Lara Newton at the front door of the Psychology Club Zürich.
FOLLOW-UP NOTES BY LARA NEWTON REGARDING HER INTERVIEW IN EPISODE #19:
1. Remember when I said something about candidates working with a tutor on a paper, and the tutor helps the candidate to recognize their own complexes in relating to the material, etc.? Actually this kind of learning is huge in Jungian training. The candidates are often being shown by the analyst(s) how their complexes might get between themselves and their understanding of or recognition of the "other" (which will eventually be the analysand).
Over and over again in Jungian training, the analysts are helping the candidates to look at their own psychological experience of the "academic" material, of each other, and of the training analysts. We as candidates basically work out our complexes and complexed reactions to psychological circumstances and psychological material for years, during our training, so that once we have graduated as Jungian analysts we are able to recognize our own complexes at the very early stages of their activation. We also are able to recognize the alchemical gold or treasure within the complex, and thus use that recognition in our work as analysts. The complexes of our analysands and their transformation are the focus, and our own complexes need to not get in the way.
There is no academic program anywhere that offers what Jungian training offers. It would be impossible.
2. In CW vol. 14, Mysterium Coniunctionis, paragraph 359 is where Jung actually remarks that water "kills and vivifies." My bad, I said "drowns."
3. When speaking of the brother-sister relationship, I referred to a quote from Jung that I said I was paraphrasing (or at least I said that I knew I wasn't quoting it verbatim). Here it is, from CW vol. 12, Psychology and Alchemy: in paragraph 436, Jung says, "The brother-sister pair stands allegorically for the whole conception of opposites."
4. In Deirdre of the Sorrows, Lara writes: "the story is also a tragic romance. Such romances always carry a deep significance for the people who hear them. Love that is fated to occur, no matter what obstacles stand in its way, and that is equally fated to end tragically, speaks to us of a psychological necessity. We must look closely at the nature of the lovers, what brings them together, and what tears them apart, in order to understand that necessity." ~L.L.
5. Toni Wolff's essay, Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche, discusses four feminine "types": mother, hetaira, amazon, and the medial woman. I would say that Deirdre embodies the hetaira and the medial woman.
6. Maria Prophetissa is sometimes referred to as the Mother of Alchemy because she is the first known female alchemist, and she is referred to with deep reverence by such alchemical greats as Zosimos of Panopolis. He also called her the Sister of Moses. These are considered to be metaphorical names, placing her in a position of profound authority where the Great Work is concerned. We don't know when she lived, but it is considered to have been one or two generations prior to the time when Zosimos lived (he was the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century A.D.). Some of this information can be found in The Jewish Alchemists by Raphael Patai.
UPDATE: JUNE 25, 2016
7. You had asked me if people could have a brother or sister complex even if they didn't have a brother or sister. I answered with information about this experience being archetypal, but there is another more experiential answer I'd like to add. Often girls or boys during early adolescence will experience a different kind of relationship with someone of the opposite sex. They may call it "platonic," or they may say they "can talk to him/her about anything." Sometimes they even say, "he's like a brother – the brother I never had." The brother-sister archetype has been awakened and a complex will form. The energy is waiting in the unconscious to be activated, as all archetypal energy is.
8. When talking about Deirdre, I spoke of one part of the myth but didn't remember it fully. It is the scene when Deirdre has not yet met Noise (her true love), and she sees her foster father slaughter an animal. Here is the correct sequence: she sees the animal's blood on the snow, and a Raven flies down to drink the blood. She says, "I could love a man with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as the Raven." Her foster mother then says, "the warrior Noise is such a one." And Deirdre said she would not rest until she saw him.