Saturday, December 6, 2014

Erich Neumann and The Magic Flute

The Jung Neumann Letters
An International Conference 
in Celebration of a Creative Relationship 
At the forthcoming 
Jung Neumann Letters Conference, April 24-26, 2015 
Tom Kelly, President of the IAAP, will present on

The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute, a fairy tale put to music, recounts a story symbolic of a profound and archetypal psychological process. Mozart, both genius and iconoclast, gathered together local folk songs, combined them with the magic of fairy tale images and polished them into breathtakingly stunning and deeply moving operatic arias. The magic of this opera is that it depicts the archetypal struggles inherent in the individuation process from both a masculine and feminine perspective. It is little wonder that this opera appeals to people of all ages and from all cultures. Erich Neumann recognized the profound psychological nature of this opera and shared his insights in his article entitled “The Magic Flute”. Using Ingmar Bergman’s film version of the Magic Flute from 1975, we shall let the magic of this tale work on us as we view excerpts of the opera that highlight the psychological process recounted.

Following Tom Kelly's presentation, Dvorah Kuchinsky, the Grand Old Lady of Jungian Analysis in Israel, will offer further comments.


Tom Kelly, M.S.W., completed his analytical training at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1986. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology and has lectured widely in Canada, the US and Europe. He is currently President of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP). Tom Kelly lives and has a private practice in Montreal, Canada.

Tom Kelly


Close to 90, Dvorah Kutzinsky, the Grand Old Lady of Jungian Analysts in Israel, is as sharp, witty and vital as ever. Coupled with her awareness of old age and death, she is full of life and energy, leaving most of us behind.

Her charismatic personality comes across in lectures and seminars, therapy and supervision, as her students, analysands and colleagues of more than fifty years will attest.

The person she is and her individual life are deeply intertwined with the history and culture of the 20th Century. She grew up in the house in which Kafka was born, with Max Brod, to whom we owe the preservation of Kafka’s manuscripts, among the weekly guests in their home. Her father, the philologist Prof. Zeckendorf, later one of the famous lecturers at Theresienstadt, predicted Kafka’s future long before his rise to fame.

After years in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, Dvorah - as everybody calls her - arrived at the shores of Israel, and met Erich Neumann. She became a close friend and his foremost disciple, making his writings accessible to generations of Jungians.
Dvorah Kuchinsky


Dvorah Kuchinsky will also participate in the session on 'Memories from my 'grand' father's house, and share memories from the life of Erich Neumann.


International Advisory Board

Erel Shalit • Murray Stein • Batya Brosh • John Beebe • Riccardo Bernardini 
Jerome Bernstein • Ann Casement • Angela Connolly • Tom Kirsch • Patricia Michan
Joerg Rasche • Nancy Swift Furlotti • Luigi Zoja • Liliana Wahba

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