Dear Membership,
Below is Chapter 8 of Liz Brodersen’s book that she is sharing with us to discuss during her IAJS seminar. This seminar will be conducted through the list serve from May 20th – the 25th. Here’s the video link she provided of a lecture on the topic of Taboo, Shamanism and Jungian Psychoanalysis also open for list-serve discussion during the seminar: https://youtu.be/W41e2b1j584
May 20th – 25th May.: Elizabeth BrodersenTaboo, Shamanism and Jungian Psychoanalysis
Summary of Chapter 8: “Taboo, Shamanism, and Jungian Psychoanalysis’
Liz is presenting chapter 8 from her book ‘Taboo Personal and Collective Representations, Origin and Positioning within Cultural Complexes,’ Routledge, 2019, now in paperback. She will also share a video introduction (link) in addition to the chapter prior to the seminar. This chapter discusses rites of passage that lead to a new development status. Such rites take place in secluded darkness, similar to working with unconscious processes at night-time through dream work. Within this dark and invisible frame, one enters into the liminal night-time taboo journey of transformation, analogous to the sun as it sets in the west and disappears into the darkness of the ‘other’ side. I explore the colour black as a night-time colour of invisibility. It is not considered negative, but as a potential space to be explored in the unconscious to find what is not yet realised in consciousness. Blackness itself, as described by Hillman, has many shades: there is black that recedes and absorbs; black that dampens and softens; black that sharpens and etches; and black that shines with effervescence. From the analysis of black and the role of Hades in the land of the dead, as the tabooed hidden hider, I examine the role of shamans who undertake the difficult symbolic journey to restore lost or stolen soul aspects of the self, using the work of Rasmussen, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Merchant and others on shamanism. I give two examples of this imaginal fete and compare their journey to the ‘land of the dead’ with the work of psychoanalysis, in particular, Jungian analysis in uncovering and integrating difficult taboo emotions.
Bio: Elizabeth Brodersen, Ph.D. was born and brought up in South Wales, UK. and is an accredited Training Analyst and Supervisor at the CGJI Zürich (IAAP, SGAP, AGAP) where she holds regular seminars. She received a BA (comb. hons.) from Birmingham University, UK; an MSc from the London School of Economics (LSE) and a doctorate in Psychoanalytic Studies from Essex University, UK. After completing her training to become a Jungian analyst at the CGJI Zürich in 2008, Elizabeth works as a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Germany and Switzerland and is former Co-Chair of the International Association for Jungian Studies (IAJS). Her publications include Laws of Inheritance, A post Jungian study of twins and the relationship between the first and other(s), Routledge, 2016; a co-edited publication with Dr Michael Glock Jungian Perspective on Rebirth and Renewal: Phoenix Rising, Routledge, 2017, and is author of the research monograph Taboo, Personal and Collective Representations, Origin within Cultural Complexes, Routledge, 2019. Her latest co-edited publication with Pilar Amezaga from the joint IAAP-IAJS conference material held in Frankfurt am Main is entitled Jungian Perspectives on Indeterminate States, Betwixt and Between Borders, Routledge, 2020.