Self in Exile - Psyche, Healing and Sense of Place

ASSISI INSTITUTE Summer Conference

Self in Exile - Psyche, Healing and Sense of Place July 20 -27, 2010
on the Island of Procida, Italy in the Bay of Naples

There is something profound about finding one's special place. We become transfixed by its power, charm and magic. The beautiful island of Procida is just such a site, and home to our 2010 Summer Conference. The oldest island in the Bay of Naples, Procida maintains its charm as an Italian fishing village, and with its scenic panoramas and unique Mediterranean architecture, the island has served as the setting for several films, including Il Postino, a story of the exiled poet, Pablo Neruda.

Throughout history, humanity has recognized the power of place, and has designated certain locations throughout the world as sacred sites. While we have always known the transformative power of place, contemporary researchers are discovering a physiological relationship between place, well-being, and healing. So too, we find that while connection to a place can be transformative, exile and estrangement create a loss of Self, a sense of rootlessness in the psyche, and a longing for one's place - in both the inner and outer world. Our faculty for this program, all leading thinkers and artists, will explore this theme from a truly trans-disciplinary perspective. We hope you can join us on the island of Procida for this special event.

Conference Faculty

MICHAEL CONFORTI, Ph.D. is a pioneer in the field of matter-psyche studies. He is Founder and President of the Assisi Institute, a Jungian analyst, and has taught at the C.G. Jung Institute-Boston, and the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York. Dr. Conforti lectures widely in the U.S. and abroad, including in Italy, Denmark, the Caribbean, Canada, Venezuela, and at the C.G. Jung Institute-Zurich. In addition to his clinical practice, he consults to organizations including the film industry, helping to identify archetypal patterns. He is the author of Field, Form and Fate and Threshold Experiences: The Archetype of Beginnings.

EREL SHALIT, Ph.D. is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Ra'anana, Israel, author and lecturer. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past President of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. He serves as liaison of the International Association of Analytical Psychology with the Jung Society of Bulgaria. He has been active in the peace movement, and is a member of The Council for Peace and Security. He is the author of numerous books and articles including: Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return (2010), Enemy, Cripple & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero's Path (2008), and The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego (2002).

ESTHER STERNBERG, M.D. was on the faculty at Washington University, St. Louis, MO before joining the National Institutes of Health in 1986. Currently she is the Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior. Dr. Sternberg is internationally recognized for her discoveries in brain-immune interactions and the brain's stress response in diseases including arthritis: the science of the mind-body interaction. She publishes numerous scientific articles, reviews and textbook chapters and has authored two popular books: The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions and Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-being (2009). Her PBS special, The Science of Healing, introduces viewers to the science behind the brain's role in healing.

GIOIA TIMPANELLI Often called the 'Dean of American Storytelling', Gioia Timpanelli is considered one of the world's foremost storytellers. Winner of two Emmy Awards, she has also won the prestigious Women's National Book Association Award for bringing the oral tradition to the American public. She has performed her improvisational telling of ancient and modern stories with other respected masters - James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, Nor Hall, and Gary Snyder. She is one of the founding members of the New York Storytelling Center in New York City. Her latest book is called What Makes A Child Lucky.

Optional Seminars
Reality of the Psyche

Michael Conforti will be leading an optional case seminar on Wednesday and Friday afternoons from 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. In this colloquium, Dr. Conforti will present clinical and theoretical illustrations of archetypal pattern analysis, and will examine the workings of complexes and archetypes. This small seminar is a unique opportunity to explore ways of applying Jung's symbolic approach to psyche in psychotherapy and organizational consultation. This program is open to anyone attending the full conference. We hope you can join us for these special presentations. Seminar Fee: $100 per session. Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

Writing from the Soul - An Archetypal Perspective on Literature, Poetry and Film Script Writing

While all stories are written from a personal perspective, they also depict humanity's encounters with the Self. Universal themes such as love, fidelity, loss and joy, while part of our collective experience, are recounted by writers in a myriad of ways. Stories are deeply enriched when viewed from the perspective of their relationship with these eternal, archetypal dramas. Writers who understand that their inspiration comes from the Self, are more profoundly connected to this greater life, which then finds expression in their stories.

These workshops will help participants learn to discern the presence of the archetypal processes and universal motifs in their stories, and how to create an archetypally coherent narrative. Marie-Louise von Franz has called archetypes "nature's constants", as are the archetypal underpinnings of all stories. Workshop members will have the opportunity to share their writing with the group.

We hope that you will join us for this special opportunity to work with Jungian analyst and film script consultant, Michael Conforti and filmmaker Gregory O'Connor, founder of Solaris Entertainment. Michael and Gregory have worked together on the film Pride and Glory, and are set to begin a new film project based on Simon Weisenthal's book, Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. Together, Michael and Gregory bring image and symbol to a new level of understanding, and make a major contribution to the world of literature and film. $100 per session.

Thursday and Sunday afternoons.

Conference Details
Conference Fee: $2395

Conference fee includes:- Tuition- Round-trip chartered bus and ferry from Rome to Procida- 7 nights accommodations (based on double occupancy)- Breakfast daily- Three dinners with local wines- Administrative fees- Pre-conference reading packet

Taxes and gratuities: $95Single room supplemental fee: $400.Optional Case Colloquia: $100 per session

Registration: $500 deposit is required at time of registration. Cancellations received prior to May 1 receive a refund less $250 per person. Before June 1, 50% will be refunded. No refunds after this date.

Travel Arrangements Conference tuition includes ground transportation from and to the Rome airport. We suggest contacting our travel agent, The Travel Loft at 888.843.5638 to ensure that your flight coincides with these arrangements.

For more information or to register, please contact the Assisi Institute at 802.254.6220 or Assisi@together.net

http://www.assisiconferences.com/

Continuing Education Credits

This conference is co-sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the Assisi Institute. NAAP is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists. The conference will carry 20 Continuing Education Units. The optional case colloquium will carry 2 Continuing Education Units per-day. NAAP maintains responsibility for the program. Full attendance is required at each presentation to receive credit. Fee is $10 per day for the main conference, and $5 per day for the case colloquium.

Please note: A limited number of partial scholarships are available for students and senior citizens. Also, if you are unable to attend the entire program, please contact the office at the Assisi Institute, as a limited number of seats are available for single-day registrations. In the event of illness or emergency, all rights are reserved to make faculty substitutions.

Where does fantasy end, where does reality take over?

As reported in Haaretz newspaper,

"Dozens of Palestinians clashed with Israeli police in East Jerusalem on Tuesday [March 16, 2010] on a 'day of rage' Hamas declared to protest Israel's consecration of an ancient synagogue in the city one day earlier. Palestinians hurled stones at police and burned tires and trash bins in several areas of East Jerusalem…  dozens of youths hurled stones at Border Police officers in the Shoafat refugee camp and in the neighborhoods of Isawiyah and Wadi Joz. Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby says police fired stun grenades to disperse dozens of protesters at one site. He said village elders helped end protests at another site. Police also arrested an Israeli rightist who sought to enter the Temple Mount compound and was refused by security forces. A police spokesman said some 3,000 officers were put on high alert … after Hamas announced, 'We call on the Palestinian people to regard Tuesday as a day of rage against the occupation's [Israel's] procedures in Jerusalem against al-Aqsa mosque.' Galilee police set up roadblocks around Safed and Acre on Tuesday to prevent Israeli Arabs from northern towns and villages from traveling to Jerusalem to take part in the protests. At 6 P.M. [Monday], scores of youths hurled stones at Border Police troops from the Palestinian side of the Qalandiya crossing, north of Jerusalem. The youths were dispersed, and the crossing closed. Tensions Monday were fanned by rumors in the Palestinian street that Jews intended to march on the Temple Mount after the ceremony."

Those of you who have read my Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return might be reminded of several passages, for instance,

"… Now, undercurrents streamed into rivers. The Islamic movement called upon all adult Arab men to join the big march to Jerusalem and gather on the Temple Mount, at the compound in front of the Al Aqsa Mosque. The call spread across the country. Young and old, from the Galilee in the north, the Negev in the south, and from the Triangle of Arab towns in the center of the country, turned up in unprecedented numbers. The call spread across the West Bank as well, and people just started marching.

The security services had presented the Ministries of Defense and of Interior Security with reports, in anticipation of unrest on Land Day and the following weeks. The government was not taken by surprise, but seemed paralyzed. The police hastily set up roadblocks across the country, which the masses just broke through. The border police had been instructed that under no circumstance may live ammunition be used. The memory of the killed demonstrators in October 2000, at the beginning of the second Intifada, was on everybody’s mind, and no one wanted events to be repeated. In quite a few places the marching crowds managed to take policemen, mostly policewomen, hostages. Most were released the following day in exchange for demonstrators that had been arrested, except for two hostages. A policeman and a young woman from a human rights group, who, by her presence at a roadblock wanted to ensure that the police refrain from violence against the marchers, had been brought to the Temple Mount area. There they were cruelly flung down to the plaza in front of the Western Wall, together with a rain of stones. Praying Jews, mostly French tourists, were quickly evacuated, and except for those two, people suffered only minor injuries.

Palestinians from the West Bank managed to break through the security fence. Widespread laughter swept across the long chain of people holding arms as they, within a matter of minutes, tore down “the wall,” the security fence, making mockery of our typical Israeli patchwork, professor Shimeoni recalled in anger and self-ridicule."

As Carl Sagan has said, “The price we pay for anticipation of the future is anxiety about it. Foretelling disaster is probably not much fun; … [but] The benefit of foreseeing catastrophe is the ability to take steps to avoid it.”

And, as one reviewer has written, "Elegantly and thoughtfully mourning today's saga of Israeli disillusion without hope, bitter alienation, and collapse of Zionist ideals, Shimeoni indicts the present movement out of the country for profit and the concomitant surrender of 'soul.' But relying on the consistency of past Jewish history and the 'triumphalism of hope' the reader reluctantly puts the book down - and smiles! "

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return is on sale now for $14.95, and Enemy, Cripple, Beggar is on sale now for $19.95 or $30.00 for the pair when ordered directly from the Fisher King Press. You can also order The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitcal Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel directly from Fisher King Press. Phone orders welcomed, Credit Cards accepted. 1-800-228-9316  toll free in the US & Canada, International +1-831-238-7799 

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Destruction of the Image and the Worship of Transiency

Erel Shalit: Destruction of the Image and the Worship of Transiency -- Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche: Winter 2010, Vol. 4, No. 1, Pages 85–98

Frontispiece

Susan Bostrom-Wong, Geology of Time #8, 2008, oil on panel, 20" × 24" (By permission of the artist) – see more of Susan's wonderful art at www.susanbostromwong.com

Abstract

Taking as its starting point Jung's statement, "Everything of which we are conscious is an image, and that image is psyche . . . [which] is a world in which the ego is contained," the fundamentalist's collective consciousness of the One Truth is compared with the postmodern imagination of a multitude of perspectives (CW 13,¶75). The identity of the fundamentalist is shaped by archetypal identification, whereby the shadow is projected onto the Evil Other, against whom acts of evil may then be "justifiably" perpetrated. Postmodern deconstruction of identity, on the other hand, tends toward a condition of transiency and "as-if." Images and ideas become detached from "ground and reality." The image becomes its own simulacrum, detached from the images of interiority. Finally, features of transiency and the transient personality are compared to and contrasted with the survivor syndrome.

Erel Shalit's books can be purchased at www.fisherkingpress.com or by phoning Fisher King Press directly at 1-831-238-7799

The Mysterious Robbery of the Queen of Clocks at the Jerusalem Museum of Islamic Art

Widow of man behind fabled watch robbery convicted in U.S. court

Haretz newspaper reports (March 4, 2010) that the widow of one of Israel's most famous thieves was recently convicted in the United States of possessing stolen property and sentenced to 300 hours of community service, U.S. law enforcement officials said. The conviction of Nili Shomrat, 64, followed a three-year investigation and is the latest chapter in a story that has been unfolding for almost 30 years. It began with a mysterious break-in at Jerusalem's Museum for Islamic Art on April 15, 1983, when a lone thief stole some 200 valuable watches from the museum's collection. The crown jewel of the haul was a watch originally made for Marie Antoinette by the 18th-century watchmaker Breguet.

Read more in Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

"…, he came to think of the exquisite Marie-Antoinette watch. It had taken the supreme watchmaker Abraham Louis Breguet forty-four years to complete this masterpiece of all times. The Queen did not live to see this timeless tabernacle of time, ready to be presented to the world only in 1827, even after Breguet himself had ascended from this world. As Sir David Lionel Salomons, the last owner of the watch had claimed, to carry a Breguet watch is to have the brains of a genius in your pocket. More than a hundred and fifty years later, the Queen of Clocks disappeared from the Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem, where the founder, the daughter of Sir David, had opened her father’s collection to the public. Marie Antoinette would reappear twenty-five years later, as mysteriously as she disappeared, having been watched and compulsively cared for by the master thief, until his death. During a quarter of a century, the glass showcase stood orphaned in the cellar of the museum. Shimeoni often wondered what happened to time in its absence. Was this only a simulacrum of time and temperature, a 823 piece replica in gold and crystal of the sun and the moon and a perpetual calendar – or was it a manifestation of Chronos, whereby Time itself moved the hands of every second? Would time continue only as long as it could manifest itself in this world? Would Time end if its worldly manifestations would disappear? Following Baudrillard, Shimeoni, as well, thought the post-modern image had become its own simulacrum, a representation of itself, no longer in need of something “real” that it would represent. …"

Erel Shalit's Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return and his previously published books can be purchased at www.fisherkingpress.com or by phoning Fisher King Press directly at 1-831-238-7799

שוד השעונים בירושלים

אלמנת שודד השעונים מי-ם נשפטה לעבודות שירות בארה"ב

הארץ מדווח (4 מרץ, 2010) שנילי שמרת, אלמנתו של נעמן דילר, אחד הפורצים האגדיים שידעה המדינה, הורשעה לאחרונה בקבלה ובהחזקת רכוש גנוב ונידונה לחמש שנות מאסר על תנאי ול-300 שעות עבודות שירות - כך מסרו גורמי החקירה בארה"ב בתום שלוש שנות טיפול בפרשת שוד השעונים. זהו פרק נוסף בפרשה המסתורית שנמשכת קרוב ל-30 שנה, ותחילתה בפריצה למוזיאון האיסלאם בירושלים שהתרחשה ב-1983. בליל 15 באפריל, שודד בודד ומתוחכם שדד כ-200 שעונים יקרי ערך מהאוסף המיוחד של המוזיאון. גולת הכותרת של אוסף זה היא השעון המיוחד שהכין במאה ה-18 אמן השעונים בראגה למלכת צרפת מרי אנטואנט. שעון זה זכה לשם "שעון המלכה" והכיל את הטכנולוגיה החדישה ביותר שהיתה מוכרת עד אז

Read more in Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

"…, he came to think of the exquisite Marie-Antoinette watch. It had taken the supreme watchmaker Abraham Louis Breguet forty-four years to complete this masterpiece of all times. The Queen did not live to see this timeless tabernacle of time, ready to be presented to the world only in 1827, even after Breguet himself had ascended from this world. As Sir David Lionel Salomons, the last owner of the watch had claimed, to carry a Breguet watch is to have the brains of a genius in your pocket.

More than a hundred and fifty years later, the Queen of Clocks disappeared from the Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem, where the founder, the daughter of Sir David, had opened her father’s collection to the public. Marie Antoinette would reappear twenty-five years later, as mysteriously as she disappeared, having been watched and compulsively cared for by the master thief, until his death.

During a quarter of a century, the glass showcase stood orphaned in the cellar of the museum. Shimeoni often wondered what happened to time in its absence. Was this only a simulacrum of time and temperature, a 823 piece replica in gold and crystal of the sun and the moon and a perpetual calendar – or was it a manifestation of Chronos, whereby Time itself moved the hands of every second? Would time continue only as long as it could manifest itself in this world? Would Time end if its worldly manifestations would disappear? Following Baudrillard, Shimeoni, as well, thought the post-modern image had become its own simulacrum, a representation of itself, no longer in need of something “real” that it would represent. …"

Erel Shalit's books can be purchased at http://www.fisherkingpress.com/ or by phoning Fisher King Press directly at 1-831-238-7799