What you will receive:

• 4 Live Webinar Sessions with Q & A
• 4 Links to the Recordings
• 4 CECs

The child image may serve as an archetypal presence that invites deep listening to inner voices and embodied engagement. As those with Jungian and post-Jungian orientations know, a psychological symptom of an individual or society may be viewed metaphorically as a messenger, calling attention to that which seeks acknowledgment and beckoning to the integration of shadow aspects. C.G. Jung explored that the way the child archetype emerges within society often serves a compensatory function and has a determining impact on the fate of actual children. This four-part course will consider the difference between the actual child and the archetypal child in individual and collective contexts; explore dreams that reflect these distinctions; discuss amplifications of the child archetype vis a vie the arts and the impact on relationality and healing; and explore ways to work personally and therapeutically with fostering the potentiality of the child. The course employs PowerPoint presentations, examples, interactive discussions, and brief experiential exercises.

This Course is Ideal if:

• You are interested in furthering your understanding of Jungian concepts.
• You wish to explore connections between individual and collective contexts.
• You seek further understanding of your own psychological processes.
• You hope to bring insights about the child archetype into therapeutic work.
• You want to explore the impact of creativity on healing.
• You can envision how Jungian approaches may be brought to larger communities.

Course Overview:

Week 1 – The Child as Catalyst and Guide

Jung (1951/1969) viewed the child archetype in the framework of potentiality beyond the confines of the conscious realm—a realm of sentience that invites engagement and even “wholeness” with transpersonal aspects of the psyche (p. 178). Jung (1943/1966) believed the way the child archetype emerges within society has a determining impact on the fate of actual children. This week, we will explore aspects of ourselves and those we work with concerning the child archetype and draw from individual, cultural, societal, and collective impacts.

Week 2 – Child Dreams: Distinctions Between Family of Origin and Archetypal Presence

Personal childhood experiences appearing in dreams and emotional responses to such are to be brought to conscious awareness and processed in therapy and integrative healing contexts. Those aspects of dreams typically involve recognizable images and scenarios. However, the numinosity of the archetypal child motif invites a deeply contemplative reflection and often inspires a sense of awe and possibility with its hints of major change in the works. This week, the difference between Family of Origin and archetypal child motifs will be described. Examples and discussion will be included.

Week 3 – The Child as Creator in Individual, Cultural, and Collective Contexts; The Role of the Arts

For an individual whose childhood story was dominated by interpersonal trauma, who is prone to a lack of trust in human relationships, and who uses dissociation as a means of defense, it is not good practice to confront the trauma immediately and directly. Instead, engaging in the arts can be an avenue of gentle exploration. For instance, viewing a film with a similar story and defense strategy and seeing a trusting relationship enacted in the film as part of the healing of the abandoned child may be a non-threatening, initial way to open the door toward integration. A therapist working with an individual or group (even in community contexts) may explore aspects of a compelling film or story together, relating to various parallel aspects and ways of responding. This will be the focus of the week.

Week 4 – Future Considerations: How are we Called to Therapeutic Work and Healing?

The divine inner child can be considered an ontological reality within the mosaic of subtle lived experience. Its intelligence defies reductive definitions and materialist validation yet continually calls us to authenticity. This week, we will reflect upon how persistent, powerful, and significant the archetype of the child is personally and collectively. The child motif crosses political, cultural, ideological, and historical boundaries and blends the personal and particular with the universal. In our lives today, the child continues to call, giving us another chance to live symbolically rather than concretely, to blend conscious and unconscious, to be authentically embodied. We will close this course by focusing on how we are called to open to the potentiality of the divine child archetype in our personal lives and applied practices.

By the End of This Course, You Will Be Able To:

• Describe ways in which the child archetype enters individual imaginal work and therapeutic practice.
• Distinguish between family of origin child images and archetypal presence in dreams.
• Identify films that amplify the child in integrative processes.
• Describe the ways that shadow aspects of psyche impact societal patterns.
• Explain how identification with numinous figures may lead to dangerous egoic inflation and dissociation.
• Identify ways to foster the individuation process individually and collectively with child as guide.
• Articulate ways that the child archetype impacts personal experience.

CEC Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to identify at least two key distinctions between Family of Origin and archetypal motifs in psychological processes.
• Participants will be able to describe three approaches to exploring the impact of trauma on child images and experiences.
• Participants will be able to explain how psychotherapeutic work focusing on the archetypal child may be extended to group and collective healing contexts.

References:

Brewster, F. (2019). Archetypal grief: Slavery’s legacy of intergenerational child loss. Routledge.

Buzzell, L., & Chalquist, C. (2009). Ecopsychology: Healing with nature in mind. Counterpoint.

Cambray, J. (2009). Synchronicity: Nature and psyche in an interconnected universe. Texas A & M University Press.

Corbett, L. (2007). Psyche and the sacred: Spirituality beyond religion. Spring.

Estés, C. P. (1997). Warming the stone child: Myths and stories about abandonment and the unmothered child [Audio CD]. Sounds True.

Hillman, J. (2007). Mythic figures. In J. H. Stroud (Ed.), Uniform edition of the writings of James Hillman: Vol. 6. Spring Publications.

Hogenson, G. B. (2004). Archetypes: Emergence and the psyche’s deep structure. In J. Cambray & L. Carter (Eds.), Analytical psychology: Contemporary perspectives in Jungian analysis (pp. 32-55). Routledge.

Jung, C. G. (1969). The psychology of the child archetype (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9, pt. 1. Archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed., pp. 151–181). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951)

Kalsched, D. (1996) The inner world of trauma: Archetypal defenses of the personal spirit. Routledge.

Kerényi, C. (1949). The primordial child in primordial times. In C. G. Jung & C. Kerényi, Essays on a science of mythology: The myth of the divine child and the mysteries of Eleusis (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (pp. 25–69). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1941)

Kin, E. C., Garcia, M. E. V., Chankin, M. C., & Gomez, M. S. (2019). Oral history, legends, myths, poetry, and images. In N. Ciofalo (Ed.) Indigenous psychologies in an era of decolonization (pp. 205-231). Springer.

Le Guin, U. (1973). The ones who walk away from Omelas. In R. Silverberg (Ed.), New Dimensions 3 (Reprint ed., pp. 1–8). Nelson; Doubleday.

Rohde-Brown, J. (2023). Shadow and society: The forgotten child in collective contexts. Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies, 18.

Rohde-Brown, J. (2021). The inner child in Jungian analytical frameworks. In M. Alemany Oliver and R. W. Belk (Eds.), “Like A Child Would Do”: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Childlikeness in Past and Current Societies. Universitas Press.

Rowland, S. (2012). The ecocritical psyche: Language, evolutionary complexity and Jung. Routledge.

Singer, T., & Kimbles, S. (2004). Introduction. In T. Singer & S. Kimbles (Eds.), The cultural complex: Contemporary Jungian perspectives on psyche and society (pp. 1–9). Routledge.

Tuhiwai-Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Zen Books.

Watkins, M. (2015). Psychosocial accompaniment. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 324–341. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v3i1.103

Wood, M. A. (2022). The archetypal artist: Reimagining creativity and the call to create. Routledge.