Featured Presenters
Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology. His hypnotic and fiery storytelling, street savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths are highly relevant to current culture. He is the author of many books including Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul and The World Behind the World. Meade is founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to education and cultural healing. For more information, visit www.mosaicvoices.org.
Donald Kalsched, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He is a senior faculty member and supervisor with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and teaches and leads workshops nationally and internationally. His celebrated book, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit, explores the interface between contemporary psychoanalytic theory and Jungian theory as it relates to clinical work with survivors of early childhood trauma. His recent book, Trauma and the Soul: A Psycho-Spiritual Approach to Human Development and its Interruption, explores the mystical dimensions of clinical work with trauma-survivors.
Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founding president of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is a Clinical Psychologist, a Marriage Family Therapist, and a credentialed public schools teacher and counselor. For more than 35 years he has explored the power of dreams through depth psychology and the pursuit of his own research. His areas of emphasis include depth psychology, dream research, the psyche/soma connection in dreamwork, and imaginal and archetypal psychology. A major focus of Dr. Aizenstat’s original research is a psychodynamic process of “tending the living image,” particularly in the context of dreamwork. He extends this work in ways that engage the healing forces of dreams through imaginal “medicines.” Aizenstat’s book, Dream Tending, includes sections on dreamwork and addictions and the craft of transmuting dream images into medicines that can be adjunctive in physical healing. His other recent publications include: Imagination & Medicine: The Future of Healing in an Age of Neuroscience, “Dream Tending and Tending the World,” in Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, and “Soul-Centered Education: An Interview with Stephen Aizenstat” in Reimagining Education: Essays on Reviving the Soul of Learning. Dr. Aizenstat has collaborated with many masters in the field, including Joseph Campbell, Marion Woodman, Robert Johnson, and James Hillman; as well as native elders worldwide. For more information on Dream Tending, visit www.dreamtending.com.
Joseph Bobrow, Roshi, Ph.D., is the author of three books, Waking Up From War: A Better Way Home For Veterans And Nations (foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama), Zen And Psychotherapy: Partners in Liberation (comments by Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh), and After Midnight: Poems of Love and Death(Fisher King Press, January, 2017). He also co-translated Thich Nhat Hanh’s Guide To Walking Meditation. Joseph is a Zen master and Roshi of Deep Streams Zen Institute in Santa Barbara, which offers Zen Buddhist practice, interdisciplinary education, and peace-building programs that implement new integrative models of transforming suffering. For ten years, Coming Home Project, a community service of Deep Streams Zen Institute, helped thousands of post-9/11 service members, veterans, families, and caregivers transform the unseen injuries of war. A retired psychoanalyst, Joseph now serves on the faculty of Pacifica Graduate Institute and teaches locally and around the world.
Edward S. Casey, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook as well as Distinguished Visiting Professor in Pacifica’s Depth Psychology Program with Specialization in Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology. He is the author of ten books, among them Spirit and Soul: Essays in Philosophical Psychology; Imagining: A Phenomenological Study; Remembering: A Phenomenological Study; Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World; and The Fate of Place; and the forthcoming The World on Edge. At Pacifica, he teaches courses in “Nature and Psyche: Toward a Depth Ecopsychology,” “Phenomenological Psychology,” and “Frontiers in Depth Psychology.”
Craig Chalquist, Ph.D., is department chair of East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where he teaches ecopsychology. He is Executive Editor of the Journal of Holistic Psychology and the author of several books, including those of the Animate California Trilogy and Terrapsychology: Reengaging the Soul of Place, editor of Rebearths: Conversations with a World Ensouled, and co-editor of Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind. Craig graduated from Pacifica’s Depth Psychology Program in 2003. For more information, visit www.chalquist.com.
Marissa Chibas, Her solo show Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary has toured the U.S., Europe, and Mexico, published by Routeldge Press, Contemporary Plays by Women of Color, second edition. Marissa has acted in over 50 productions and over two-dozen premieres, including the world premiere of Two Sisters and a Piano by Nilo Cruz. Her silent film/performance piece, Clara’s Los Angeles, was presented at REDCAT’s NOW festival and the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Marissa is on the Theater School faculty at CalArts where she heads the initiative Duende Calarts that collaborates with innovative Latinx and Latin American artists to make adventurous theater work. For Duende she wrote Shelter, which premiered in April 2016 at Lincoln Park and was presented at the Kennedy Center. Shelter was published this year by NoPassport Press. Last Decemebr she wrote and performed in The Second Woman at Bootleg Theater in LA. Marissa will be exhibiting a video installation and performance piece, Nostalgia, in LA and La Habana in Spring 2017, a collaboration with Cuba based artist Aissa Santiso. She is a recipient of the TCG Fox Fellowship in Distinguished Achievement.
Nuria Ciofalo, Ph.D., is Co-Chair of the Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology specialization. Born in Mexico, she gained her B.A. and first M.A. in Germany where she specialized in psychoanalytic theories, particularly Jung and Adler, and, her latter M.A. and Ph.D. in a community focused psychology program at University of Hawaii. From 1982-1987, she was a professor of psychology and chair of the Psychology Department for five years at University of Xochicalco (Mexico), for two summers in an M.A. psychology summer program at University of Las Americas. Since her doctorate in 1996, she has worked in wide variety of research situations in the U.S. and Mexico, training others to do research and managing and evaluating large-scale research projects. She has been a Senior Evaluation Analyst at The California Endowment. Recent publications include: Cultural-religious empowerment, popular power, and contra power: A demand for Indigenous Rights (2014). Revista de Psicologia Social Comunitaria 3 (2), and Heroes and martyrs against alienation: Growing up as puer and puella in post-modern society (2013). Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice.
Thyonne Gordon, Ph.D., specializes in Social Transformation of individuals and communities through communications, programming and social change. Her work speaks to youth in particular, providing innovative change methods to enhance their future. Dr. Gordon has served as Executive Director of youth organizations, CoachArt & A Place Called Home advocating education, arts, athletics and health & well being for underserved youth from chronic illness and autism to at-risk and environmental issues. She is currently Board Chair at Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Susan James, Ph.D., is co-Chair of the Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology specialization and a community psychologist and digital media producer. Dr. James’ work focuses on understanding cultural ecologies and disseminating social science research findings using visual design solutions and film, a practice she pioneered over a decade ago. James established innovative action research agendas and directed large-scale projects while holding senior positions at New York University, University of Chicago, and the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. Her own research focuses on structural violence as a determinant of well-being, and is published in American Journal of Community Psychology and Violence Against Women. She created Research Imaging Productions, a research and design consultancy that conducts social research and produces digital communications products for the nonprofit sector. She earned a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. from New York University. Dr. James has been a guest member of the psychology faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, and a faculty member in the department of Africology at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Rae Johnson, Ph.D., RSW, RSMT, is the chair of the Somatic Studies specialization in the Depth Psychology program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the developer of Elemental Movement™ and the author of a book by the same name. Working at the intersection of somatic studies and social justice, her scholarship focuses on the embodied experience of oppression, somatic approaches to research, and arts-based cross-cultural somatic literacy.
Romeo Keyes grew up in the inner cities of Las Vegas and South Los Angeles. Now nineteen, he spent most of his early years in the foster care system or homeless. He believes that his deep interest in mythology, developed at a young age, probably saved him. Romeo’s first published article, “Urban Romulus: How The Myths Have Shaped My Life,” appeared in the first issue of the journal “Immanence” (Fall 2016).
David Ragland, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and Co-director for the Truth Telling Project of Ferguson and a Visiting Professor at United Nations Mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. He researches and thinks about the moral dimensions of violence and trauma against vulnerable populations in the U.S., as well as envisioning a world with reduced violence on all levels. As an activist, educator and scholar, his recent and past work is the ground level- in his home community near Ferguson, MO. David’s analysis is drawn from the radical teaching and scholarship of MLK, particularly in his description of the Triple evils of Militarism, Racism and Materials, as an ever present part of American life- calling us to a shift in values Dr. Ragland focuses specifically on how our society conceives justice as retributive and proposes a shift toward restorative justice to transform communities and criminal justice system and take the America’s turbulent history and lives experiences into account for policies at all levels.
Susan Rowland, Ph.D., is Chair of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and teaches in the Depth Psychology Program with Specialization in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. She is author of a number of books on literary theory, gender and C.G. Jung including Jung as a Writer;Jung: A Feminist Revision; C.G. Jung in the Humanities; The Ecocritical Psyche: Literature, Evolutionary Complexity and Jung; and The Sleuth and the Goddess in Women’s Detective Fiction. She will be presenting from her forthcoming book, Remembering Dionysus: Revisioning Psychology and Literature in C.G. Jung and James Hillman.
Michael P. Sipiora, Ph.D., is a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where he is Director of Research. The author of numerous peer reviewed articles and book chapters, areas of Dr. Sipiora’s teaching and publication include existential-phenomenological psychology and philosophy, and archetypal psychology. He earned a Bachelors and Masters in Philosophy at San Jose State University. His Masters and Doctorial studies in psychology with a concentration in literature were carried out at the University of Dallas. He is a licensed psychologist who has practiced in both private and community mental health settings.
Doug Thomas, Ph.D., has a private Jungian based psychotherapy practice in Pasadena and he teaches as adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. He has presented workshops and talks throughout the state of California on LGBTQ issues and on dream therapy, his two areas of specialization. Dr. Thomas holds a masters degree from the USC School of Social Work, and a PhD in Depth Psychology with an emphasis in psychotherapy from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Over the past decade he has studied and refined Steven Aizenstat’s method of Dream Tending through ongoing training and collaboration with its creator in workshops, seminars, and retreats. For more information, visit Dr. Thomas’ website at drdouglasthomas.com.
Mary Watkins, Ph.D., is chair of the M.A./Ph.D. Depth Psychology Program, a founding faculty of its Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology Specialization, and Coordinator of Community and Ecological Fieldwork and at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA. She is the author of Waking Dreams, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues, co-author of Toward Psychologies of Liberation, Talking with Young Children About Adoption, Up Against the Wall: Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border, and a co-editor of “Psychology and the Promotion of Peace” (Journal of Social Issues, 44, 2). She has written essays on the confluence of liberation psychology and depth psychology. She works at the interfaces between Euro-American depth psychologies and psychologies of liberation from Latin America, Africa and Asia. She has worked as a clinical psychologist with adults, children and families, and with small and large groups around issues of peace, envisioning the future, diversity, vocation, immigration and social justice.
Oksana Yakushko, Ph.D., is the Chair of the Clinical Psychology Department at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her work has focused on xenophobia and oppression of immigrants; human trafficking and human slavery; feminism; indigenous healing practices; psychoanalytic and Jungian theories related to social justice; and importance of humanistic and human science oriented scholarship in psychology. As a Ukrainian immigrant and survivor of a multiple generations long history of Soviet political persecutions (which involved concentration camps, deportations, forced starvation, and other forms of abuse directed at her ancestors and her family), she is interested in ways that individual and collective trauma is lived, experienced, understood, and compassionately held.