Portals to the Imaginal: Re-Visioning Depth Psychology for the 21st Century
“… hence the unconscious is not merely conditioned by history, but is the very source of the creative impulse. It is like nature herself – prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions in her acts of creation.”
~ C.G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
Details
October 7-9, 2022
Pre-Conference Included with Registration
- Friday: 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Alumni Author Spotlight & Reception
Conference:
- Friday: 6:00 – 6:45 PM
Wine & Cheese Reception - Friday 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Keynote Presentations - Saturday: 9:00am – 5:00 PM
Featured Workshops & Presentations - Saturday: 3:45 PM
Admissions Presentation - Saturday 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Alumni Gala Dinner (Off Campus) – Separately ticketed event - Sunday: 9:00 AM – Noon
Panel Discussion and Breakout Groups.
Conference Rates:
- $225.00 Pacifica Student Rate
- $275.00 Pacifica Alumni, Full Time Students, & Senior Rate
- $325.00 General Rate
- Saturday Alumni Gala Dinner TBD
$25 Continuing Education Credit Fee (8 hours)
CECs are available for Live Conference only
Live Stream (Keynote Presentations & Panel Discussions only – live via Zoom)
- $125.00
Participants requesting Continuing Education Credits (CECs) must attend all live sessions and sign in on the attendance sheet provided in order to receive CECs.
All registration fees include meals, beginning with a light reception on Friday evening through lunch on Sunday.
Overview
We live in an epoch not only of political, but archetypal tumult. The meta-narratives through which we have historically come to understand ourselves and our world are being challenged, deconstructed and imploded. It can feel as if we have been thrown into a metaphorical sea of storm-tossed waves with navigational instruments that are not only outdated, but irrelevant, as even the heavens deny us a clear sight of the North star from which to navigate.
Times of personal as well as collective upheaval confront us not only with the archetypal tensions between chaos and rigidity, life and death, but also with the need for psychologies that can evolve to accommodate an emerging consciousness that transcends the limitations of psychological theory that no longer speaks to the challenges of the epoch.
The global challenges of recent times have constellated a re-emergence of apocalyptic languaging and symbolism. “Apocalypse,” however, understood archetypally, refers not only to the destruction of a world, but the creative emergence of new worlds. As award-winning poet, Ben Okri writes:
You will think that
Your world is being
Shattered for ever. It is.
But out of the destruction,
Out of all this thunder,
Something new will
Come….
~ “To Katya, aged seven, in a bomb shelter in Kyiv”
We invite you to join the distinguished faculty and alumni of Pacifica Graduate Institute, along with invited artists, as we offer creative, forward-thinking scholarship that both builds on and transcends the boundaries of Jungian and post-Jungian theory. This conference additionally celebrates the formal, public re-opening of our campuses. Join us, as we come together in creative community, to contribute to the hope that through engaging more deeply with one another – especially in these challenging times – something new will come.
“If you remain within arbitrary and artificially created boundaries, you will walk as between two high walls: you do not see the immensity of the world. But if you break down the walls that confine your view, and if the immensity and its endless uncertainty inspire you with fear, then the ancient sleeper awakens in you.”
~ C.G. Jung, The Red Book
KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
Portals to the Imaginal in a Digital Era:
Cultural Complexes and the Mythopoetic Imagination in the 21st Century
Thomas Singer, M.D.
Mythic Imagination:
Claiming Presence and the Body Poetic in the “After Times”
Marissa Chibas
Reconsidering Individuation in the 21st Century:
When Archetypal Patterns Shift
Joe Cambray, Ph.D.
Tradition and Lineage: Mythopo ieticsn the Writing of Africanist Women
Fanny Brewster, MFA, Ph.D.
The Imagination Matrix
Stephen Aizenstat Ph.D.
FEATURED PRESENTATIONS
Music as a Window to the Imaginal through Dreamtime and Waking Reverie
Juliet Rohde-Brown, Ph.D. and Daniel Siuba, M.A., Ph.D.c
Mythic Meditation:
Labyrinth
Emily Chow-Kambitsch, Ph.D.
Re-Imagining the Sacred:
Jung’s Approach
Lionel Corbett
Remembering How to be a People:
Exploring Psychological Belonging by Forming Conscious Groups
Peter Dunlap, Ph.D.
Transcending the Classroom and Consulting Room:
The Initiation and Invitation of Collective Trauma
Jemma Elliot, M.A., LMFT, LPCC
Eastern Spiritual Practices and the Process of Individuation:
Exploring Lived Experience
Pat Katsky, Ph.D.
Imaginal Mediums:
The Occult Origins of the Unconscious in Jung’s Red Book
David Odorisio, Ph.D.
Co-Creative Responsibility for the Posthuman Age
Glen Slater, Ph.D.
Depth Psychology is Transdisciplinary:
Introducing Jungian Arts-Based Research as a Methodology for Learning and Being in the 21st Century
Susan Rowland, Ph.D.
Art at the Abyss:
Recreating Depth Psychology for a World on the Edge
Mary Antonia Wood, Ph.D.
ALUMNI PANEL DISCUSSION
Community as Classroom: Listening to and Learning From Each Other
ADMISSIONS PRESENTATION
Please join the Office of Admissions at Pacifica Graduate Institute for a presentation on our admissions processes, application requirements, new-student timelines, and a brief overview of our academic programs and services.
Attendees will also have the chance to ask questions to our panelists. We look forward to seeing you all.
Keynote Presenters

Thomas Singer, M.D. is a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst who trained at Yale Medical School, Dartmouth Medical School, and the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is the author of many books and articles that include a series of books on cultural complexes that have focused on Australia, Latin America, Europe, the United States, and Far East Asia countries. He serves on the board of ARAS (Archive for Research into Archetypal Symbolism) and has served as coeditor of ARAS Connections for many years.

Joe Cambray is CEO-President at Pacifica. He is also past President of the International Association for Analytical Psychology; he has served as the U.S. Editor for the Journal of Analytical Psychology and is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Analytical Psychology and The Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche. He has been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies. Dr. Cambray is a Jungian analyst in Santa Barbara, CA. His numerous publictions include the book based on his Fay Lectures: Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe.

Fanny Brewster, PhD., MFA is Core Faculty in the Depth Psychology specialization of Integrative Healing and Therapy Practices. Dr. Brewster completed her training to become a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York. Her writing includes the publication of books and poetry, the most recent publication is Racial Legacies: Jung, Politics and Culture (Routledge 2022), that she co-authored with Helen Morgan. She has received three Gradiva Award nominations for her writing from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP). The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race (Routledge), was nominated in 2021 for the Gradiva Award

Marissa Chibas is an award winning Cuban American writer, filmmaker, actor and a #1 new release author on Amazon for her book, Mythic Imagination and the Actor. Marissa is a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow. Marissa is on the Theater School faculty at California Institute of the Arts where she is Director Duende CalArts.

Stephen Aizenstatis Chancellor Emeritus, Founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute, and Ex-Officio Board of Trustees member. He is a professor of Depth Psychology with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and a credentialed public school teacher and counselor. He has served as an organizational consultant to companies and agencies worldwide, and teaches extensively. He has explored the potential of dreams through depth psychology and his own research for more than 35 years. His Dream Tending methodologies extend traditional dreamwork to the vision of an animated world, where the living images in dream are experienced as embodied and originating in both the psyche of nature and the psyche of persons. His main book, Dream Tending, describes multiple applications of dreamwork in relation to health and healing, nightmares, the world’s dream, relationships, and the creative process. He is the Founding President of the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences (Carpinteria, USA).
General Information
Location
Hosted on campus at the Ladera Lane Barrett Center, 801 Ladera Ln, Santa Barbara, CA 93108
Cancellations
Cancellations 14 days or more prior to the program start date receive a 100% refund of program registrations. After 14 days, up to 7 days prior to the program start date, a 50% refund is available. For cancellations made less than 7 days of program start date, no refund is available.
Learning Objectives for CEC Attendees (8 Hours):
- Identify the characteristics and nuanced manifestations of a cultural complex and how social media reinforces the non-generative complex
- Identify the ways in which the cultural complex depotentiates the mythopoetic imagination
- Analyze the ways in which the figure of the hero as the basis of ego identity is declining
- Assess the emergence of an interconnectedness that is more psychologically sustaining for the challenges of the 21st Century
- Differentiate the projections embedded within cultural narratives and how these shape ego identity.
- Describe how the recent disruptions on a global scale have precipitated a shift in the archetypal patterns emerging in the collective unconscious and how these manifest in the individual.
Continuing Education Credit
This program meets qualifications for 8 hours of continuing education credit for Psychologists through the California Psychological Association (PAC014) Pacifica Graduate Institute is approved by the California Psychological Association to provide continuing education for psychologists. Pacifica Graduate Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Full attendance is required to receive a certificate.
This course meets the qualifications for 8 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Pacifica Graduate Institute is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (#60721) to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs. Pacifica Graduate Institute maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. Full attendance is required to obtain a certificate.
For Registered Nurses through the California Board of Registered Nurses this conference meets qualifications of 9 hours of continuing education credit are available for RNs through the California Board of Registered Nurses (provider #CEP 7177). Full attendance is required to obtain a certificate.
Pacifica Graduate Institute is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs. Pacifica Graduate Institute maintains responsibility for each program and its content. Full day attendance is required to receive a certificate.
Continuing Education Goal. Pacifica Graduate Institute is committed to offering continuing education courses to train LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs to treat any client in an ethically and clinically sound manner based upon current accepted standards of practice. Course completion certificates will be awarded at the conclusion of the training and upon participant’s submission of his or her completed evaluation.
CECs and Online Program Attendance: Participants requesting Continuing Education Credits (CECs) must attend all live sessions and sign in on the provided form in order to receive CECs.
For additional information, including travel, cancellation policy, and disability services please visit our general information section.