Thursday, July 17, 2014

Viktor Frankl meets Edith Stein: Timeless Night


Advance Press Release for June 17, 2014

Just Published by il piccolo editions:

Timeless Night: Viktor Frankl meets Edith Stein

by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

Late in the Spring of the Second World War. Two “troublemakers” are thrown together in an old storage shed in Auschwitz: Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who is making notes on the book he will write if he survives the camp, and Edith Stein, a Jewish philosopher/author who defied her family to become a nun. With the dawn comes Liberation, or Extermination. They make a contract for comedy, but the reality of their characters, and their deep curiosity about each other, draw them again and again, to reveal their ideas, their joys, and the deepest longing of their souls.

Elizabeth Clark-Stern is a psychotherapist, screenwriter, and playwright. Her produced teleplays include All I Could See From Where I Stood, Help Wanted, and Having Babies II. Her play, Out of the Shadows: A Story of Toni Wolff and Emma Jung was performed at the International Jungian Congress in South Africa, and for the Archetypal Theater Company in New Orleans. In 2013, On the Doorstep of the Castle: A Play of Teresa of Avila and Alma de Leon was performed at the International Jungian Congress in Copenhagen. Timeless Night premiered in 2014 in Seattle.

Product Details
Timeless Night: Viktor Frankl meets Edith Stein
Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: il piccolo editions; First edition (June 21, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690194
ISBN-13: 9781771690195

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Monday, July 14, 2014

John Hill on The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness


by John Hill, from the preface of
The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness

The Orphan addresses loneliness and the feeling of being alone in the world, two distinct characteristics that mark the life of an orphan. Regardless if we have grown up with or without parents, we are all too likely to meet such experiences in ourselves and our daily encounters with others. Our technological age has enabled us to create networks with many people, but these relationships often fail to meet the need to belong to someone, some place or something in a world that suffers from “spiritual depletion, emotional alienation, and personal isolation.” With numerous case examples, Dr. Punnett describes how loneliness and the feeling of being alone tend to be repeated in later relationships, especially when the earlier attachment patterns have been insecure, disruptive, or intrusive and can eventually lead to pathological states of anxiety and depression.

In an historical survey, Dr. Punnett outlines some of the appalling conditions that parentless children have suffered. One just has to think of 19th century England, as described in the novels of Dickens or the Dying rooms of Asia. Despite Biblical exhortation to care for the homeless and the gradual increased social empathy for orphans, as witnessed in the creation of orphanages and their gradual replacement through foster families, improved outer circumstances fail to bring the kind of healing that makes such devastating experiences meaningful.

A main purpose of this book is not just to stay within the context of the literal orphan, but also to explore its symbolic dimensions, for the author believes that symbols provide meaning to the diverse experiences of feeling alone in the world. Regardless if a child is brought up by parents or not, the orphan complex can be constellated, especially if attachment patterns have been problematic. In order not to remain limited by a purely biographical approach to the psychological orphan, Dr. Punnett elaborates on the archetypal foundations of this complex. She notes that many heroes have suffered abandonment in childhood. Their birth and early development, usually emerging from miraculous circumstances, bear the characteristics of a Divine Child, symbolizing hope and renewal for the individual, for society, and for our culture.

The constellation of this archetype in dreams, fantasy, and sandplay can act as an inspiration and bring transformation to those who have endured the sufferings of an orphan. With the help of amplification and case material, the author shows in a convincing way how the constellation of the orphan archetype with its accompanying feelings of isolation, anguish, and despair can act as a catalyst for the individuation process. Inspired by Jung’s creation of the Orphan Stone in Bollingen, Dr. Punnett’s book has placed the orphan at the center rather than at the periphery of human concern and invites us to explore the creative potential in feeling alone in oneself and the world. This is a remarkable book on a subject that tends to be viewed with attitudes that are too narrow and restrictive. The author concludes that in accepting the orphan within, we begin to take responsibility for our own unique life journey, an attitude that also celebrates authentic relationship with the other.

John Hill
Zurich, Switzerland

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Saturday, July 5, 2014

On Keeping your Friends Close - Your Enemies Closer


by Erel Shalit

On his way, the hero initially meets the Enemy, because the previously unrealized and unconscious dark side, the shadow, is often first encountered in projection, as carried by the enemy.

In reference to the First World War, Jung wrote in 1916:
As events in wartime have clearly shown, our mentality is distinguished by the shameless naïveté with which we judge our enemy, and in the judgment we pronounce upon him we unwittingly reveal our own defects: we simply accuse our enemy of our own unadmitted faults. (C.G. Jung, CW 8,  quoted in Shalit's, Enemy, Cripple, Beggar)
The realization of the enemy shadow—whether persecuted by it, or when trying to flee or to fight it—provides a possibility of energizing the ego. In the inward process of finding one’s pain and resources, and in order to eventually find one’s way to the inner wounds that unsettle us if we do not attend to them, to find the wounded child in our soul, it is necessary to go through the projections of the shadow, as for instance in the following dream:
I am persecuted by a group of young children. I am really afraid, and run as quickly as I can. I then discover that I have found refuge in what looks like a concentration camp. I see that the commander is an Arab, in Nazi uniform. I try to escape, and finally I find a way out. I am really very frightened. I cross a field and come to a small village. Initially it looks friendly, but then I discover that I have been taken prisoner-of-war. Even though I am the prisoner, I am asked to treat a wounded child. The child looks angry, and I am scared, but I know this child is in pain, so I am determined to treat it.
In the following dream, which I have discussed elsewhere, the dreamer is painfully shown that there can be no ego without a shadow. Furthermore, it demonstrates how we are often awoken to encounter what lingers in the shadow, as it is projected onto the awesome enemy:
I see a small Arab boy crawling on his knees in the street, screaming in despair, ‘My hand is cut off.’ It is in the grass, some meters away from where he is crawling. At the crossroad of the street are four cut-off hands, reaching up through the asphalt. The sight is too frightening for me to approach. I don’t dare reach out a helping hand to bring his hand back to him, to the Arab boy. On the opposite side of the crossroad there is an overturned van. Underneath it, also on his knees, there is a Jewish man, dressed in a blue overall. His hands are tied together, and bandaged. It is Intifada. (Shalit, The Hero and His Shadow, p. 119.)
While the Arab boy initially is identified as the enemy, he is then recognized as the wounded one. Later the dreamer realizes that it is by this frightening encounter that he comes to see the struggling Self, the awesome sight of the four cut-off hands in the center of the crossroads.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

News Release: Just Published - Shared Realities


June 1, 2014 - Press Release

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond
[The Fisher King Review Volume 3]
edited by Mark Winborn

Cover image, 'This Longing,' is from an original oil on panel painting by Susan Bostrom-Wong

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond brings together Jungian analysts and psychoanalysts from across the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Carl Jung’s concept of participation mystique is used as a starting point for an in depth exploration of ‘shared realities’ in the analytic setting and beyond. The clinical, narrative, and theoretical discussions move through such related areas as: projective identification, negative coniunctio, reverie, intersubjectivity, the interactive field, phenomenology, neuroscience, the transferential chimera, shamanism, shared reality of place, borderland consciousness, and mystical participation. This unique collection of essays bridges theoretical orientations and includes some of the most original analytic writers of our time. An essential read for psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts, psychotherapists, and analytic candidates.

Section I – Clinical Applications
1 Negative Coniunctio: Envy and Sadomasochism in Analysis by Pamela Power
2 Trauma, Participation Mystique, Projective Identification and Analytic Attitude by Marcus West
3 Watching Clouds Together: Analytic Reverie and Participation Mystique by Mark Winborn
4 Modern Kleinian Therapy, Jung’s Participation Mystique, and the Projective Identification Process by Robert Waska

Section II – Experiential Narratives
5 Songs Never Heard Before: Listening and Living Differently In Shared Realities by Dianne Braden
6 Variants of Mystical Participation by Michael Eigen
7 Participation Mystique in Peruvian Shamanism by Deborah Bryon

Section III – Theoretical Discussions
8 Healing Our Split: Participation Mystique and C. G. Jung by Jerome Bernstein
9 The Transferential Chimera and Neuroscience by François Martin-Vallas
10 Toward a Phenomenology of Participation Mystique and a Reformulation of Jungian Philosophical Anthropology by John White

Product Details
Paperback: 270 pages (Large Page Format 9.25" x 7.5")
Publisher: Fisher King Press; 1st edition (June 1, 2014)
Weight: 1.3 lbs
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690097
ISBN-13: 9781771690096

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles.