Training

[Guest guest]

Dear

Beatrice,

Your

e-mail resonates with me and here’s why.

I

too wanted to become a Jungian analyst, but the admissions director at the

Institute in New York told me on the phone that I wasn’t qualified

because I was too old and had no clinical experience (this was about 8 years

ago).  He even said that my graduate psych degree was “worthless.” 

I couldn’t believe he was talking that way and I was deeply hurt, to the

point where I never even applied. Shame on me for my cowardice, but that’s

the way I was at the time, ready and willing to believe my own lack of

self-worth.

 

Later

I applied to a different Jung institute and was provisionally accepted, but I

decided not to attend because I had gotten involved in a new career.  Perhaps I

was again feeling my unworthiness and was afraid to try.

 I

was still toying with the idea of becoming a Jungian analyst when I moved to

Vermont and began archetypal dreamwork therapy with Marc Bregman (www.northofeden.com).

When

Marc began offering training for therapists and teachers I signed up and soon

found myself quite overwhelmed by the possibility of truly plumbing the depths

of the psyche in a way my previous analysis had only given me a tiny taste of. 

I’ve now been doing this work for 4 ½ years, steadily growing in my

awareness of the child self and the Divine within.  This training is rigorous

and demanding; frequently terrifying in its acuteness and integrity.  I have

had to face my pathologies head-on, and although I’ve often turned away

in terror and despair, I keep coming back.  The rewards are constant and

on-going and the fear, which makes me want to run and hide, is also the gateway

to ever more consciousness.

In

the first chapter of “The Deep Well Tapes,” Marc Bregman, Sue Scavo

and Ellen Keene, (available via www.amazon.com and elsewhere) wrote:

One of the central

goals of Archetypal Dreamwork is to create the capacity in an individual to

feel and experience his or her unique essence. Essence is an individual’s

particular capacity to feel God’s love in a direct and personal way, living

in the underlying truth of God’s existence. This state of being allows an

individual to be in conversation with the Divine through an intimate

relationship with God.

A person in essence

has the heart that can know God. Through the psyche, the potential exists in

all of us to have an open doorway to another dimension - God’s dimension,

the Archetypal realm. Dreams are a portal to God - as portals, they reveal how

God sees each individual.

A therapist, one

who works with clients and their dreams, can only dare to know what God is

showing a client through a dream by standing solidly in his/her own connection

to essence.

If I were still in

the semi-unconscious state where I first approached the Jung Institute years

ago I would not have been able to “get” what this passage

references.  I was still very much in my head, processing the experience even

of my dreams in a dry, intellectual way that didn’t touch the emptiness

in my soul or the unique essence of my being, what Jung calls “individuation.” 

I knew I wasn’t individuated, and when I was being honest with myself,

despaired of ever experiencing it.  Now I can see that individuation is a

possibility, provided I consistently work hard and with honesty, to get past

the pathologies that have dogged me since childhood, so I can be in essence.

The dreamwork

training at North of Eden is outlined on the website. Before one begins the training,

they first have to work with an archetypal dream therapist, see the website. 

If this work is for them the dreams will show it clearly.

If you care to

share more about your experience on this list, I welcome the dialogue with you

and will respond in kind.

Peace,

From:

JUNG-FIRE [mailto:JUNG-FIRE ] On Behalf Of helena729

Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 10:39 AM

To: JUNG-FIRE

Subject: Jungian Training

I was interested in what fa said about her

IGAP training. I also

want to be a Jungian analyst, but my training school keeps talking

about the " experience " of their training, as though it were a

different

thing from the Jungian training advertised in their brochure (which I

responded to). I feel quite sad too, at how Jung is rejected in many

ways on the archetypal level, under the ethos of the training school

identity which in my school takes the form of obedience to rules which

constitute their type of analyst. I needed to find something with that

old feeling (which is still new and vibrant to me) of the Jung I

experienced in the complete works and others' memories of him. I came

to the conclusion that I just needed to follow my dreams, and one led

me somewhere ...

Beatrice.