The C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles offers a Certificate Program in Jungian Studies for clinicians and non-clinicians. This version of the Certificate Program is intended for the public interested in the in-depth study of Jung’s psychology. It is not limited to licensed mental health professionals.
The program consists of 20 sessions of 3 hours from September 2025 through June 2026. All the sessions will be online on Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. [Pacific Time]. Please check our Course Schedule below for exact dates and times.
Two Saturday Lectures with Stephen Kenneally, M.A., M.B.A., M.F.T.
Saturday, September 6, 2025; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
INTRODUCTION TO JUNG AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INDIVIDUATION – PART 1
Jung’s psychology remains profoundly relevant because, despite the initial difficulty of his approach, it resonates with experience, especially in light of the quest to find meaning in life’s suffering and to participate in the desire to individuate. In this first class, we will explore the cultural and scientific context from which Jung’s thought emerged, along with the personal crisis that plunged him into a confrontation with the unconscious—an experience that shaped his life’s work. We will also introduce key concepts, including the persona, shadow, anima/animus, archetype, the collective unconscious, and the Self.
September 20, 2025; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
INTRODUCTION TO JUNG AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INDIVIDUATION – PART 2
In this class, we will discuss how the various components of Jung’s theory interrelate, guiding our approach to complexes, dreams, suffering, ambition, and inspiration. We will examine Jung’s method of amplification—the process of discovering our inner struggles and dreams mirrored in mythopoetic material—as a means of gaining deeper insight and appreciation for the individuation process. We will look at some archetypal stories and images to see how Jung’s ideas can be found in cross-cultural expressions of life’s journey.
Stephen Kenneally, M.A., M.B.A., M.F.T., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Santa Monica, CA. He is active in the training at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and has taught for over ten years at Antioch University. Stephen has also worked at an experiential retreat center, and prior to that, worked in finance in New York City.
Two Saturday Lectures with George Bright, M.A., M.Sc., Dip. Theol.
Saturday, October 4, 2025; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
INTRODUCING PHILEMON
Replying to a patient who urgently asked who could tell him the meaning of his life, Jung replied: “Within you there is a person who is perhaps millions of years old . . . [who] has experienced this situation millions of times and has stored all these human lives and their sediments accordingly.” He refers to the figure whom in Liber Novus and The Black Books he calls Philemon, later described as “My ‘guru’, a real ghostly guru.” In this presentation, I will trace Jung’s developing encounter with and understanding of Philemon by guiding us through the Liber Novus and Black Books narratives. My aim is to clarify the role of Philemon in present-day quests for the meaning of life, the urgent questions that may drive us to seek analytic help when our own answers, life’s puzzles, and dilemmas are no longer adequate.
Saturday, October 25; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
INTRODUCING KA
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung wrote that “Philemon was the spiritual aspect, or 'meaning'. Ka, on the other hand, was a spirit of nature... a kind of earth demon or metal demon.” In Black Book VII, we learn a great deal more about Ka, and I will present him as the figure from whom Jung first learns that most of what affects us in life comes from a realm which we cannot know or research, but from the darkest unknowable. “The unknowable” is not a comfortable terrain for the rational and scientific mind, but may have been seriously undervalued in an age that pins its hopes on what we can know. Jung revisited this question much later in his life in his work on synchronicity. By tracing Jung’s Black Book encounters with Ka, I aim to re-evaluate the role of the unknowable in our lives, using Jung’s Black Books' imaginative language rather than his later conceptual approach.
George Bright, MA, MSc, Dip. Theol., was educated at Cambridge University and The London School of Economics. He is a Training & Supervising Analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology and a co-founder of The Circle of Analytical Psychology, a London-based group engaged in the study of Jung’s Liber Novus and Black Books. He works in private practice in London. His 1997 paper, Synchronicity as a Basis of Analytic Attitude, won the Michael Fordham Prize.
Two Saturday Lectures with Muriel McMahon, M. Ed.
TWO-PART JUNGIAN EXPLORATION OF FAIRYTALES: THE TINDER BOX AND THE JUNIPER TREE: PATHWAYS TO INDIVIDUATION AND REDEMPTION
Saturday, November 8; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
THE TINDER BOX, A FAILED INDIVIDUATION
Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinder Box, is a story of a soldier's journey towards individuation. Initially his lack of conscious moral engagement, desire for superficial power and transient success reflect an inflated ego and psychic fragmentation. His transformative but ultimately destructive use of the tinder box, and his relationship to the magical dogs, symbolizing instinctual and shadow energies, reflect an unchecked inflation, unconscious shadow material, and the misuse of archetypal power. Participants will engage with active imagination exercises, group discussion, and reflective journaling prompts to illuminate how failed individuation can guide us toward deeper self-awareness and cautionary wisdom.
Saturday, November 22; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
THE JUNIPER TREE, SUCCESSFUL INDIVIDUATION AND REDEMPTION
Building upon the insights from "The Tinder Box," our second session will focus on the Brothers Grimm's powerful tale, The Juniper Tree, the story of a boy's journey through betrayal, death, and resurrection. We will analyze the symbolic motifs of death, transformation, and rebirth embodied within the juniper tree itself, as well as the boy's journey towards individuation. Themes of sacrifice, the reparative power of truth-telling, and the integration of shadow material are evidenced as necessary steps towards psychic healing. We will use guided meditation, reflective group sharing, and analysis of imagery to deepen our understanding of this redemptive and transformative journey
Muriel McMahon, M. Ed., is a Zurich trained Jungian analyst and internationally recognized educator specializing in depth psychology, fairytales, and dream analysis. With extensive experience facilitating retreats, workshops, and seminars globally, Muriel integrates traditional storytelling with contemporary psychological insights to foster transformative learning experiences. She is the founder of Fox Haven, a retreat center dedicated to exploring Jungian principles, archetypal symbolism, and spiritual growth through immersive and experiential learning.
Two Saturday Lectures with Robert Moradi, M.D.
Saturdays, December 6 & 20, 2025; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
DREAMS
Dreams can serve as metaphors for unconscious conflicts, highlight shadow or disavowed pats of the personality, reveal aspects of our interpersonal relationships, reflect issues in the transference, make us more aware of the role of our somatic experience, alert us to psychological issues that are in the process of becoming conscious, and connect us to our innermost authentic core sense of self. In this class we will focus on how to identify different types of dreams, ways of helping the dreamer to amplify their dream material, how to distinguish between the personal and archetypal aspects of a dream, and the role of specific kinds of dreams in the context of the analytic process.
Robert Moradi, M.D., is a Jungian analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Monica. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine. Currently, he teaches and writes on Jungian approaches to clinical practice.
Two Saturday Lectures with Thomas Singer, M.D.
Saturdays, January 10 & 24, 2026; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
THE PSYCHE IN THE WORLD: HOW CULTURAL COMPLEXES CAN TAKE POSSESSION OF OUR SOULS
Learning to differentiate between the personal, group, and archetypal levels of our cultural complexes allows us an opportunity to identify some of the ways in which our lives are deeply influenced by these complexes, which operate at many levels of the psyche. Drawing from his research in Australia, Latin America, Europe, and East Asia, Dr. Singer will examine the basic concept of cultural complexes and ways in which they operate—in individuals and in groups—that can be based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and national identity in the emerging global community. Utilizing case material, we will look at a potent cultural complex manifested in the life of an individual. We will study some of the ways in which cultural complexes can live and function both within a group and between groups. In the second session, we will follow how an archetypal energy takes form through history in personal and cultural complexes. Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to identify and share their own experiences of cultural complexes—whether it be in personal experience, clinical examples, or in the emerging national and world upheaval.
Thomas Singer, M.D., is a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco and the current president of ARAS, an archive of symbolic imagery. Author of The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics, and Psyche in the World and The Mind of State he has also edited a series of books exploring cultural complexes that includes Cultural Complexes in Australia: Placing Psyche (Australia), Cultural Complexes in Latin America, Europe’s Many Souls, The Cultural Complex, Cultural Complexes and the Soul of America, Cultural Complexes in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan: Spokes in the Wheel. The newest in this series is Cultural Complexes and Europe’s Many Souls: Jungian Perspectives on Brexit and the War in Ukraine.
Two Saturday Lectures with Joseph Cambray, Ph.D.
Saturdays, February 7 & 21, 2026; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
SYNCHRONICITY, COMPLEXITY, AND THE NEW COSMOLOGY
This presentation will begin with a brief history of the origins and development of Jung’s notions of synchronicity and the psychoid realm. Complexity and field theories will then be applied to link these concepts to a 21st-century view of a fully interconnected cosmos, stated in a modern form, with acknowledgement of various precursors from different traditions. This approach opens to the hopeful but uncertain possibility of moving towards a reenchantment of the world, which is a vision emerging in many areas of culture facilitated by revivification of emotions such as wonder, awe, and the sublime. To explore this, select materials from ecology and the arts that seek to envision and represent these realities will be offered.
Joseph Cambray, PhD, is Past-President-CEO of Pacifica Graduate Institute; he is Past-President of the International Association for Analytical Psychology; and has served as the U.S. Editor for The Journal of Analytical Psychology. He was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies. Dr. Cambray is a Jungian analyst now living in the Santa Barbara area of California. His numerous publications include the book based on his Fay Lectures: Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe. He has published numerous papers in a range of international journals. He lectures and gives workshops internationally.
Two Saturday Lectures with Katharine Bainbridge M.F.T., S.E.P.
Saturdays, March 7 & 28, 2026; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
“TO DIE BEFORE WE DIE”: DEATH AND THE DEEP IMAGINATION
Death comes in many guises—an ending, a silence, a release, a return. It walks beside us in shadow and dream, in grief and in sudden joy. Across the worlds of myth, depth psychology, and contemplative wisdom, death is not simply a fact—it is a presence, a power, a sacred threshold. In this two-part offering, we will enter into dialogue with death—not to solve its mystery, but to bow to it, speak with it, and let it change us. Drawing from Jungian thought, Buddhist philosophy, and ancient myth, we will explore death as both a personal experience and a collective archetype. Together we will ask: What must die so that something true may live? This series is for those who feel death stirring in their dreams, their losses, their questions. Therapists, artists, wanderers, and witnesses are welcome.
Katharine Bainbridge, M.F.T., S.E.P., is a Jungian analyst and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner in private practice in Encino. Her unique holistic psychotherapy practice is partly informed by her 30 years as a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. Katharine writes, lectures, and holds workshops nationally on trauma, grief, and the collective wounds of the feminine.
Two Saturday Lectures with Maggie Gwinn, L.M.F.T.
Saturdays, April 11 & 25, 2026; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
THE NUMINOUS PATH OF THE TWELVE-STEP EXPERIENCE
“You see, ‘alcohol’ in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.” -C. G. Jung, Letter to Bill W., 1961.
These lectures will discuss both the light and dark sides of the numinous as the alcoholic stumbles through the stages of addiction. From the magical and numinous transformation of the first drink to the black pit of “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization,” as the “disease” progresses to an inescapable bottoming-out, then rebirth as the alcoholic finds, or rediscovers, a connection to a Higher Power as recovery progresses over the years. Alcoholism oscillates between the opposites of the light and dark, the ecstasy of the Dionysian revel with wine, dance, music, masks, and theatre, to its murderous conclusion with dismemberment and death. The Twelve-Step program is, like Jungian Analysis, a transformational model dependent upon a relationship to the Self, or God, at every step. This program reflects on similarities between Jung’s concept of individuation and the progress of the alcoholic through the Twelve Steps as he trudges toward recovery.
Lecture material will include Jung’s writings with emphasis on the Terry Lectures, the writings of Bill W. in A.A. literature, and the writings of William James, Rudolph Otto, Walter Otto, Kerenyi, and others. The program will include recordings and film clips and allow interactive discussion time. Both sessions will emphasize experiential sharing of one’s encounters with the numinous in one’s Twelve-Step experience and encounters with the numinous in other venues, such as Jungian analysis, dreams, religion, or the arts. Those in recovery, Jungian analysis, or both should find this program relevant to their interests.
Maggie Gwinn, L.M.F.T., is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Santa Monica since 1990. She has taught and supervised at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, Antioch University, Phillips Graduate Institute, and Maple Counseling Center. She is an American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Approved Supervisor and has developed a specialty working with high-conflict couples. She was a 2009 nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play, TORTURE. A former actress, she has a life-long interest in creative expression. This finds emphasis in her analytic work with writers, actors, fine artists, and architects, as well as work with professionals in all fields to integrate creative energies that have not found an outlet. She has maintained a close connection to two Twelve-Step Programs for over 37 years.
Two Saturday Lectures with John Beebe, M.D.
Saturdays, May 9 & 23, 2026; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
COMING FROM THE SELF
Most people accommodate others in social situations, summoning the persona in the service of adaptation. There are times, however, when a person needs to choose instead to come from the Self. Drawing from two strong semi-autobiographical films by American women directors, we will focus on critical turning points in the lives of creative female characters at different ages whose task it was to learn to come from the Self in order to keep others from pre-empting their potential. Dr. Beebe will discuss what these films reveal about artistic individuation.
John Beebe, MD, is a Jungian analyst and past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco who has spearheaded a Jungian approach to the analysis of film. In teaching and writing, he has often used psychological type and archetype to explore developments in the cultural and political unconscious. His books include Integrity in Depth and Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type. With Virginia Apperson, he has co-authored The Presence of the Feminine in Film.
Two Saturday Lectures with Marybeth Carter, Ph.D.
Saturdays, June 6, 2026; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
VISIONS: NUMINOUS EXPERIENCES ON THE PATH OF INDIVIDUATION
This presentation will examine the phenomenon of waking visions as something that can move the individual towards a greater consciousness and sense of wholeness. Jung suggested that these "visions" contained unconscious material that was incubated over time, eventually finding expression in a form that contained both image and affect. We will examine some of the ways in which visions and other symbolic spontaneous phenomena can occur when the ego is struggling to assimilate challenging and often overwhelming emotional experiences, by providing an avenue by which these deep and often chaotic feelings can be contained and expressed, and brought to consciousness.
Saturdays, June 20, 2026; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY: A CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING PRACTICE
Jung defined individuation as the process of creating a psychologically-minded individual who, as a result of learning to adapt to the collective and then undergoing a differentiation process, is granted freedom. In this paradigm, analysis is seen as a process by which the individual is gradually able to re-integrate formerly split-off parts of the self, resulting in a greater sense of self-agency and cohesion. In this presentation, we will examine some of Jung's ideas regarding the stages of consciousness as a means of mapping the emergence of a psychological process.
MARYBETH CARTER, PhD, is a Jungian analyst with a degree in religious studies with honors from Indiana University and in clinical psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she is now an adjunct faculty member. She is past chair of the International Association for Jungian Studies (IAJS) and serves on the board of the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. Marybeth’s interests are in the creative arts, transcendent states, and the process of individuation. Some of her published work includes “Crystalizing the Universe in Geometrical Figures: Diagrammatic Abstraction in the Creative Works of Hilma af Klint and C. G. Jung” and “Painting an Especially Bright Spirit: A Jungian Lens on the Art of Agnes Pelton,” all published in Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. Her book The Spectre of the Other in Jungian Psychoanalysis, co-edited with Stephen Farah, is published by Routledge and won the 2023 Gravida Award for Best Edited Book. Recently, Marybeth was Guest Editor of a special issue of Psychological Perspectives journal entitled, “Queer Jungian Voices.” Correspondence: Marybeth.Carter@msn.com.
