January 30, 2011 Dutch Jungian analyst Robert Bosnak
“New Amsterdam and the Dream of the Golden Age: An Alchemical Perspective”
(Nieuw Amsterdam en de Droom van de Gouden Eeuw: vanuit een alchemistisch standpunt)
The Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam formed on the tip of Manhattan in the midst of the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century. The Netherlands excelled at seafaring, dominated trade and banking, and fostered scientific inquiry—concerns of the material world. The small nation became not only the world’s most powerful, but Europe’s most tolerant and inclined toward discourse. Historians credit New York’s similar attributes to its Dutch origins.
In Europe during the same period, a centuries-old interest in alchemy, the precursor of chemistry, reached its peak. On the surface, alchemy was a quest to turn base materials to gold. In the 20th century, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, exploring a series of his own dreams, began to see a parallel between the dreams’ symbols and the symbols of the esoteric alchemical texts. Alchemy’s true quest, Jung concluded, was for the transformation of the psyche, the process he called individuation. Robert Bosnak will apply that perspective to illuminate a deeper process underlying the Netherlands’ Golden Age and the establishment of the Dutch colony that would later become New York.
Robert Bosnak is a diplomate of the C.G.Jung Institute; he trained in Zurich, Switzerland, from 1971 to 1977. In the late 1970s, he pioneered a radically new method of dreamwork, based loosely on Jung’s work, especially on Jung’s technique of active imagination and his studies of alchemy. He developed methods to reenter dreams by inducing a hypnagogic state (a state between waking and sleeping) through a process of careful questioning. His techniques are now applied worldwide, by therapists, artists, actors, and others interested in the creative imagination.
His first book, A Little Course in Dreams, was translated into twelve languages. Since then he has written Christopher’s Dreams: Dreaming and Living with AIDS and Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming, in which he describes his techniques in detail. After having been in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for 26 years, Bosnak is now based in Sydney, Australia. He has also been a visiting professor of clinical psychology at Kyoto University in Japan.
Bosnak is a past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD). He will be a keynote speaker at IASD’s annual conference this year in Kerkrade, The Netherlands, June 24–28, 2011. See ASDreams.org/2011.
Center for Sharing & Remembering, 123 Fourth Ave, 2nd Floor
Manhattan, off Union Square (between 12th & 13th Streets)
(212) 677-8621, crsny.org (Sorry, this location is not handicapped-accessible.)
$10 suggested donation (goes toward space rental)