritual wholeness and healing, and the sense of community this work offers us at a time of change.
Jason Wright is a transpersonal and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. For twelve years, he was Clinical Director and CEO for the CORE Trust holistic addictions charity, as well as a manager and director in theatres. He has since founded Number 42, a group psychotherapy practice in Central London, UK. He has been a Member of the Blake Society for the last six years and has used this work in his practice for the past thirty.
Jason is the author of an extraordinary book about his engagement with Blake:
https://www.routledge.com/Blakes-Job-Adventures-in-Becoming/Wright/p/book/9781032389868
8 Feb 2025: Mark Williams
Cyclops by Odilon Redon
In the Kingdom of the Blind: The Single Eye as an Archetypal Image
One-eyedness is slippery, uncanny, and paradoxical. As the result of loss, both as a human experience and as a theme in dreams and myth, it conducts us into the archetypal regions of sacrifice, wounding, and initiation, in which to lose an eye can disable—but also mysteriously empower. But inherent monocularity, as with the disembodied eye, the Eye of God, or the one-eyed Cyclops, is a phenomenon confined to dreams, myth, and religion. Within and between these two broad categories lies a tangle of meanings, cultural images, and psychological implications, so that any given image or experience of one-eyedness may sit within several overlapping fields of archetypal resonance. This talk will provide a chance to explore the theme of the single eye through its connections to some of the central preoccupations of Jung’s psychology: the nature of consciousness, the relationship between ego and unconscious, the Self, one-sidedness, the mandala, sacrifice, the Shadow, and the God-image.
Mark Williams is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Oxford and a member of the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists (IGAP). He is a scholar of mythology and a specialist in the literatures and languages of the Celtic world. His books include Ireland's Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths That Shape The Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021).
8 March 2025: Brian Stevenson
Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali
Neurodiversity and Jung
ADHD and autism appear to be increasing. and pose challenges to the traditional methods of the psychotherapies. How do we make sense of what is happening? And how can analysts modify their approach to embrace this diversity effectively?
Psychiatry has typically seen these neurodivergencies as closely associated with learning disability, and psychoanalysis has focussed on the associated dynamic structures related to isolation. More recent perspectives are perhaps liberating us from the straight-jacket of these pathologizing perspectives, allowing a more balanced and optimistic view to emerge which can highlight the strengths that these conditions may bestow.
Based on his clients' and his own experiences, Brian will offer his own perspective on this area which has fascinated him in recent years, and try to dispel some of the associated fear and prejudice. His thesis is that analytical psychology (Jungian therapy) presents us with a ready-made perspective to help us grapple with understanding these conditions and in so doing may deepen our grasp of analytical psychology itself.
Dr Brian Stevenson was, from a young age, fascinated by the mystery of the physical world and of existence, and on leaving school studied to acquire his first degree in Physics, while at the same time avidly reading Jung. Having worked as a physicist and engineer for a few years (in the field of magnetic resonance) he studied medicine, and went on to specialise in psychiatry and worked in addiction psychiatry and pain management. He studied at the Jung Institute, Zurich, qualifying from the newly formed ISAPZurich in 2006. He left the NHS in 2015, and continues to work in private practice as a Jungian analyst. He is a member of IGAP (the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists), and is a member of the executive committee of the Journal of Analytical Psychology.
12 April 2025: Dale Mathers
Dreams: the basics
This seminar is an introduction to dreams: how they are made, what they are made with and what they are made for. Dreams are a natural product of the unconscious mind, as it does its nightly task of helping us understand the world and our place in it, bridging between conscious and unconscious. They are an essential part of a culture’s psychological eco-system, and not a personal possession.
Dreams evolve memory, which has a predictive function, letting us guess what is next up. Dreams are creative play-spaces, which develop empathy. They have a transcendent function, moving between and beyond ego and self. Sometimes, dreams are the source of religious, political, and spiritual insights. However, most are not remembered.
The seminar includes an account of dreaming based on the latest neuropsychological research. Detail about ‘the three network model’ - a best guess at how the mind works – is evolving. This brings together insights from both Freud, Jung and the humanistic therapies.
Personally, I feel ‘work’ is the last thing a dream needs. They are gifts from our unconscious, for our conscious to play with. The less solemn you are in your approach, the more you’ll discover from their ever-changing symbols.
Dr Dale Mathers MBBS., is a retired psychiatrist, former training analyst and supervisor with the Association of Jungian Analysts and a humanistic psychotherapist. He teaches analytical psychology in the UK, Ukraine, and Russia.
Publications include:
An introduction to meaning and purpose in analytical psychology (2001) London: Routledge.
Vision and Supervision (2009) London: Routledge (ed.)
Self and No Self (2009) London: Routledge (ed.)
Alchemy and psychotherapy (2014) London: Routledge (ed.)
Depth psychology and climate change ( 2019) London: Routledge (ed.)
Dreams: the Basics (November 2024) London: Routledge
10 May 2025: Mark Vernon
Dante’s Divine Comedy and Spiritual Awakening.
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is many things: a personal crisis, a diatribe against corruption, an unsurpassed poem, a celebration of love. But at heart, as Dante described it, it is the realisation that “I am more than I am”, discovered by journeying through three domains of reality. So, what is the nature of this perceptual expanse and how does it come about?
This talk will examine the transformation Dante underwent, which human beings can still undergo. It will focus on what might be called the emergence of Dante’s spiritual intelligence and examine this alongside psychotherapeutic insights. Spiritual intelligence knows many things: that descent and ascent are intimately linked; that time can be experienced in dramatically different ways; that virtues are crucial not so much for moral reasons but because they connect with reality; that the whole of life is one life, unified not through uniformity but, as Dante describes it, like a book of many leaves bound by love, each with its part. The talk will assume no knowledge of the Divine Comedy and serve as an introduction, as well as exploration and application.
Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist and writer. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and degrees in theology and physics. His books include A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling, and the Evolution of Consciousness (2019) and Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey (2021). He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London.
14 June 2025: Kurt Lampe
Darkness Reborn: Satanism and the Problem of Hatred
‘Hatred’ is one of those words that makes people uncomfortable, though we’re quick to label it in others. Whether we’re on the left or the right, we accuse our political opponents of being ‘hatemongers’. In popular culture, we hear all the time that someone ‘hates himself’, ‘hates her parents’, or ‘hates their life.’ There’s a long tradition of theorizing hatred in depth psychology, starting with Freud’s ‘death drive’ and Jung’s ‘shadow’. Donald Winnicott warns that psychiatrists must be honest about feeling hatred toward their patients, just as parents must be honest about feeling hatred toward their babies. ‘You may have to let your client hate you’, supervisors tell their psychotherapy trainees.
In this event, we’ll attempt to shine just one small light into the abyssal darkness of hatred. The figure we’ll strive to see there is another one that makes people uncomfortable, namely the lord of darkness himself: Satan. Despite Satan’s continuing vitality in the western imagination, few have explored how the study of Satanism can illuminate the dynamics of hatred. Here we’ll experiment with an archetypal approach to the phenomenon of Satanism today, ranging from Satanic panics and Luciferian politics to black metal music and demonic dreams or visions. Approaching this in a creative spirit, our hope is to understand both the dangers and opportunities in our own hatred just a little bit differently.
Kurt Lampe is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol and a trainee at the Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling. He currently works with people both in private practice and in the local NHS.