Forever Jung

Folks flock to meetings to learn how to reflect

By Joseph Gallivan

The Portland Tribune, Sep 14, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

We love dreamers here. How else would you explain that Portland has one of the country’s biggest and most successful Jungian societies?

The Oregon Friends of Jung began 30 years ago when a Lake Oswego real estate agent named Dotty Kyle became interested in the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. An early collaborator with Sigmund Freud, Jung (1875-1961) placed great emphasis on the interpretation of dreams, on facing up to one’s dark side or “shadow self” and on understanding symbols and myths. “Introvert” and “extrovert,” “the collective unconscious” and art therapy all come straight from Jung.

It was the early 1970s and once-wild ideas about creativity and normal behavior were becoming mainstream. Kyle had come to Jung through her pastor at Christ Episcopal Church in Lake Oswego. She ran an ad for a Jung happening in the Lake Oswego newspaper looking for like-minded souls. To her surprise, 50 people showed up, meeting under a tree in her garden.

These days, as many as 400 people crowd into the Fireside Room at the First United Methodist Church, at 1838 S.W. Jefferson St., in the Goose Hollow neighborhood, one Friday evening a month. But these are no stuffy lectures: Recent talks and slide shows have included a Jungian reading of the “Lord Of the Rings” movies (the hero’s journey is surprisingly unsuccessful), as well as analyses of the Black Madonna, the purpose of nightmares and other talks with names such as “Tears of God” and “Creating a Life.”

Portland is not a town where one can train to be a psychoanalyst (as the Freudians call it) or an analytical psychologist (as the Jungians say). For that you need to go to Seattle or San Francisco. But the big names keep coming here, giving lectures and leading all-day workshops to earn modest fees. Joseph Campbell, who wrote many books on mythology, including “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” (1949) visited three times. Other names include Thomas Moore (“Care of the Soul,” 1992), Robert Bly (“Iron John,” 1990) and top Jungian analysts such as James Hall, John Beebe and James Hollis.

Dream ticket

Beebe, 65, is based in San Francisco and has been to Portland seven times. “What I like about the board, and the audience, is they always listened when you spoke,” he says. “This is one of the most alive adult education groups I have seen. They take seriously the Jungian idea that you try to do things consciously.”

Becoming conscious is a big deal. Jungians in analysis have to do “inner work,” i.e., they have to look in the mirror and see past the mask or persona they put on for others, and explore their repressed or shadow self. The shadow is not just the ugly side of humankind, it also is where creativity comes from.

Dreams are one way in. Once you honor your dreams by paying attention to them, your new dreams become more interesting, as though they want to reveal more. Jung himself says in “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (1963) that he feared he was going mad but never stopped looking into himself.

“They used to say Jungians had a faraway look to them,” says Beebe laughing, “I’d say they are people who have looked into the abyss and still have a kindness to them.”

Jungians value the midlife “crisis” and have respect for aging. As board member Jolinda Osborne says, midlife is a time of special change.

“Joseph Campbell said that midlife is when you’ve finally climbed the ladder and realize you had it against the wrong wall.”

Although the majority of people at the lectures are well-turned out women approaching middle age (the shawl and chignon set), there’s also Jerry. A heavyset man who arrives by bus, he sits in the front row asking often inappropriate questions. In a world where people who don’t fit in are routinely shushed, bounced and generally put in their place, Jerry always is accorded respect. As one regular put it, “Something obviously draws him to the Oregon Friends of Jung, and we honor that.”

Sweet treatment

The speakers say they love the way they are treated in Portland. Instead of relying on an agency, board members take turns picking up their honored guests at the airport, ushering them to the Benson Hotel and laying on a catered dinner in the West Hills. The season begins this week with Pitmman McGhee’s lecture, “Burn the Barn,” on Friday.

The nice treatment is grounded in theory. “It’s very personal Ñ there are no nonpeople,” says Vicki Hess-Smith, a board member who has a counseling office in a rambling house at 811 N.W. 20th Ave., which also contains the C.G. Jung Fae Dougan Library. “The basis of Jungian work is that each human soul is an absolutely precious thing, unique and individual, a sacred person. What we try to do is act that way, for membership and for the speakers who come.”

The book covers in a Jungian stronghold such as Looking Glass Books, at 318 S.W. Taylor St., show a rather hippie-ish iconography: lots of suns and moons, snakes, trees, towers and rivers. (The Oregon Friends of Jung logo or mandala was designed by Eugene psychologist Linda Sherman, based on a patient’s dream.) Jungians usually distinguish themselves from New Agers and popular self-helpers, however, by saying Jungian inquiry goes much deeper.

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