11/21/2008 Jung Society of Washington Ileen Brennan Root, PhD

What: An Evening With
Who: Ileen Brennan Root, Ph.D.
When: Friday
Fees: $15.00, members; $20.00, nonmembers; $10.00, full-time students and seniors over 65

Let us imagine archetypes as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the roots of the soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves and the world.

-James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, p.xix

Shamanic traditions all over the world have spoken of the Realm of the Storytellers or Mythmakers as a region within alternate reality that we can visit in order to begin to collect our personal myths. In this program, I will share my own personal mythic quest in search of the archetypal Dark Goddess, who had entered my psyche and refused to leave. This journey has spanned most of my life, culminating most recently with the completion of my doctorate in depth psychology.

In researching and writing my dissertation, entitled Redeeming the Gorgon: Reclaiming the Medusa Function in Psyche, I willing opened myself to this archetypal field, named "psychoidal space" by Jung and experienced as a space in which everyday conscious reality shifted as synchronistic events, visions, and waking dreams became part of my everyday psyche. (Please note that I was careful, throughout this journey into deep inner space, to maintain grounded anchors). As I became more adept at traversing this strange otherworld, I came to realize the deep wisdom contained within the mythic symbols and stories. Could this state, which sociologists derided as primitive Participation Mystique, actually yield a primordial communication with the numinous forces (Deities, Tao, perhaps quantum Unified Field)?

Ileen Brennan Root, PhD
. . . is a frequent writer and lecturer on Archetypal Psychology, Transper-sonal Psychology, and Archaeomythology. She holds a PhD in depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, an institution uniquely dedicated to tending the Anima Mundi (Soul of the World). Her interests and writing frequently deal with exploring the subtle intuitive realms of knowledge and experience that are so authentic to those who share the experience yet discounted within contemporary culture. Her diverse speaking and teaching experience has been gained as a corporate executive, consultant, and trainer within the fields of investment, marketing, and human resources. In addition, as an author of visionary and historical fiction, she has presented numerous writers workshops. With a BA in Literature and an MA in Library Science, she currently serves as the Psychology/Philosophy subject specialist for the Washington, DC, Public Library System.