Rolling in the Deep: Carl Jung and the Creative Subconscious

​A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of thought
And rolls through all things.
-William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”

Deep inside each of us is a box of monsters and stars called the subconscious. The seminal pioneer of the subconscious and one of humanities most challenging and provocative minds was the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. In this Olio we will explore the fundamental optimism contained in Jung’s descriptions of the subconscious–what he called “The Undiscovered Self.”Jung theorized that the human imagination is the seat of the soul, and is a gateway to the innate healing powers inherent in each of our minds. It is only by knowing these parts of ourselves that we can progress towards self-actualization and build bridges to one another. But there can be no real self-knowledge based on theory, and in this Olio, we will seek to go beyond theory in order to address the problem of meaninglessness, what Jung termed “the spiritual malady of our time.”

“There is another world, and it is this one.” –Paul Eluard

Teacher: Michael Prettyman

Michael Prettyman is an artist and scholar of Eastern Religions. He holds a Masters Degree in Theology from the Harvard Divinity School and teaches on the subject of religion and the arts, Asian Religion and philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

$20

St John’s Episcopal Church
139 St. Johns Pl., Brooklyn, NY 11217-3401