The Human Soul: Lost in Transition at the Dawn of a New Era - audio recording

with Dr. Erel Shalit

A Public Event on the Pacifica Institute Ladera Lane Campus, Barrett Center
Thursday, November 12th from 7:15 – 9:00 p.m.

An audio recording of the lecture is now available here, beginning with Joe Cambray's introduction.

The post-modern condition is characterized by a multitude of perspectives and narratives, challenging the view and the value of central, universal truths. The changes generated by this existential condition affect the individual as well as society, the experience of interiority as well as the perception of external reality. In cyberspace, the internal and the external sometimes converge, persona and shadow may merge, and the ego's sense of identity may become detached from its roots in the Self.

The lecture will present these developments, including the Transient Personality, who traverses time, space, narratives and a plenitude of faces at great ease, but does not stay in one place either in external reality, or within him- or herself.

Dr. Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Tel Aviv. He is a past President of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology, founding Director of the Jungian Analytical Psychotherapy Program at Bar Ilan University, and past Director of the Shamai Davidson Community Mental Health Clinic, at the Shalvata Psychiatric Centre in Israel.

He is the author of several books, among them The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey; Enemy, Cripple & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path; The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego; The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel, and the novella Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return; and with Nancy Swift Furlotti, he has edited The Dream and its Amplification. Dr. Erel Shalit is also the editor of Jacob and Esau: On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif, a previously unpublished book by Erich Neumann, and Turbulent Times, Creative Minds - Erich Neumann and C.G. Jung in Relationship, co-edited with Murray Stein, as well as the author of a forthcoming book on The Human Soul in Transition, at the Dawn of a New Era.

Last spring Dr. Shalit chaired the Jung-Neumann Conference, April 24-26, 2015 in kibbutz Shefayim, Israel.

The Night of Broken Glass, 75 years ago

77 years ago, on the night between November 9-10, 1938, pogroms took place during the so called Kristallnacht, in which more than 90 Jews were killed, 30,000 incarcerated in concentration camps, 1,000 synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish business, schools, homes and buildings damaged and destroyed.

The following are excerpts from the novella Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return:

Eliezer Shimeoni recalled the words of Chaim Potok, who so poignantly gave voice to that collective concern, “To be a Jew in this century is to understand fully the possibility of the end of mankind, while at the same time believing with certain faith that we will survive.” Living in Israel was certainly living at life’s edge, at the edge of survival.

Bitter irony turned into sour cynicism, as Professor Shimeoni reflected on the word “certain.” He was convinced that an eloquent writer such as Potok had purposefully used the ambiguous word certain. “Is there a word more uncertain than certain?” he asked himself rhetorically. “Did Potok mean that we could be sure, could be certain in our faith that we will survive, or did he mean that we may have some, a bit, perhaps a certain bit of faith that we will survive?” 

Eliezer Shimeoni did indeed have a certain, a very certain faith that the Jews would survive.
.... 

Had not the ordinary German, covering the gamut from willing collaborator to frightened compliant, been infected by years of indoctrination and selective information? “When I myself look into the mirror,” he said to himself, “it is somewhat embarrassing to admit that, perhaps, I may have wished Chamberlain success in his mission of appeasement. I have always had a soft spot for Neville Chamberlain. He pronounced himself to be ‘a man of peace to the depths of my soul,’ and I believed him, and I like to see myself as a man of peace to the depth of my soul.” ...

"Peace in our time"

And Professor Shimeoni, for one, would have made his way to Heston Airport and applauded him upon his return, because he is a man of hope and peace.

Thus, he told himself, “I cannot blame the passively collaborating German, and can only admire and feel a deep love for those who dared to see and those that dared to act.” Particularly he thought of Wickard von Bredow, as the example of exceptional heroism: As County Officer (Landrat), he received the order, November 9, 1938, to burn down the synagogue in the East Prussian town of Shirwindt, just like all the synagogues in Germany that were to be destroyed during the next few hours. Von Bredow put on his German Army uniform, said goodbye to his wife, and, ...

Eli Shimeoni wondered, “Would I have dared to trespass the prohibitions, would I have dared to buy from a Jewish store? I hope so, but the honesty that fears evoke, makes me wonder. If I would have been a 1938 German, may I not have looked the other way, avoiding the shame and the guilt gazing back at me in the store owner’s eyes of shattered glass.”

And he knew very well that pathology is always stronger and more powerful than sanity, just like hatred settles into scorched ground, while love forever remains aloft, like letters written in the clouds. Does not Father Death eventually swallow every one of Life’s Children? ...

@Howard Fox. http://howardfox.com

The Cycle of Life Book Giveaway

Enter for a chance to win a first edition paperback copy of THE CYCLE OF LIFE: THEMES AND TALES OF THE JOURNEY by Erel Shalit.

In the first half of life, the task of the young traveler is to depart from home, to step out into the world in search for his or her adventure, to find his or her own individual path. However, in the second half, we find ourselves on what often amounts to a very long journey in search of Home. In many a tale, the hero, for instance Gilgamesh, sets off on his road to find life's elixir, while other stories, such as the Odyssey, revolve around the hero's long and arduous journey home.

This archetypal journey of life is constantly repeated along the never-ending process of individuation. We find ourselves returning to this venture repeatedly, every night, as we set out on our nightly voyage into the landscape of our unconscious.

From the Bible to Shakespeare, to Carl Jung and to Erik Erikson, Erel Shalit's book, THE CYCLE OF LIFE poetically and informatively presents "the themes and tales of the journey". THE CYCLE OF LIFE received the Eric Hoffer Book Award Honors (in Culture), 2012.

Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Ra’anana, Israel. He is the author of several publications, including Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path, The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel, The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego, and Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return. With Nancy Furlotti, he co-edited The Dream and It’s Amplification, also a Fisher King Press publication. Dr. Shalit lectures at professional institutes, universities, and cultural forums in Israel, Europe, and the United States.

Click here to enter the book giveaway.