The Awakening Of Psyche’s Daughter: Return From Exile Towards Individuation

The conclusion of the tale of Amour & Psyche is eloquent; with unfailing instinct, Apuleius tells us that a daughter will be born of their love.  Her name, Voluptas, is the story’s true seal, and also the last word.  The term is dense with meaning: the Latin translation of the Greek noun-- it indicates: pleasure, joy.   Its value is a dual one; it can indicate spiritual joy, the soul’s ecstasy in the presence of the divine, or the satisfaction of the sense.

For Jungians, this teaching myth is encoded with the process toward mature femininity…. The tale ends with the birth of a daughter.   But this end is yet another beginning…an unspoken tale within each of us that will be revealed.  LN’s talk will begin where the myth of Cupid & Psyche concluded, with Psyche’s Daughter

PRODUCER: Lorraine Neithardt

Lorraine Neithardt is an internationally recognized Jungian inspired cultural visionary who has had the remarkable experience and privilege of working with thousands of individuals in the conscious soul-making process known as ALCHEMY.  Llorraine initiates the possibility for each person she counsels to know, accept, and work with the creative aspects of their destiny.

Through the years and  the countless sessions Neithardt has conducted, she has been exposed to the psyches and dreams of innumerable individuals.  The outcome is her observation of an emerging pattern: people’s unconscious urge to discover their own wholeness.  Llorraine’s belief is that this pattern is just now beginning to take form in a collective renaissance through which mysticism and science will unite; the feminine will be re-imaged. 

Over three decades, Neithardt has studied esoteric sciences, Alchemy and Jungian individuation process, leading her to a conscious relationship with Psyche.  Born clairvoyant and a prophetic dreamer, she has discerned that her own creative contribution is to inspire.

Canada Lee: Erased from History

Every society attempts to preserve itself by – among other approaches – silencing, and if, need be, erasing its critics and those it regards as dangerous to the social order.  The United States has, of course, its own rich history of such myth preservation through personal assassination.   Canada Lee was one of its victims.

And so, although Canada Lee was one of the greatest African American actors of the 20th Century, most people have never heard his name.  Lee poured his talent into fighting for racial equality. His uncompromising stance prompted the U.S. Government to label him a Communist, destroying his reputation and career.  Less than four years later, Lee died at the age of 45 from hypertension.  Through the insights of historians, cultural critics, co-stars, old friends and Lee's widow, Frances Lee Pearson, the film Canada Lee: Man Out Front relives Lee's triumphs and hardships -- both on and off the public stage.  This film uncovers the steps taken by the FBI to halt Lee's work toward social change and how this charismatic boxer-turned-actor found himself at the forefront of the movement for equality.  With the support of the Canada Lee Heritage Foundation and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Man Out Front is the first film to explore his life and legacy.

PRODUCER: Kenneth Kilfara

Kenneth Kilfara is an award-winning filmmaker who has screened across the U.S., Canada, Bermuda, and Germany, was one of the youngest full-time faculty members in the history of University of Georgia. Kilfara holds an MFA in Dramatic Media from the University of Georgia, sits on the Board of Trustees for the Canada Lee Heritage Foundation and is a founding member of the Athens Film Foundation. Kilfara currently teaches Media Studies and the video production at the Ross School.

Child's Play: Kindergarten and Modernism by Norman Brosterman

This Talk will describe the genesis of the revolutionary kindergarten system and explain kindergarten's foundations in the natural world - in the growth of plants, and the symmetries of crystals and sea-shells.  We will focus on the abstraction inherent in the play gifts designed by German educator, crystal scientist, and inventor of kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), and investigate their formative influence on the work of early modernist artists and architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, Vassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Le Corbusier, and the Bauhaus, and others. 

PRODUCER: Norman Brosterman

Norman Brosterman is an architect, artist, cultural historian, and author who is nationally recognized for unearthing and chronicling the origins, techniques, and aims of the original, historic, kindergarten system.  His collection of 19th century kindergarten work by teachers and children provides contemporary educators and historians of modern art access to the remarkable lost world of creative play that was the foundation of kindergarten from its invention in 1839.
Bridging the realms of pre-school education and modern art and architecture, Norman Brosterman has spoken at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Indianapolis Children's Museum, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple and the Guggenheim Museum. He is the author of several books, including Inventing Kindergarten, a New York Times Notable Book, and winner of the American Institute of Architect's award for best book of the year on children's issues. He also wrote Out Of Time: Designs for the Twentieth Century Future, on the graphic history of past futures, and curated The Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition it accompanied.

Psychotherapy and Change

Is psychotherapy a useful tool for lasting change in adults?  Specifically, can psychotherapy:

• Repair malfunctions in natural development?
• Speed up the natural developmental process?
• Trigger immediate transformative change into novel areas?

What do we mean by change? Maturation? Development through a series of stages?  What about transformation?  Is change even the right goal for psychotherapy?  Might release be a more appropriate objective? 

To understand the process of personality development and how psychotherapy facilitates maturation, we return psychology to its origins in the study of the psyche, or soul, and then outline a psychotherapy based on “psycheology” – a clinical philosophy based on development, not pathology, and focused on love, unity, and the perfect nature of the soul. 

We will close with a discussion of the long-term implications for a society that integrates the psycheology worldview, taking a developmental perspective on the process of psychospiritual maturation.

PRESENTER: Neal Goldsmith

Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D. is a psychologist specializing in psychospiritual development.  He is a therapist, author, and public speaker with particular expertise in psychotherapy and change.  (A six-minute clip of Neal’s “Fusion of Spirit and Science” can be found at:http://vimeo.com/751700).

Neal has curated dozens of successful conferences and cross-disciplinary “meetings of minds” for corporations and is a founder of several discussion salons on integral philosophy, media, healing, and the future of society.  He has a psychotherapy practice in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, NY and can be reached via his Web site: http://www.nealgoldsmith.com