“The more you advance in the understanding of the psyche the more careful you will have to be with terminology, because it is historically coined and prejudiced. The more you penetrate the basic problems of psychology the more you approach ideas which are philosophically, religiously, and morally prejudiced. Therefore, certain things should be handled with the utmost care.”  

C.G. Jung, Tavistock Lectures1935, CW 18, para 116

Primary texts in the field of analytical psychology and psychoanalysis have often aroused controversy to the sensibilities of 20^th and 21^st century readers. This workshop will aim to introduce the principles and method of intellectual charity when reading and interpreting primary texts from outside the contemporary era or context. The main focus of the sessions will be the practical application of these principles on primary texts of analytical psychology and psychoanalysis and will include interactive activities. It will cover broadly the following areas:

·      How to read a text

·      Why be charitable, and when not to be charitable

·      Identifying contentious statements

·      Disentangling language from emotion

·      Reconstructing a statement

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Katerina Sarafidou is the Head of Research and former Jungian Director of the MSc Psychodynamics of Human Development run by Birkbeck College and the British Psychotherapy Foundation.She is an honorary member of the British Jungian Analytic Association and is carrying out academic research at the Warburg Institute on Jungian theory and German aesthetics. She is one of the three founders of The Circle of Analytical Psychology, which offers a 2-year course of study on Jung’s Liber Novus. She is also leading a Reading Group for the British Psychotherapy Foundation focusing on the systematic study of Jung's primary texts.

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Hunt, Lynn, 2002. Against Presentism. In, Perspectives on History. American Historical Association

Armitage, David, 2021. In Defense of Presentism. In, History and Human Flourishing, ed. Darrin M. McMahon. Oxford University Press.

Davidson, Donald, 1973. Radical Interpretation. In, Dialectica Vol. 27, No. 3/4 (1973), pp. 313-328

Jung, C.G., 1923 Lecture on Analytical Psychology and Education. In, Contributions to Analytical Psychology, 1945, trans. H.G. and Cary Baynes

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