Neumann at Eranos

Erich Neumann lecturing at Eranos

Erich Neumann at Eranos

a presentation by Riccardo Bernardini

The fifth and last session of the Asheville Jung Center Webinar based on the volume 

Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: Erich Neumann and C.G. Jung in Relationship 

will be broadcast on June 22, 2017, at 11 am ET.

Between 1948 and 1960, Neumann lectured annually at the Eranos Conferences. The papers he delivered at Eranos are among his most brilliant works. Scientific Secretary of the Eranos Foundation, Riccardo Bernardini, will offer an overview of these works and include many photographs taken at the Eranos Conferences during Neumann’s time.

Eranos was created by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn in Ascona (Switzerland) in the early ‘30s as a interdisciplinary cultural platform. It served as the only international convention center active in Europe during the war. The Eranos Conferences wound up becoming the most important meeting point between C. G. Jung’s complex psychology and other disciplines. Eranos also represented a meeting point for Jung and his pupil, Erich Neumann. This presentation will retrace the steps of Neumann’s involvement with the Eranos project from four viewpoints: (1) Neumann’s encounter with Eranos and his intellectual contribution to the Conferences, from 1948 to 1960; (2) The impact of Eranos on Neumann’s work and the significance of his work for Eranos; (3) Neumann’s encounter and collaboration with the Eranos Archive for Research in Symbolism; (4) Neumann’s relationship with Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn. Several photographs of Jung and Neumann taken by Eranos photographer Margarethe Fellerer, belonging to the Eranos Archive, will also be shown.

Riccardo Bernardini, Ph.D., Psy.D., serves as the Scientific Secretary of the Eranos Foundation. He is also the Founding President of the postgraduate Institute of Analytical Psychology and Psychodrama (IPAP) in the “Olivetti” University District of Ivrea and a Fellow of the Association for Research in Analytical Psychology (ARPA) in Turin, Italy. His works include Jung a Eranos. Il progetto della psicologia complessa [Jung at Eranos. The Complex Psychology Project] (2011), the critical edition of C. G. Jung’s The Solar Myths and Opicinus de Canistris. Notes of the Seminar Given at Eranos in 1943 (with G. P. Quaglino and A. Romano, 2015), and the special issue of Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture dedicated to Eranos (2015).

Watch the excerpts from all the previous seminars now! Our most recent seminar was Neumann and the Feminine. As theoretician of feminine development and the archetypal ground of the feminine in individuals and culture, Neumann had considerable influence on Jungian thinkers that followed him. Lance Owens will present as well as Israeli Jungian psychoanalyst Rina Porat. who is intimately familiar with this aspect of Neumann’s oeuvre and will summarize his views and offer her reflections on Neumann’s importance for their own thinking and practices.  Erel Shalit and Murray Stein joined as hosts in this fourth installment of the series.

The full course of this series consist of 5 webinars discussing the works of Erich Neumann as well as the relationship he shared with Jung. Participants may register for the full series of lectures for one price of $127. Participants joining anytime after the course begins can still register and catch up by watching the recorded version of prior lectures. Visit the registration page to view the free first webinar or to register for the full series.

Erich Neumann has been widely considered to be Jung's most brilliant student and heir to the mantle of leadership among analytical psychologists until his untimely death in 1960 at the age of fifty-five. Many of his works are considered classics in the field to the present day - The Origins and History of Consciousness and The Great Mother, to name just the best known among many others. Now with the publication of the correspondence between Neumann and Jung (Analytical Psychology in Exile, Princeton University Press, 2015) and of the substantial papers presented at the conference held at Kibbutz Shefayim in Israel honoring the relationship between Jung and Neumann (Troubled Times, Creative Minds, Chiron 2016), a great deal of new interest is developing in the life and works of Neumann. The five-part webinar Series is devoted to exploring the important relationship between them and discussing Neumann's works in many areas, clinical and cultural, from the perspective of analytical psychology. 

This volume of essays by well-known Jungian analysts and scholars provides the most comprehensive comparison to date between the works of C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann. Among the many specific subjects discussed are Jung and Neumann on art and religion, their views on the problem of evil, and clinical aspects of Neumann’s work. Also included are personal memories of both Jung and Neumann family members.

The book includes exclusive photos from Eranos, and several illustrations in color.

Contents:

Introduction (Erel Shalit and Murray Stein) ix

I. The Correspondence (1933–1960)

Uncertain Friends in Particular Matters: The Relationship between C. G. Jung and

Erich Neumann (Martin Liebscher) 25

Companions on the Way: Consciousness in Conflict (Nancy Swift Furlotti) 45

Neumann and Kirsch in Tel Aviv: A Case of Sibling Rivalry? (Ann Lammers) 71

II. Cultural Backgrounds

German Kultur and the Discovery of the Unconscious: The Promise and Discontents of the German-Jewish Experience (Paul Mendes-Flohr) 83

Basel, Jung’s Cultural Background and the Proto-Zionism of Samuel Preiswerk (Ulrich Hoerni) 95

The Cultural Psyche: From Ancestral Roots to Postmodern Routes (Erel Shalit) 111

III. Troubled Times

Carl Jung and Hans Fierz in Palestine and Egypt: Journey from March 13th to

April 6th, 1933 (Andreas Jung) 131

1933—The Year of Jung’s Journey to Palestine/Israel and Several Beginnings (Thomas Fischer) 135

Jungians in Berlin 1931–1945: Between Therapy, Emigration and Resistance (Jörg Rasche) 151

IV. The Problem of Evil

The Search for a New Ethic: Professional and Clinical Dilemmas (Henry Abramovitch) 167

Erich Neumann and C. G. Jung on “The Problem of Evil” (Murray Stein) 185

V. Neumann and Eranos (1948–1960)

Neumann at Eranos (Riccardo Bernardini) 199

“Dear, dear Olga!” - A Letter to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (Julie Neumann) 237

VI. On the Arts

The Great Mother in Israeli Art (Gideon Ofrat) 245

Jung, Neumann and Art (Christian Gaillard) 261

The Magic Flute (Tom Kelly) 299

A Brief Comment on Neumann and His Essay “On Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’” (Debora Kutzinski) 309

VII. Clinical Contributions

Erich Neumann’s Concept of the Distress-ego (Rina Porat) 315

Can You Hear My Voice? (Batya Brosh Palmoni) 333

Neve Tzeelim—A Field of Creation and Development (Rivka Lahav) 347

VIII. On Religion

Erich Neumann and Hasidism (Tamar Kron) 367

Theological Positions in the Correspondence between Jung and Neumann (Angelica Löwe) 385

IX. On Synchronicity

Toward Psychoid Aspects of Evolutionary Theory (Joseph Cambray) 401

X. “Memories from My (Grand)Father’s House”

Introduction 411

Some Memories of My Grandparents (Andreas Jung) 413

Memories (Ulrich Hoerni) 415

Memories (Micha Neumann) 417

Memories (Ralli Loewenthal-Neumann) 421

Memories (Debora Kutzinski) 425

A Response (Thomas B. Kirsch) 429

Remembering the Mamas and Papas (Nomi Kluger Nash) 433

Memories of Max Zeller (1904–1978) (Jacqueline Zeller) 437

Neumann at Eranos

Official launch of

The Jung-Neumann Letters

An International Conference in Celebration of a Creative Relationship

Kibbutz Shefayim, April 24-26, 2015, Conference Website Trailer

Follow updates on FaceBook

Dr. Riccardo Bernardini will present

Neumann at Eranos

Copyright Eranos Foundation Archives, Ascona

The ancient Greek word, “Eranos,” means a “banquet,” held thanks to the contributions liberally offered by the table companions. Eranos was a project of Olga-Fröbe Kapteyn’s (1881–1962), which came into being at Ascona-Moscia, Switzerland, in 1933—a “place of encounter and experience” or a “free space for the spirit,” where Eastern and Western philosophies could meet. Eranos has brought together some of the most influential scholars of the 20th century. This pioneering endeavor of annual interdisciplinary Conferences (Tagungen) has been properly recognized as “one of the most creative cultural experiences in the modern Western world” and “one of the richest centers of intellectual and spiritual interchange known to our century.” Its influence has been documented in a number of fields of knowledge, ranging from psychology to the history of religions, from philosophy to Eastern studies, from theology to anthropology, from biology to physics.



Jung’s influence, in particular, was decisive for the development of Eranos. Thanks to him, the Conferences could be profitably directed towards the study of the archetypes, the basic patterns of the psychic life, whose “archaic” and “primitive” side seems to keep its features despite the evolutionary processes that take place over time. The Eranos gatherings were characterized in the years of Jung’s presence in Ascona mostly as a meeting and convergence of different paths of research, which had been conducted independently up until that point. Gradually, this encounter became an original and fertile interdisciplinary crossroad, above all in authors like Erich Neumann, Marie-Louise von Franz, and James Hillman. Neumann, in particular, was the first analytical psychologist to speak at Eranos after Jung. Eranos represented a real trait d’union between Jung and his pupil. Between 1948 and 1960, Neumann lectured at Eranos thirteen times, on topics as “The Mystic Man,” “The Moon and the Matriarchal Consciousness,” “The Psychological Meaning of Rite,” and “Art and Time,” among others. A further contribution of his appeared in a special Yearbook, published at the occasion of Jung’s seventieth birthday (1950). Neumann’s Eranos lectures can be seen as a theoretical and clinical attempt to develop a post-Jungian psychology.

In 1950, Neumann wrote to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, recalling his encounter with the Eranos Archive: “When I came back to Europe in 1947 for the first time after the World War and having being away for eleven years, I was sure that, after all that had happened to me, Europe would seem alien and disturbing. There was one place, however, where I found my initial foothold—a ground for myself, my way of life, my work—and that was in the Eranos Archive … For some years now I have been coming to Switzerland and to Europe, but strangely enough—or is it in fact so strange?—in truth, it is always to Ascona and to Eranos that I come.”

This presentation will retrace the steps of Neumann’s participation at Eranos from three main viewpoints: Neumann’s encounter with the Eranos and its Archive for Research in Symbolism; the meaning of Eranos for Neumann’s work and the meaning of Neumann’s work for Eranos; and, through some excerpts from the still unpublished Erich Neumann–Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn correspondence, his profound relationship with the Eranos’s founder. Thanks also to several unpublished photographs of Neumann at Eranos as well as to some sequences from the mostly unknown movie, belonging to the Eranos Archives, we will thus try to understand what Neumann meant when, for testifying the role that the Ascona gatherings played in his life and work, he described Eranos as “… inconspicuous and off the beaten track, and yet a navel of the world, a small link in the Golden Chain.”

Dr. Bernardini is Scientific Secretary of the Eranos Foundation, and has served as Adjunct Professor at Turin University. Among his written and edited books are Jung at Eranos, The Complex Psychology Project (2011), The Jung–Corbin Correspondence (2013), and Carl Gustav Jung’s The Solar Myths and Opicinus de Canistris. Notes of the Seminar Given at Eranos in 1943 (edited with Gian Piero Quaglino and Augusto Romano, 2014). He serves as Co-Editor of the Eranos Yearbooks series, together with Fabio Merlini, and of Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture.

Don’t miss this historical event!

Jung Neumann Letters Conference Website

Analytical Psychology in Exile: 

The Correspondence of C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann,

edited and with an introduction by Martin Liebscher,

will be published in the Philemon Series by Princeton University Press.

Conference attendees will be the very first to purchase and receive copies of the Correspondence,
at a special, large discount by Princeton University Press.

The Jung Neumann Letters Conference

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