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Please find below the Workshops and Master Classes from Sunday, 24th August 2025.
Workshops:
Pre-Congress Workshop 1
New perspectives on Active Imagination in Movement: the Knowledge of the Heart and the Spectrum of Colors of the Soul
Lead author: Antonella Adorisio (CIPA) - Co author: Margarita Mendez (SVAJ)
Margarita Mendez and Antonella Adorisio would like to propose a Pre-Congress workshop on Active Imagination in Movement focusing new perspectives in the field and keeping in mind the experiences of the non-understandable. For many years, the IAAP Congresses have dedicated a pre-congress day to the exploration and practice of Active Imagination in Movement. These experiences can expand our perspective and invite us to explore beyond the confines of rationality. Jung knew that the intellect, as part of the Whole, cannot explain all phenomena because the psyche is both, rational and irrational.
Non-understandable experiences often tap into the sphere of intuition and archetypal understanding. The rational mind may struggle to grasp these experiences, but the intuitive and symbolic aspects of the psyche can provide valuable insights. Active imagination can establish a bridge between conscious and unconscious, enabling us to explore and engage with the non-understandable through the body/psyche expression.
In the Red Book we learn that for Jung the contempt of the heroic spirit of time towards “the irrational” turned off the knowledge of the heart. Today we have re-discovered what many ancient cultures have always known, that the heart has its own intelligence capable of register the multiple colors of life and the range of emotions. Research has shown that the heart has its own complex network of neurons, neurotransmitters, and electromagnetic fields. The heart communicates with the brain and other organs through neural pathways and hormonal signals. The heart is the seat of a non-local intuition that transcends the boundaries of time, space, and individual consciousness. It implies that the heart has the capacity to perceive and understand aspects of reality that extend beyond our immediate awareness.
“The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth.” C.G. Jung
Jung saw the analogy between the heart and the green seed, indeed to be able to perceive colors is a mystery and a gift from nature. In fact what we perceive as colors is the reflection of light over an object; light is an electromagnetic field with frequencies that range in a spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet. What our brain register as the color of something is the pigment it rejects rather than the one it absorbs.
The metaphor of the range of the spectrum of colors as a description of inner knowledge was recognized by Kundalini yoga and its chakras as well as by Alchemy and the different stages of transformation. Jung’s idea was that an archetype can be depicted as a spectrum, ranging from a physiological or instinctual pole to a spiritual or imaginistic pole. We would like to offer the participants the possibility to explore the psychic life of colors while feeling connected to the living intelligence of the heart in order to open and deepen the path to Active Imagination in Movement.
Pre-Congress Workshop 2
Active Imagination: Engaging the Wisdom of the Body in Navigating Experiences of the Non-Understandable
Lead author: Tina Stromsted (CGJISF) - Co author: Eileen M. Nemeth (AGAP) Lisa Malin (OGAP) Kate Jobe (Switzerland) Nancy Gurian (California)
Our bodies and dreams may be our deepest access to the unconscious, the dark interior where nonverbal, inarticulate forms of understanding exist before emerging through sensation, gesture, image, memory, and the temenos of relationship. In these challenging times, the body/psyche/spirit connection can serve as a vital compass to help navigate non-understandable passages, painful turmoil, and unexpected opportunities as Eros and Logos find a new balance.
Jung referenced bodily movement and dance as forms of active imagination as early as 1916, in “The Transcendent Function.” Current research still points to the importance of the body in working with transgenerational trauma patterns, implicit memories, and family dynamics in analysis. Rather than attempt to make meaning prematurely, Authentic Movement offers a way to contact one's authentic experience through the senses and emotions, in the body and through art. Inner-directed movement bridges the realms of conscious and unconscious, body and psyche, instinct and spirit, affect and image, memory, and emergence.
What was experienced as non-understandable moves toward form and consciousness.
In the process, we may learn to discern and reclaim our unconscious “shadow” projections, which we otherwise tend to attribute to others. Engaging with "unrecognizable" elements in this way requires a level of processing that's not explicit or articulate. Rather, it calls for a be-ing with that is non-linear and may at first seem non-understandable, though it is at the root of analysis.
Amid deep change, we can discover what is enduring within the Self: the guiding intelligence that serves as a center and a vital source. This is represented in the Stone, a living reality from the Earth and an ancient symbol of enduring ground, stability, and transformation. As we encounter challenges, we engage the process that generates the Philosopher's Stone, and through friction forms the Pearl of great price. Both ordinary and extraordinary, the stone symbolizes the "non- understandable,”
and embodied wisdom.
This day-long pre-conference workshop will continue to explore and develop dance/movement as a form of active imagination - interweaving theoretical, experiential, cultural, ecological and clinical material - with special attention to the living body in analytic practice.
Analysts will gain a practical experience of their moving imagination, and enrich their understanding of its application to verbal analytic practice. This depth integration also supports analysts and their analysands in addressing concerns within the larger socio-political zeitgeist in which we practice. We will link Jung's early contributions involving multi-sensory images and emotions to recent neurobiological research. Morning and afternoon sessions include lecture, discussion, breathwork, movement, art, and writing.
This presentation is part of a tradition, now in its 22nd year, held by leading voices in the field of Active Imagination in Movement & embodiment in analysis, including Dr. Joan Chodorow, Marion Woodman, Carolyn Grant Fay, Tina Stromsted and others. Joan Chodorow has invited Tina to continue this offering. Co-leaders include Eileen Nemeth (Zürich), Denise Gimenez Ramos (Brazil), Anjali D'Souza (India & Canada), and Lisa Malin (Austria).
Pre-Congress Workshop 3
Self-experience: Playing with sand/Witnessing in silence
Lead author: Ana Deligiannis (SUAPA) - Co author: Eva Pattis Zoja (CIPA) Caterina Vezzoli (CIPA) Mónica Pinilla (SCAJ) John Gosling (SAAJA) Maria Claudia Munevar (SCAJ)
Self-experience: Playing with sand/Witnessing in silence
Since its origin in 1930 with Margaret Lowenfeld, and in the sixties with Dora Kalff, Sandplay has become an important expressive practice in Analytical Psychology. Since 2008 an international team of Jungian analysts developed Expressive Sandwork, a structured intervention by volunteers for children in situations of social vulnerability and in emergency situations.
Sandplay and Sandwork both share a common experience which is playing with the sand in a sandbox with miniatures in the presence of a witness who empathically accompanies the process. In this workshop, the focus is on the self-experience of playing and witnessing.
This 3-hour workshop will be conducted in a group setting and the participants will work in pairs. It will be structured in the following way:
Number of participants: 24 in the morning and 24 in the afternoon = max. 48 participants.
Language: Since a part of the experience will be verbal sharing, we will offer the workshop in 2 language groups: English and Spanish. In the registration process each person should specify which of the 2 languages he/she prefers.
Facilitators: Eva Pattis (CIPA), Caterina Vezzoli (CIPA), Monica Pinilla (SCAJ), John Gosling (SAAJA), María Claudia Munevar (SCAJ) and Ana Deligiannis (SUAPA)
Pre-Congress Workshop 4
Sharing Liminal Space of the Non-understandable: Dreams, Meditations, Movements and Melodies
Lead author: Emma Ting Wong (HKIAP) Emma Ting Wong (HKIAP) (Company) - Co author: Robin Zeiger (IIJP)
Proposal for a Whole-day Pre-Congress experiential workshop
The workshop aims to cultivate a sense of awareness of the interconnection between the mind and the body and the collective psyche. In this polarized world with too many words and too much knowledge, we often long for deep connection and a way to heal all the splitting.
Jung reminds us of the importance of silence, solitude (the Red Book), and the introverted function. In discussing the role of creativity and active imagination, in the Transcendent Function, Jung states, Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain (Jung, CW 8). Jungians have increasingly invited art, music, and movement to face the “not knowing” that exists in the spaces between words.
Emma and Robin met in the previous IAAP Congress in Bueno Aires. We shared a space in the dream matrix of the Congress, where we both listened to the cadence of the Spanish, a language neither of us understood. The beyond-language experience reached deep inside. We then continued to meet the Other in the experiential via dreams, music without words, songs in languages not our own, and production of art. We have continued to meet in shared online collegial dream matrices and have noted the power of this forum to heal splits in our fractured world. This shared experience gave birth to our idea for this workshop.
Deeper levels of psyche will be accessed by means of guided meditation practices, songs, drawing, and group reflection and discussion. We hope to expand this awareness and connection to our collective psyche that Identifies similarities and bridges conflicts and splitting.
The unconscious contains the darkest and scariest of possibilities, as well as the seeds of healing and hope. In times of despair (war, terror, natural disasters, COVID) sometimes we are left with only tiny glimmers of hope and light.
In the first half of this workshop, we will begin the morning with a mindful body scan practice, cultivating the deep presence of our body and our mind. Participants will then be invited to sing or play a nursery rhyme in their own culture and mother tongue. We will direct them with, “Let the song / nursery rhyme sailing through, be contained in the room and let it meet other deep images of the participants. Participants practice mindful listening to the song / nursery rhyme shared”. We will weave in moments of silence allowing individual participants to “speak” by drawing / creating artwork. Participants will share their drawings / artworks and all the participants will be invited to share further associations to the artworks.
In the second half of this workshop, we will create an experience from a social dream matrix, first sharing dreams and then reflecting on the experience both via associations to the process and with art or movement. We will aim to weave a shared “quilt” of hope and reconciliation.
Reference:
C. G. Jung, The Transcendent Functions, vol. 8 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (2nd ed.), trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014 [1967], § 180, Kindle edition.
Master Classes:
Master Class of Supervision I
Master Class of Supervision in the context of Training
Lead author: Susanna Wright (SAP)
The masterclass will focus on experiences in individual training supervision. The supervision of a training case brings emotional challenges for both supervisor and supervisee that we do not usually experience in other supervisory settings. Challenges arise from the supervisor’s relationship to the training organisation; from the complexities of their relationships with colleagues who act in other roles for the trainee as analyst, teacher or group supervisor; and from their ‘gatekeeping’ role with responsibility for assessing candidates’ suitability as new recruits to the profession. For the candidate in training, anxiety levels are running high and defences are often strongly in play. It can be hard to hear supervisory input when we are trying to prove ourselves as capable analysts – suggestions that are meant constructively can easily be heard as criticism in this situation. There can be fear of narcissistic wounding that would prevent development and the building of confidence based in sound clinical practise. We know that we learn from our mistakes, but in the training situation perhaps the fear of being seen to make a mistake can get in the way of an open, trusting relationship with a supervisor.
As a forum for discussion of these and other issues arising in the context of individual training supervision, participants in the workshop are asked to bring their own examples and cases. We will be holding in mind the client or patient who is at the centre of the work, and the powerful psychodynamic energies of their own traumas and defences that may lie ‘hidden in plain sight’ when a complex reflective process invades the supervisory alliance.
Master Class of Supervision II
Recognizing Defensive Patterns in Dreams as a Key to Deepening the Analytic Process
Lead author: Donald E. Kalsched (IRSJA)
Patients who have a history of early childhood trauma have been forced to cope with unbearably painful feelings and annihilating levels of anxiety and terror. The dissociative defenses that come to their “rescue” are of a different order of magnitude than the dissociation Jung discussed as related to the splitting-off of “complexes.” This form of dissociation is both more severe and more systematic becoming a major organizing structural factor in the self-regulation of these patient’s egos at a very early level--before experience has even “formulated.”
The remarkable thing is that once the analytic process begins, dreams begin to portray the dissociative ‘powers’ and a core of innocent aliveness in the psyche that they are “trying” to protect. Learning how to recognize these primitive defenses and their ‘ward’ of innocent vulnerability, enhances our effectiveness in healing work with trauma survivors. Clinical examples will be used to support these ideas.
1: See Donnel B. Stern, (1997) Unformulated Experience; From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis, Hillsdale, NJ, The Analytic Press
Master Class of Supervision III
Lead author: August J. Cwik (AJAJ)
Using the technique of associative dreaming participants can explore case material in an unstructured way allowing the group to add its own reverie and associative dreams. In this manner the process between the therapist and the patient can be elaborated by identifying the core complex being activated in both. There will be didactic presentation elaborating this process and the larger supervisory process in general, and an experiential component. I ask that a few individuals be prepared to present clinical material. No formal case write-up is required just be able to talk about a case with dreams if available.
August J. Cwik, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist, hypnotherapist and a senior Jungian analyst in private practice in the Chicago area. He is member of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts and the Interregional Society of Jungian Analysts. He is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology.
Master Class of Supervision IV
Lead author: Jan J. Wiener (SAP)
Jan Wiener is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Society of Analytical Psychology in London. She was Vice President of the IAAP from 2010 until 2013 with particular responsibility for developing the IAAP router programmes. She has a long-term interest in the dynamics of supervision and her book ‘Supervising and being Supervised: A Practice in search of a Theory’ (2003), continues to be used on supervision courses in different parts of the world. Jan has organised a number of supervision courses in recent years and she has lectured on the topic of supervision in the UK and in the Ukraine, Romania, Denmark, and Moscow to name just a few.
Jan asks for three people attending the Masterclass each to prepare a 30 minute presentation where they are working as a supervisor. The presentations should include the supervisor’s observations and countertransference reactions when supervising. The focus of the afternoon will be on the nature of the supervision process, with a particular emphasis on the dynamics of the supervisory relationship, the role of the patient and aspects of culture and cultural differences that might be affecting the process. Jan will offer individual comments about the presentations in the first instance and then invite a small group of those participating to join the discussions.
Forschungstagung INFAP3: "Was ist denn in dich gefahren?"
Komplextheorie - Grundlagen, Forschung und Anwendungen
09.00 Begrüssung
09.15 Vortrag – Prof. Dr. habil. Christian Roesler
Die Transformation der Beziehung zwischen Ich und Komplex in Traumserien – empirische Ergebnisse der Strukturalen Traumanalyse
10.15 Kaffeepause
10.45 Vortrag – Prof. Dr. phil Verena Kast
Komplexepisoden: Brennpunkte in der psychotherapeutischen Arbeit
11.45 Mittagessen mit Postersession
13.45 Vortrag – Dr. phil. Juliane Kärcher & Ralf T. Vogel, Prof. Dr. phil.
Komplexfokussierte Kurzzeittherapie
14.30 Vortrag - Dr. phil. Isabelle Meier
Das Kraftfeld der Grundbedürfnisse
15.15 Kaffeepause
15.45 Dr. sc. nat. Mario Schlegel & Dr. sc. pth. Christa Futscher
Werkstattgespräch «Assoziationsexperiment»
16.30 Podiumsdiskussion mit den Referierenden
17.30 Ende