December 5-6, 2008: Lionel Corbett

Spiritual structures require periodic renewal. When our spirituality cannot be contained within traditional institutions, we urgently need new ways to articulate our experience of the sacred. From within the depth of the psyche, a new image of the divine is emerging alongside traditional Judeo-Christian images. By approaching spirituality based on a personal experience of the sacred, depth psychology enables us to articulate this emergence, without the need for recourse to traditional theology, doctrine or dogma.

Traditional Jungian thought emphasizes the ego-Self axis, implying a relationship between an ego and the Self as if these were separate. However, Jung also thinks of the Self as the totality of the psyche, in which case the ego cannot be a separate entity, or the word "totality" would not be meaningful. If the psyche is truly undivided, depth psychology must adopt a nondual ontology, linking it to the nondual spiritual traditions. It seems counterintuitive to insist that reality is a unity, and that our apparent separateness is an illusion. Yet, synchronistic events and advances in quantum physics lend support to this idea. This workshop will consider some of the theoretical and clinical implications of the Self as the totality of consciousness. Dr. Corbett will offer an alternative to the traditional notion that psychotherapy occurs between two individuals within an inter-subjective field, by presenting a larger perspective that sees no fundamental separation between the therapist and patient. In this model of psychotherapy, each are manifestations of a superordinate field of Consciousness that contains them both. While separate at the level of ego and conventional reality, they are not divided at the deeper level of the transpersonal Self. As parts of this Totality, therapist and patient are simply meeting aspects of the Self, a mutual recognition that moves them past any "I-Thou" distinction. This approach broadens our usual understanding of the therapeutic field, changes the therapist's view of his or her client, and builds a tentative bridge between depth psychology and the contemporary views of consciousness emerging from quantum physics.

Lionel Corbett, M.D., trained in medicine and psychiatry in England and as a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Dr. Corbett is a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. His primary dedication is to the religious function of the psyche, especially the way in which personal religious experience is relevant to individual psychology. He is the author of Psyche and the Sacred, and The Religious Function of the Psyche. He is co-editor, with Dennis Patrick Slattery, of Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field and Psychology at the Threshold. He has also authored Spirituality Beyond Religion, a set of audiotapes published by Sounds True.