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Transforming Complexes as Pathways to Vocation

  • Habitat Uniting Church 2 Mont Albert Rd (corner of Burke Rd) Canterbury, VIC, 3126 Australia (map)
Our torments also may in length of time become our elements
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
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Could your sensitivities, wounds and preoccupations – your complexes –
hold the missing key to your vocation?

A complex is an impulse, pattern of behaviour, recurring mode of imagination, obsessive thought or particular fantasy which keeps you in its grip. According to Jung, all complexes have an archetypal core.  Jung also considered that the royal road to the unconscious was not, as Freud thought, the dream, but “the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms” although the complex is “more like a rough and uncommonly devious footpath” than a royal road!

Drawing on fascinating stories from interviews with individuals, Suzanne Cremen Davidson explores how a more conscious understanding of one’s complexes can be revelatory for the discovery and conduct of one’s vocation. Complexes may stem from personal wounds (often originating in childhood); the collective wounds of the individual’s culture; or the traumas and patterns of previous generations.  A Jungian approach suggests that the complex be treated not merely as a historical wound but that it has a teleological function, whereby the psyche leads the individual towards new horizons and an unfolding vocational direction infused with passion and commitment.

Hosted by the C.G. Jung Society of Melbourne.
$20 or $10 concession at door.  Jung Society members free.

Earlier Event: 6 May
Vocation as psyche's call
Later Event: 28 June
Creativity, Character and Calling