Saturday November 14, 10 am – 12:30 pm
Held in-person at the Jung Center
Melissa Perrin, PsyD
$55, CEUs: 2.5

*Limited to 18 participants.

Social media is the Collective Unconscious as it is expressed in 2026. Social media offers a shallow dreamscape on which to form a tenuous identity. For many, social media is the robust sense of connection and identity; deeper roots and connections forgotten or taken for granted. For others it is the unconscious made conscious as edges are pushed, truths and untruths offered and AI hallucinates. Archetypes abound. The algorithm provides targeted, marketable synchronicity.

Individuation is the act of separating oneself from the group and exploring. Many cultures have rituals that name and support this stage of development. Anxiety tends to express itself in direct proportion to the depth of the rootedness of our individuation. Social media offers a mid-point of belonging to a collective while having the phantasm of individuation while scrolling through the shallowness of the on-line collective.

In this gathering, participants will analyze aspects of social media, inclusion, exclusion and identity. We will examine aspects of wakeful dreamtime, both in social media and the embodied experience, and identity. We will discuss strategies to support and strengthen individuation for ourselves and those in our sphere of care.

About the Instructor
Dr. Melissa Perrin is a licensed clinical psychologist, whose 40-year career in psychology has centered on clinical practice. Whether speaking at Conferences, Retreats or providing consultation, Dr. Perrin brings research into the scope of human behavior with a deep and interwoven understanding of the human experience interacting with the larger story and energy of our experience.

A gifted teacher, she leads rich seminars and retreats with information that attendees are able to put into practice immediately. She teaches psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology; supervises clinicians; leads wellness retreats; teaches and provides psychospiritual support; and has provided consultation to religious institutions for over 35 years.

Dr. Perrin is a trusted consultant to religious leadership to facilitate healing when clergy have harmed individuals and parishes. She provides clinical consultation for individual clinicians, groups and institutions and is a trusted consultant to spiritual and religious leaders. Dr. Perrin is based in Evanston, Illinois.

Friday November 20, 7 – 9 pm
Mary Ellen O’Hare-Lavin, PhD
Held in-person at the Jung Center
$50, CEUs: 2

*Limited to 18 participants.

Using James Hilman’s directive to “Find the myth in the mess,” Dr. Lavin will discuss Ovid’s story of transformation using the myth of Baucis and Philemon. This is a story of an aging couple who hosted Zeus and Hermes in disguise and were then rewarded for their kindness and generosity. There are few stories in the Roman and Greek collection about elderly people. Most love stories are about infidelity, jealousy, anger, and resentment. In contrast, Baucis and Philemon give us a story of kindness, loyalty, and devotion ending in their transformation. We can take pause and learn that “Those who care for the Gods, may someday become Gods themselves.”

Recommended Reading
Eros and Pathos: Shades of Love and Suffering, Aldo Carotenuto
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell

About the Instructor
Dr. Lavin, PhD has been associated with Jungian Psychology since 1968 when she and Tom Lavin were married. A week later, they ended up in Zurich, where Tom was a student at the Jung Institute. Dr. Mary Ellen Lavin studied at the Institute and began a family. After living in Europe for 10 years, studying, working, and traveling, they returned to Wilmette. Tom set up his private practice and Mary Ellen enrolled at Pacifica Graduate Institute earning her PhD in Clinical Psychology. She has been a psychotherapist since 1994. She lectures and writes about Alchemy, Addiction, Dreams, Sandtray, and other various Jungian topics.

Helping Women Embody Courageous Change through the Shapeshifting Woman Archetype

Saturday January 30, 1-4 pm
Held via Zoom
Liza Hyatt, ATR-BC, LMHC
$65, CEUs: 3

In many myths and folk-tales, women heal and escape oppression by transforming into wild animals and plants. Shapeshifting transformations also occur in our dreams. The shapeshifting woman archetype helps us bear our grief for self and world, access feminine leadership, heal from trauma, reconnect with our bodies, and awaken courage to change personally. In our complex time of societal conflict, many women are turning to shapeshifting stories for guidance and strength.

This workshop will explore how the shapeshifter archetype connects to core Jungian concepts like the anima/animus, the trickster which is tied to the shadow, and our journey toward psychological wholeness (individuation). Shapeshifters empower us to become boundary crossers within our own psyches, disrupt rigid structures and challenge the conscious ego’s rules. This empowering enables us to live in new ways, more authentically aligned with the Sacred Feminine.

Through active imagination and expressive arts engagement, we will engage with three selected tales from Greek and Celtic mythology through storytelling, visual art-making, movement, and voice practices. These practices are designed to help women activate personal agency and shift out of nervous system overwhelm toward greater freedom. These practices also help women imagine new depths of healing and reclaim their natural soulfulness, something that is so needed in our times. Finally, we will honor how the shapeshifting woman archetype nourishes and sustains therapists, activists, and artists serving individual and collective psycho-spiritual maturation during the challenges of our current era.

Recommended Reading:
Foxfire, Wolkskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women, Sharon Blackie
She Shape Shifts: A Healing Woman’s Bond with the Animate World, Liza Hyatt

About the Instructor
Liza Hyatt, ATR-BC, LMHC is an art therapist with 40 years experience serving women healing from complex trauma. She practices at IU Health Charis Center for Eating Disorders, is faculty in art therapy graduate programs at Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods College and Edgewood University, and is a dreamwork practitioner affiliated with the Natural Dreamwork international community. Her published work includes 5 books of poetry and an eco-art therapy workbook. She is the author of a new book that is a genre-blending writing, storytelling and visual art project celebrating the shapeshifting woman archetype.

6 Thursdays: March 4, 11, 25, April 1, 8, 15, 2027, 7-9 pm
Joanne Underwood, LCSW
Held in-person at the Jung Center
$180, CEUs: 12

*Max of 12

Rediscover your sense of wonder, possibility, and power. Using Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way as a guide, this course is designed to help individuals deeply engage their own creative process. Within the sacred circle of the group, we will discuss how to reconnect with qualities that nurture and encourage creativity such as safety, identity, abundance, and power. In addition, this course provides participants with numerous tools and activities to engage their sense of play and possibility including free-form journaling and weekly artist dates.

Recommended Reading:
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

About the Instructor
Joanne Underwood, LCSW, is a fellow in the JPP/JSP two-year program at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago and a therapist in private practice in Evanston. She is also a senior teacher at the Piven Theatre Workshop where she has taught children and adults how to access their creativity through theatre games and improvisation for over twenty years. She is particularly interested in the intersection of Jung’s idea of active imagination and Viola Spolin’s idea of releasing the unconscious through play.