The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experience you are released from the curse of pathology.  Carl Jung

(Letters 1, p.377, to Martin, 20 August 1945)

Jung time and time again insisted that he was not a theologian. From the beginning to the end of his professional life Jung called himself a psychologist. And for him, different to mainstream psychology as we know it today, being a psychologist meant that his focus was on the psychological experience, the experience of the soul-in-action. Not our cognitions or our sensations or our behaviours but soul-in-action.

So, his concern, primarily, was the desire for the numinous, the desire for transcendence and less so, on the numinous as the object of the desire. My interpretation of Jung’s attitude was that he wanted to view this more as a process-of-striving rather than a point-of-arrival.

The deeper psychological attitude is working-with-the-desire: what it looks like, how it manifests, and who (what mythic figure) is being represented.

I will tell the archetypal story of Orpheus and Eurydice: a story of desire and of the imaginal world. I will also give my account of a journey into the underworld by Herakles as an illustration of how we might approach the numinous in our daily lives.

David Russell completed his psychology studies at the University of Sydney. After a period in private practice he joined Western Sydney University and worked first in the Social Ecology program and then in a master’s degree based on the works of Carl Jung and the post Jungians. He is a past President of the Sydney Jung Society. Prior to leaving academic life, David held the position of Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at WSU.

David is currently in private practice in Darlinghurst where he offers psychodynamic psychotherapy.

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 Date: 14th May 2021 at 7.00

Venue: Zoom
Cost: Members $10 Non-Members $20 Non-Member
Concession $15

*Psychotherapists and other practitioners can obtain credit for Professional Development hours recognised by PACFA and ACA for this presentation.