About Us
Welcome to the Texas Seminar website!
As Jung’s words below suggest, participation in our Seminar is an experience that is both uniquely yours, guided and contained in 9 monthly meetings throughout the year. There is much to be encountered by all of us when approaching psyche with such intention. The following details will hopefully orient you to the outer process, just as we hope to provide an opportunity for the more significant inner one - a process that is not linear, nor always rational.
"One cannot just think up a system or truth which would give the patient what he needs in order to live, namely faith, hope, love, and understanding.
These four achievements of human endeavor are so many gifts of grace, which are neither to be taught nor learned, neither given nor taken, neither withheld nor earned, since they come through experience, which is an irrational datum not subject to human will and caprice."
— C.G. Jung
Philosophy & Purpose
Jung wrote that "Experiences cannot be made. They happen – yet fortunately their independence of man’s activity is not absolute but relative. We can draw closer to them – that much lies within our human reach….The way to experience…is a venture which requires us to commit ourselves with our whole being."
The Texas Seminar provides a professional level of education in Analytical Psychology and is the local didactic seminar for candidates in analytic training with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA). We attempt to promote a forum for both didactic learning of analytic psychology and for the conscious development of oneself as an analyst.
The training philosophy of our seminar is based on the understanding that Jungian analysis involves an integration of clinical, intellectual, symbolic, emotional and ethical expertise. We are grounded first and foremost in the importance of a personal analysis for analytic learning. As Jung noted, “everything depend[s] on how far the analyst has been analysed himself” (CW4, ¶447). We therefore strongly recommend that analytic candidates engage in a personal and intensive analysis at some point during training. Because of the importance of understanding one's self in relation to one's community, facilitated process groups are also an integral part of our curriculum.
The subject matter of our seminar is focused on a comprehensive understanding of the Collected Works, on mythology, symbols, and current advances in Jungian thought. This includes post-Jungian and psychoanalytic innovations along with classical and archetypal approaches. Our hope is that seminar participants will find and develop their own points of view.
Our focus is two-fold: to train mental health providers who wish to become Jungian analysts and to provide a space in which all Seminar participants can challenge themselves and one another into creative and integrated thought in order to better meet not only the exigencies of life but encounters with the unconscious as well. We accept applications for both clinicians and non-clinicians with an interest in studying Jungian theory and the application of that theory to their clinical practices and/or to their lives.
