New IAJS Seminar : Jung’s Personal Confession with Betsy Cohen

Dear Membership,
Betsy Cohen will be presenting a ZOOM IAJS Seminar entitled “Jung’s Personal Confession” on February 27. 

The ZOOM session begins at 10 am Pacific (San Francisco) 6 pm London time. Ris Swank will moderate the session.
A ZOOM invitation will be posted a few days prior to the event. The recording link will be posted on the day of the seminar and the list serve will be directed to commentary/discussion about the presentation through Tuesday March 1st. On March 2nd, the list-serve will be opened to non-related posts. 


Summary: Jung’s primary template for describing the delicate transference phenomena of the analytic relationship is depicted in the symbolism of an alchemical opus, the Rosarium Philosophorum, which he discovered at age seventy-one. His selection of this opus engenders many questions. For instance, why did he choose arcane, sometimes distant, drawings to describe the most personal aspect of his theories for how analysts are to help our patients heal? What is the subjective confession behind Jung’s choice of the Rosarium drawings as a template for our deep work with patients? Did Jung’s personal relationships with three ex-female patients, Sabina Speilrein, Maria Moltzer, and Toni Wolff, influence his choosing the Rosarium Drawings?  

 In this seminar, Dr. Cohen will strive to answer these questions by exploring the power of Eros in Jung’s life with these patients and in the ways that it shaped his theories of transference, countertransference, and individuation. We will discuss Dr. Cohen’s intimate use of the drawings, Jung’s shadow, daimon, his life with these patients, and his views on marriage. Dr. Cohen proposes that these aspects point to Jung’s personal confession.

Betsy Cohen, LCSW, Ph.D., analyst member and faculty at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, is the author of The Snow White Syndrome: All about Envy (MacMillan, 1987). She was on 120 TV and radio shows, including Oprah! She’s also published in The Jung Journal on “The Intimate Self-Disclosure,” “Emmanuel Levinas and depth psychotherapy,” “Jung’s Answer to Jews,” “Dr. Jung and his patients,” “The Flexible Frame: holding the patient in mind” and “The Skinless Analyst: mutual transparency in psychoanalysis.” Her paper, “Tangled Up in Blue: A revision of complex theory,” is in Why and How We (still) Read Jung (J. Kirsch and M. Stein, Eds.), Routledge, 2013. Her current interest is exploring how ancient wisdom, particularly the erotic dialogues of Plato and the Song of Songs, could be incorporated into contemporary relational Jungian psychotherapy.  

1 thought on “New IAJS Seminar : Jung’s Personal Confession with Betsy Cohen”

  1. I attended Dr Cohen’s seminar earlier today on Jung’s Personal Confession. I have not yet seen the link to receiving a copy of her paper. Please direct me to where I can find this link. Thank you.

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: