The Psychic Drive for Wholeness - Workshop

The Orphan: The Psychic Drive for Wholeness

A Workshop for Psychotherapists and Lay People in Oberlin, Ohio

Presenters: Audrey Punnett and Dyane Sherwood

Date: Saturday March 12, 2016 from
Time: 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM EST
Location: The First Church in Oberlin, Ohio

REGISTER

Dr. Punnett will show 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. Jungian theoretical concepts will be woven into her presentation of the case of an 11-year-old boy, including his sandplay process. Her work with the boy will also demonstrate how, when working with children, there is always the potential that parents see progress and want to end the child's therapy too soon. She will discuss how she worked with this problem and invite discussion from the participants.

Dr. Punnett will have copies of her recent book, The Orphan, for signing, which can also be ordered through the publisher, Fisher King Press.

In the afternoon, Dr. Sherwood will discuss the psyche's survival strategies in response to actually being orphaned, including the case example of a young girl and her sandplay process. We will see how the healing capacities of a child's psyche are constellated and expressed symbolically. The case example will serve as a basis of looking at ways these survival strategies also appear in situations in which a person feels emotionally abandoned, including reactions to the therapist within a therapeutic setting.

Participants need not be child therapists in order to benefit from this program and apply it to life experience and to working with patients.

Audrey Punnett, Ph.D., received her diploma in both adult and in child and adolescent analysis at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She is also a Teaching Member and past President of the Sandplay Therapists of America (STA). She has lectured nationally and internationally on the archetype of the orphan. Her private practice is in Fresno, California.

Dyane N. Sherwood, Ph.D., received her analytic training at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, where she was certified as both an adult and as a child and adolescent analyst. She is a Teaching Member of the Sandplay Therapists of America (STA) and International Society of Sandplay Therapy (ISST). She has taught widely on topics in Jungian psychology such as alchemy, active imagination, implicit communication, attachment, and working with trauma. She is the author of articles and book chapters, and the most recent can be downloaded from her website, http://dyanesherwood.com. She is in private practice in Oberlin, Ohio.




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

Audrey Punnett and The Orphan: Hosted by the Idaho Friends of Jung

On January 22-23, 2016, the Idaho Friends of Jung is hosting
The Orphan: Alone yet at One with Oneself in the World
presented by Audrey Punnett, PhD

Date: January 22-23, 2016
Time: Lecture, Friday, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm; Workshop, Saturday, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Location: Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 6200 N Garrett St, Boise, ID 83714

This salon is based on Dr. Audrey Punnett’s recently published book, The Orphan: A Journey Towards Wholeness. The lecture will focus on the experience of being alone while being at one with oneself in the world. Dr. Punnett will use excerpts from her book to illustrate the connection between psyche and spirit through the archetypal image of the orphan. The workshop will expand on this topic by using excerpts from the film of the fish tale, Finding Nemo with group discussion about the individuation journey as initiated by the death of Nemo's mother, Coral.

Audrey Punnett, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, certified child, adolescent and adult analyst graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and a member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco where she is past chair of the Infant, Child & Adolescent Training Committee (iCAT). Dr. Punnett has published in peer-reviewed Journals and she teaches nationally and internationally. Dr. Punnett is an Associate Clinical Professor, UCSF-Fresno, Department of Psychiatry and maintains a private practice in Fresno, California.

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. 

www.fisherkingpress.com

The Orphan as Symbol

A review of Audrey Punnett’s The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness

Review by Dyane Sherwood

Audrey Punnett has brought this powerful topic to our attention in a thoughtful and multifaceted book that is engaging, carefully researched, and clearly written.  As a Jungian analyst, she concerns herself with the effects on individuals of losing a parent in childhood and with the universal questions of the Orphan in each of us—that is, the underdeveloped aspects of our personalities that have lacked the nurturing, structure, and sense of security that they have needed to grow.

In her opening chapters, Dr. Punnett recounts the way the theme of the orphan seemed to find her, rather than her consciously seeking it out, after she had moved alone to Zurich to enter analytic training.  Throughout, one can sense her deep empathy with the loneliness of the parentless child.

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. 

www.fisherkingpress.com

Audrey Punnett on the Orphan

June 21, 2014 - Press Release - Just Published by Fisher King Press

The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness
by Audrey Punnett

"This awesome book on the orphan, its inner, outer, and symbolic meaning, is a deep and thorough investigation into the feeling of being alone in the world. The core of this archetype gives rise to our potential to search for meaning and wholeness as does all our suffering, and – if we stay with it – it becomes our teacher. Punnett’s book is a must for all of us and reading it grants us a deeply rewarding experience."

—Kathrin Asper, PhD, author of The Abandoned Child Within

"This well-focused meditation demonstrates that the archetype of the orphan is always alive in us, even if we try to devalue and marginalize it as a symbol we can safely reject along with the children we ask to carry it. Audrey Punnett has illuminated how central this neglected mythologem is to what our souls want therapists, social workers, and clergy to recognize. Her book makes a psychological home for aloneness itself—a rare and touching achievement."

—John Beebe, MD, author of Integrity in Depth

"At the very end of his biography C.G. Jung wrote, “When Lao-tzu says: ‘All are clear, I alone am clouded,’ he is expressing what I now feel in advanced old age.” This feeling of seclusion is why he, at the age of 75, engraved the quotations from alchemy about the orphan on his stone at Bollingen. It is this wisdom that is behind the archetype of the orphan if we can only accept it. This is, to me, the most precious message of Audrey Punnett’s book on the orphan."

—Andreas Schweizer, PhD, author of The Sungod’s Journey through the Netherworld

The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness 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 in our daily encounters with others. With numerous case examples, Dr. Punnett describes how loneliness and the feeling of being alone tend to be repeated in later relationships and may eventually lead to states of anxiety and depression. The main purpose of this book is not to just stay within the context of the literal orphan, but also to explore its symbolic dimensions in order to provide meaning to the diverse experiences of feeling alone in the world. In accepting the orphan within, we begin to take responsibility for our own unique life journey, a privileged journey in which one can at some point in time say with pride, I am an orphan.

Audrey Punnett, PhD, is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich with diplomas in both Child/Adolescent and Adult Analytical Psychology. She is an Associate Clinical Professor, Psychiatry, the University of California San Francisco – Fresno; Adjunct Professor, Alliant International University; Registered Play Therapist – Supervisor, and Certified Sandplay Therapist – Teacher, ISST & STA, past President of the Board of Trustees. She is a member of AGAP, serving on the Board, and the CGJI-SF, past Chair of the Infant, Child & Adolescent Training Committee (iCAT). She has lectured and given workshops on the orphan in Europe, New Zealand, Taiwan, Canada and the USA, and published in peer reviewed Journals. Dr. Punnett maintains a private practice in Fresno, California.

Product Details:
The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness
by Audrey Punnett
Paperback edition
Price $27.50
180 pages, Index, Bibliography
Publisher: Fisher King Press; 1st edition
Publication Date: June 21, 2014
Language: English
ISBN-10: 177169016X
ISBN-13: 978-1771690164

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. 

www.fisherkingpress.com