This talk will explore how the nineteenth century came to realise that, like it or not, we are creatures composed of both light and darkness.

With their sometimes complementary and sometimes conflicting theories of the unconscious, Freud and Jung continue to dominate how we conceive of those realms of knowledge and emotion that lie beneath our conscious life.

However, these theories have a long and deep gestation in nineteenth-century Europe. The disciplines of psychiatry and hypnosis, both of which were grappling with the increasingly obvious fact that human beings are not masters of their own souls, came together at the end of the century in the person of Jean-Martin Charcot and the diagnosis of Hysteria. It was his student, Pierre Janet, who was to have a profound influence on both Freud and Jung. 

But it was not only the psychiatrists and hypnotists who were being awakened. Philosophy also was coming to realize that the rational had limits, and that there was a cost to ignoring the irrational. None more so than Frederik Nietzsche. Freud, realizing how much Nietzsche’s ‘guesses and intuitions often agree in the most astonishing way with the laborious findings of psychoanalysis’, tried to avoid reading him. But Jung had no such inhibitions, often quoting him and giving courses on Nietzsche’s prophetic last work, Zarathustra. 

Brendan McPhillips is a psychotherapist working in private practice in Sydney. He has been a member of the Jung Society since 1983, and has a deep interest in how myth and culture underpin our lives. He has an abiding passion for saturated fat in cooking, and believes that if everyone played the B-52’s Love Shack video every day the world would be a better place.

Click Here to Reserve Your Place at Brendan’s Presentation.

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 Date: 8th March at 7.00

Venue: Zoom
Cost: Members $Free 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.