Reflective Writing for Life Enrichment: An Introduction to the Progoff Intensive Journal® Method

Sunday February 8, 1-4 pm
Held via Zoom
Kelley Williams
$65, CEUs: 3

*Limited to 20 participants. 4 volunteer spots available.

The Intensive Journal® Method is a nationally recognized technique for self-discovery and self-reflection that uses writing exercises.  Created by Ira Progoff, PhD, in the mid-1960’s, this technique is now taught by certified instructors.

As the first American to complete his doctoral dissertation on the work of Dr. Jung, Dr. Progoff was invited by Dr. Jung to study with him in Switzerland in the early 1950s.  Dr. Progoff’s work in Depth Psychology culminated in the Intensive Journal method.  While the Intensive Journal is distinctly Dr. Progoff’s own method, Jung’s influence on him was significant as evidenced by the inclusion of the concept of the unique seed potential of each person, the importance of the spiritual dimension in overall psychological growth and the power of symbols and imagery in one’s search for meaning.

This program provides an introduction to the Intensive Journal method, which utilizes an integrated system of writing exercises for self-awareness.  This method can be used to gain insights into personal relationships, career/interests, body/health, major events, dreams, and meaning in life.  It may also be useful for working through transitions, reducing stress, and resolving issues.

The unique workshop atmosphere is critical for the method’s success.  You work privately to feel safe to write without censorship.  You are not writing your life story but rather writing what comes from within.  The instructor will provide a program overview, including the major rules for using the method and the underlying principles of holistic Depth Psychology.  You will be guided through sample exercises to experience how the method works.

About the Instructor

Kelley Williams is a certified instructor leading Intensive Journal workshops for 30 years primarily in the Midwest, including at the C.G. Jung Center in Evanston.   Prior to relocating to the greater Phoenix area, Kelley served as Senior Editor of Publications in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago and Managing Editor of the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics.  Kelley is a published poet and fiction writer, stained glass artist, and former president of the American Medical Writers’ Association.

“Intensive Journal” is a registered trademark of Jon Progoff and is used under license by Dialogue House, the headquarters for the Intensive Journal program. For more information, see www.intensivejournal.org or read At a Journal Workshop by Ira Progoff, PhD. By registering you are agreeing to allow the Center to share your registration information with Dialogue House, which may provide occasional updates about future programs.

Held via Zoom on behalf of the Jung Center of Evanston. Meeting details sent via email after registration has been confirmed. For questions, contact jung@cgjungcenter.org.

Flowers in Liminal Space: Grief, Symbol, and Active Imagination*

Saturday March 28, 11 am – 1 pm
Hart Ginsburg, LCPC and Danbee Kim, MSW
Held in-person at the Jung Center
$75 (includes art materials), CEUs: 2
*Limited to 15 participants.

This experiential workshop explores grief through the Jungian lens of active imagination and the symbolic life, using Korean ancestral flower practice as embodied engagement with loss and transformation. Participants will create “grief bouquets” that give material form to psychological content that resists linear narrative.

Korean flower practice—aligned with the Cocoji tradition of natural, seasonal arrangements—offers a symbolic vocabulary for what cannot be spoken directly. Its principles of seasonal attunement, negative space, asymmetry, and honoring natural form emerge from Korean cultural frameworks around grief as something carried and tended across time and generations, rather than overcome through linear processing.

The workshop begins with photographic meditations on flowers in transformation, establishing contemplative seeing as preparation for hands-on work. Participants then engage in flower arrangement as active imagination—allowing the psyche to speak through material, color, form, and symbol rather than concept. This process is grounded in Jung’s understanding that the psyche speaks in images and symbols, not only in concepts. The “symbolic life” becomes particularly essential in grief work.

*This workshop is intended for Licensed mental health professionals (LCSW, LCPC, LMFT, psychologists) and Jungian analysts working with grief, loss, and life transitions. Designed for clinicians who want embodied, symbolic methodologies to complement their practice, particularly when verbal processing has reached its limits or when working with intergenerational/collective grief. No prior experience with flower arrangement required.

About the Instructors

Hart Ginsburg, LCPC, is a therapist who strives to creatively support his clients through self-awareness, acceptance and empowerment. Over the past 15 years, most of his clinical work has been with immigrant/refugee populations, artists and others interested in developing existential awareness. Being inspired by witnessing the creativity of his clients, he started Digital Tapestries which develops abstract and existential art forms to broaden perspectives through films, art-therapy resources and experiential workshops.

Danbee Kim, MSW is a Korean American multidisciplinary creative, former youth worker and teaching artist whose practice centers on grief, addiction recovery, and forms of meaning-making that unfold across language, symbol, and material experience. Shaped by years of visual storytelling alongside grassroots organizers in Chicago, she works with symbolic and embodied practices, especially ones connected to her lineage. Her work approaches loss not as something to be resolved, but as a condition that reorganizes memory, relationship, and expression over time—holding space for language to return more precise, grounded, and accountable to lived experience.