Twins appear frequently in folk cosmologies – usually cast in morally opposing roles. Anthony Stevens in his Guide to the Symbols of Mankind, Ariadne’s Clue, suggests that this archetype reflects the evolutionary ascent and involuntary descent of the sun: the good twin is represented as white, the bad one as black; one creates civilisation, the other destroys it; Thus twins are locked in everlasting struggle (see, for example, the myths of Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Osiris and Set).

Stevens suggests that the symbolism has grown out of humanity’s primordial awareness that day is paired with night, light with darkness, summer with winter, and so on.

The archetype of twins is therefore to do with opposites, that together represent a whole.

For Jung the opposites were “the ineradicable and indispensible preconditions of all psychic life”. In the natural state they co-exist in an undifferentiated way. However, as consciousness awakens, the tension between the opposites increases until a seemingly intolerable conflict arises. From this conflict an irrational third arises, the transcendent function, often in the form of a symbol. Logically the opposites are always split and in conflict, but illogically, they coalesce in the unconscious psyche. The duality of archetypal content can be said to be integrated only when the full range of the spectrum has been made conscious.

The Guild of Pastoral Psychology is hosting a lecture by London-based Jungian analyst and Principal Rabbi Helen Freeman entitled ”The Symbol of the Double”. Freeman will explore the symbol of the twin in myth, legend and psychological development.

Thursday 3rd November

7.30pm

Essex Church, Notting Hill, London W8 4RT

Click here for more details

Those interested in an operatic presentation of the myth of twins Castor and Pollux may be interested in seeing the English National Opera’s production running until 1 December 2011. Click here for more information.

In the myth of Castor and Pollux, one light, the other dark, the twins wear domed caps on their heads, symbolising the Cosmic Egg. Castor is fathered by Leda’s husband Tyndareus, whilst Pollux is fathered by Zeus. Castor is therefore mortal, Pollux immortal. In Jungian terms Castor represents the ego and Pollux the Self. The close bond between them represents the ego-self axis (see Stevens)

The document, which has been authorised by the House of Bishops, has been produced by a working group which includes both experts in safeguarding and those who have suffered personal traumas.

The policy sets out firm expectations for the quality of response to be made by those responsible at parish, diocese and national level.

It includes pointers for what makes a church a safe place for someone to feel confident that they can disclose their experience, as well as suggestions on how to respond if someone shares their experience.

To download a copy of the document please click here

Sections include:

- Needs of those who have been abused

- Awareness in worship

- Correcting myths

- What is sexual abuse?

- Sexual images on the internet

- The impact of sexual abuse

- The impact on sexuality

- Surviving sexual abuse

- About disclosures

- Listening and responding well

- Disabilities and abuse

- Spiritual abuse

- Ritual abuse

- Cultural abuse

- Healing and wholeness

- The issue of forgiveness

“I can only hope and wish that no-one becomes a Jungian“

He did not wish to found a school or establish an institute. Rather, his interest was largely the attempt to understand the psychological background of religious experience.

The question being addressed by eminent Jungian Analyst Mario Jacoby is: What is Jung today? Where do we stand today in connection with his genius?

Jacoby belongs to the generation of analysts trained by Jung’s closest colleagues (Marie Louise von Franz and Jolande Jacobi). He attended some of the case colloquia that Jung gave to his students. His books include Analytical Encounter; Individuation and Narcissism and Longing for Paradise.

The lecture is being organised by The Jung Club London & The Guild of Pastoral Psychology.

It will take place on 20 October at 7.30pm in Notting Hill London. Please click here for more information.

Cambridge graduate Cathy is a teacher in a secondary school – and has a diagnosis of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder).

Her story describes the wonderful help she received at a Catholic girls school as a troubled child, making it a place of safety where she could succeed.

Little did she realise how working as a teacher herself would expose her to triggering situations – a safeguarding meeting led her to suffer non-epileptic seizures; the Police’s Guns and knives talk led her to lose consciousness altogether. A day after being interviewed about sexual abuse within her family she regressed to her 12-year old part who responded to an enquiry from a member of the senior management team with “f*** off”. On another occasion her 4-year old part was found cowering under a table in the staffroom.

A brief spell being sectioned eventually resulted in a diagnosis of DID.

One of the most amazing things about Cathy’s story is the lengths the school have gone to, to enable her to continue to teach. For example, the Deputy Headteacher on her own initiative made some small laminated cards that she had prepared for Cathy to give to a student if she felt unsafe. The card is then taken to reception and a cover teacher immediately sent to the classroom. The staff are learning to spot when she is struggling, and the plan now is for them to learn some grounding techniques that they can use if they spot Cathy beginning to dissociate.

Many people suffering from DID hold down successful professional careers. Sometimes it can help to include your colleagues when working out how to manage a dissociative disorder in the work place. People can be surprisingly willing to offer support and help, significantly reducing stress for the sufferer.

To join TAG please click here

For details of an excellent book that includes various anchoring and grounding techniques, please click here

Rehearsed readings of:

Pure O by Gareth Jandrell directed by Julia McShane

(“Nick has OCD, and it’s started screaming at him… “)

Hinterlands by David Maxwell, directed by Tanja Pagnuco.

(‘An eye-opening journey into traumatised war correspondent’s troubled mind…’)

The Mad Women of England by Judi Sissons, directed by Hamish MacDougall.

(‘Rebellious women must be regulated…‘)

Date & time: 3pm on 10 October 2011

Venue: The Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D 3NE

Admission: free.   Register for complimentary tickets here

Raising funds to support the charity Mind

This is the title of a new book by psychotherapist Reamonn O’Donnchadha

Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh is considered to be one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. His best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger.

O’Donnchadha weaves together the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh and the psychology of C G Jung to offer an imaginal foundation for individual transformation.

He addresses key concepts such as attachment, shadow, individuation, sexuality and love from the perspective of Jungian psychology and through the lens of Kavanagh’s poetry, “so that doors may open to readers into their own innate resilience and capability not only to survive, but to grow“.

Chapter headings:

Psychopoesis

The Psychologist

The Poet

The Fusion-Distance Dilemma

Unstirred Mud

Place and Displace

The Sparrow’s Bow

The Generous Impulse

My Sixteen-Acre Farm

A Hellish Scatter

The Universal in the Particular

Desire’s Adulation

Pouring Redemption

To Experience Ourselves

The Creative Illness

The Inch-Wide Chasm.

A True Note on a Slack String is published by Spring. Click here for more information

The conference will focus on psychosis and its relationship to spirituality, altered states of consciousness and unusual experiences and how these can be used constructively to facilitate recovery in people with mental health difficulties.

Speakers include Consultant Psychiatrist Dr Christopher Findlay, Consultant Clinical Psychologists Dr Mike Jackson and Isabel Clarke, Janice Hartley (Director of Spiritual Crisis Network) and Dr Jessica Bockler (theatre director and actress).

“From breakdown to breakthrough” is the motto of the Spiritual Crisis Network. Their aim is to promote understanding and support for those going through profound personal transformation.

“Spiritual crisis (often called Spiritual Emergency, Emergence, Awakening or psycho-spiritual crisis) is a turbulent period of spiritual opening and transformation” according to the charity. They note that spiritual crises and mental health difficulties often overlap.

For further information on the conference please visit their website by clicking here

Conference at University of Northampton (UK) –  a day of debate and discussion with papers and exhibitions from fine art, performance art, actor training and creative writing.

Saturday 24th September 2011

Admission free

Speakers include Prof Susan Rowland, Joel Weishaus, Prof Jane Bacon, David Parker and Mike Evans.

Psyche in the Arts Research Network in an online space for critical debate, sharing and interrogation of ‘depth experience’ and arts/performance practice and research.

It will be of interest to Jungians, arts and performance practitioners and scholars and anyone interested in the most profound and meaningful aspects of arts practice.

The group aims to engage in and develop new modes of speaking and theorising from the experience of psyche and the processes of creation.

For more information contact Prof Jane Bacon by clicking here

In fact, according to a study by Paul Andrews, Evolutionary Psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University, sufferers who use anti-depressants aretwice as susceptible to further episodes in the future.

His meta-analysis considered numerous other research findings and discovered that people suffering from depression who took no medication had a 25% chance of relapsing, whilst those who took medication and then stopped were 42% more likely to have another depressive episode.

Why is this?

The brain self-regulates the production of serotonin and other neurotransmitters. Anti-depressants are intended to disrupt and alter production. Andrews notes that whilst anti-depressants reduce symptoms for some sufferers in the short term, there seems to be an issue over their long-term effect. It seems that the brain can over-correct once medication is stopped and struggles to re-establish healthy self-regulation.

“Anti-depressants can leave people stuck in a cycle where they need to keep taking them to prevent a return of symptoms” says Andrews.

He goes on to suggest that depression may actually be a natural and beneficial – though painful – state in which the brain is working to cope with stress.

“There’s a lot of debate about whether or not depression is truly a disorder, as most clinicians and the majority of the psychiatric establishment believe, or whether it’s an evolved adaptation that does something useful”, he says.

Andrews’ paper, Blue Again: perturbational effects of anti-depressants suggest monoaminergic homeostasis in major depression, has been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

In major depressions where there is a significant loss of functionality or risk of suicide, anti-depressants are clearly necessary. This research, however, reinforces the need to be cautious in starting on anti-depressants in cases of mild or medium depression.

Concern has been expressed recently about GPs prescribing anti-depressants too quickly, in circumstances where psychotherapy and counselling should be the treatment of choice. Click here to read more about this.

Andrews’ research raises two interesting and related points for those interested in psychotherapy – the self-regulation of the psyche and the positive purpose of depression.

Carl Jung observed that it is not only the body that self-regulates, but that the psyche also self-regulates.

It does this without us noticing – through dreams, images and other unconscious contents. Our unconscious and consciousness interact to provide a healthy balanced psyche.

(For a brief summary of Self-regulation of the psyche, see the Jung Lexicon on the New York Association for Analytical Psychology - click here.)

When there is a disturbance in the psyche, the self-regulatory function can become disrupted. Jung explained:

“The aim of analytical psychotherapy, therefore is a realisation of unconscious contents in order that compensation may be re-established”.

If, therefore, a depression is caused by a disturbance in the self-regulation of the psyche, it may be more beneficial to make conscious the repressed contents of the unconscious through psychotherapy, than to take medication.

Jung tended to have a teleological attitude to the psyche – rather than focus on its diseases and dysfunctions, he saw the psyche as trying to heal itself. When faced with a psychological difficulty of some sort, he would enquire as to what healing the psyche was trying to achieve.

In 1959 Jung received a letter seeking advice as to how to deal with feeling depressed. There is not space here to include the whole of his reply, but here is an extract:

I am sorry you are so miserable. “Depression” means literally “being forced downwards”. …

When the darkness grows denser, I would penetrate to its very core and ground, and would not rest until amid the pain a light appeared to me, for in excessu affectus [in an excess of affect or passion] Nature reverses herself.

I would turn in rage against myself and with the heat of my rage I would melt my lead. I would renounce everything and engage in the lowest activities … I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.

Anyway that is what I would do. What others would do is another question, which I cannot answer. But for you too there is an instinct either to back out of it or to go down to the depths. But no half-measures or half-heartedness.”

In essence what Jung is saying is that he would wrestle with the depression in order to extract its meaning, the thing of great value that is hidden in it.

By comparing the struggle with depression to Jacob’s struggle with the angel of God, Jung not only draws attention to the profound difficulty of the struggle, but also to its meaning as relating to a struggle with something of higher value within oneself.

Having survived the struggle, Jacob demands a blessing and, as his reward, is renamed Israel “because you have fought with God and man and have won“.

Jacob’s hip never recovered – we are wounded by our struggles in life – but his wrestle in the dark night with such a powerful force was a key transformative experience in his life that enabled him to fulfil his potential.

Depression feels like a wholly negative state of hopelessness and despair. Meaning and fulfilment in life are lost. We are stuck. But if, instead of seeking a quick solution through anti-depressants, we struggle with the darkness until it reveals its meaning, our depression can be a positive life-enhancing and even life-changing experience.

Jacob went on to father the people Israel. As a result of his titanic struggle he became fruitful, a leader and a mature man in his own right.

This therapeutic tool has been adapted by de Serdici for modern living.

The day will offer space and time where focus can be given to current life issues, active imagination and dreams, in a private and reflective way.

Novices and the more experienced both welcome.

Simona de Serdici ia an artist and therapist working for a West London clinic specialising in addiction.

For more information, click here