Louise Bourgeois was a renowned French-American artist whose influence is far reaching. She became the first woman to be honored with a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Locally, her large-scale spider piece stands in The Besthoff Sculpture Garden in City Park and her huge lighted sculpture of eyes in Lafayette Square made front page news in the Times Picayune when it was vandalized and its copper parts stolen. Bourgeois died in May 2010 at the age of 98 and continues to be a powerful international influence on legions of artists.

This talk will present a focused glimpse of the artwork of Bourgeois in the context of healing. The lifelong themes of Bourgeois, anxiety and betrayal, were mined in her artwork, using her personal experience of childhood trauma, which arose from the discovery that her governess was also her father’s mistress.

Karen Oser Edmunds, MFA,is a native New Orleanian whose mixed media works range from small collages on paper, monotypes, and intimate, miniature sculptures to large-scale installations. They have been shown in New Orleans as well as nationally, most recently in Tennessee, New Jersey, and Maine. The healing aspects of art-making underscore most of her work. Edmunds earned an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College in 2005 and her undergraduate degree in psychology from H. Sophie Newcomb College (1967). She spent a year at the University of Paris studying art and psychology. In addition to Louise Bourgeois, Edmunds has lectured on the ecological effects of consumerism and the personal trauma and loss wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

* This program was approved for 3.5 Clinical hours of continuing education credit by the National Association of Social Workers— Louisiana Chapter as authorized by the Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners.
* The C. G. Jung Society of New Orleans is an approved provider of the National Board of Certified Counselors.

What iis it about a particular situation in our professional work and daily lives that leaves something or someone difficult to understand and challenging to respond to, respectfully and ethically? In such situations and relationships of life, is there something within each of us that guides us? If there is, from where does this guiding source originate? Might it be that in such struggles (especially when ethical), are we likely to find this source hiding in an unconscious, unacknowledged aspect of our lives and psyches that prevents us from seeing clearly and with less judgment, the world around us and its people? Thus, as we seek understanding and acceptance of our own stories, as well as our psychologies and wounds, is it possible that ethical, guiding principles emerge . . . not as rules imposed from without, but as guiding lights from within?

Using lecture, film, individual and group exercises, as well as discussion, the ground for our psychological and ethical exploration will focus on one man’s life, a life now approaching its final chapter. In a story for our times, and perhaps for each one of us, an unexpected, unwanted invitation arrives. In the end, the invitation is responded to with a consciously considered choice, one some among us might characterize as ethical. The choice, once made, reshapes the story of this individual’s life and the legacy left for the world that surrounded him. In his final chapter of life, perhaps wounds are healed and a wholeness is achieved. 

Karen Magee, MA, LMFT, LPC is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Houston, working in-depth with individuals, couples and occasionally families. Following her graduate work in family systems, she trained with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, where she recently completed four years as the national Ethics Chair and serves as a senior training analyst for the Texas Seminar, an arm of the Inter-Regional. For more than 20 years, she has been an instructor at the Houston Jung Center and is known for her work with ethics and using film as a lens for psychological exploration. (The Saturday workshop will include work with film.) Karen lectures and presents workshops locally and nationally. For many years, New Orleans was her home.

Deldon Anne McNeely, Ph.D.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
7:30 pm
2 CEUs
Free to members, $10 nonmembers
Parker United Methodist Church
1130 Nashville Avenue, New Orleans
2 CEUs

Jung proposed that human nature is instinctively receptive to spirituality, sometimes referred to as a “religious instinct.” The failure of our materialistic age to support transpersonal principles resulted, thought Jung, in great suffering and frustrated longing for spirit. As militant atheism becomes increasingly vocal and popular, how does Jung’s proposal stand today? Is there evidence of Jung’s proposal, which Jung claimed was his empirical observation? Did he, as some think, give us the beginnings of a new myth or religion that is more meaningful for our time? This lecture will consider some perspectives on the possibility that we are, or are not, each subject to innate, spiritual motives.