Jung: For men only

I went to a lecture on Depression and the Elderly last Saturday. There I was impressed by the main lecturer, Dr. Emmanuel Gatchalian, 87 years old and still going strong. "I will never retire," he said. He spoke about depression in a way I would not have expected from a man of his age. He welcomed psychiatrists to alleviate depression, drugs, and talk therapy, he said, though he said it with a note of apology, as if we had to get used to the notion of therapy.

I, on the other hand, am so used to therapists. They are my friends. I have not gone to them because I’m crazy or flawed but because I really enjoy talking to them, genuinely enjoy their seminars. I have more fun talking to my therapist friends than I have talking to father confessors. But they have to be Jungians, disciples of Carl Jung who, as far as I know, believed that one’s life was a long journey generally inward to discover his or her individual self. Now, of course, this journey begins at a time when you are in crisis. Maybe you are hurt or wounded. Maybe destiny once threw you a bucket, which you noticed but ignored. So now you are thrown a sink or worse a bathtub. What do you do now?

Women are more sensitive to these issues. They talk to each other. They attend seminars and laugh with each other. They make new friends. But what about men? Are they equally sensitive to these questions about themselves or do they just go out, buy a news magazine and read until they fall asleep. I have long suspected them of the latter. But I met A. and M., both Jung followers, too, same terms as I. So I decided to interview them.

A. said he was in a funk when he decided to take his first Jung seminar. All sorts of things had gone wrong with his life and he found even his taste for business had gone bland. Did he enjoy it? Very much, he said. "I have become a better person and I enjoy my life more. I have made many new friends and I enjoy being with them. It’s great," he said. And A. is not gay. He’s a real guy.

M. and I used to work together a long time ago in a multinational company. He was – and still is – an engineer and I was in advertising. There was something different about him, but I never could tell exactly what. He was just different from the other guys. Then life hit him with a bathtub. His wife passed away at an early age and there he was feeling bereft. Somehow that led him to the Jung for-men-only seminar. Like A., he also found it very good. It made him get to know himself better, It made him look at himself and others in a more generous way. And it also gave him new friends. For example, we are better friends now than we ever were when we worked together.

There is something about this Jung seminar for men that I don’t know anything about. First of all, it is conducted by women, Dr. Dido Gustilo, Rose Yenko, Sophie Sim Bate, and Bernie Nepomuceno with their men Raj Mansukhani and Alex Tee. I am so curious about it I would like to go, but I keep getting told that it’s only for men. Why can’t I come? I may be a woman, but I have a dominant animus, that means metaphorically I’m very male. May I come to watch? No, they say. My male archetypes are more dominant than my female archetypes. Why can’t I come? Because it’s only for men, they say, and whatever you say, you don’t look like a man. So I think I should get a shorter haircut and sneak in.

The Jungian seminars are nothing to be afraid of. They are fun, designed to make you look at yourself and discover yourself again. If I were a man who just wants a change in his boring life, I would make a beeline for this.

The seminar, titled "King or Hunter: Exploring the Masculine Self," will be held on September 14 and 15 at the Ricco-Renzo Galleries, LRI Business Plaza on Reposo Street. If you want any further details, please call either Rose at 0916-3023763 or Sophie at 0917-5276279. Make your reservations with them, not with me. I am out of it, remember?

I keep thinking that older men should come to this one to discover parts of themselves that are just waiting to be awakened. I think it would be great for those who are 50 and up. But that’s just my opinion. It will give you a new way of looking at yourself and enjoying yourself again. It beats the drugs and talk therapy solution to common depression, but that’s if your depression is common, if you’re just simply down in the dumps or in a funk. Anyway, try it. I won’t see you there, but if I can devise a way to look male, maybe you will.

Anyway, to any male reader who responds to this, will you send me e-mail afterwards telling me how you enjoyed it?

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Please send your comments to lilypad@skyinet.net or secondwind.barbara@gmail.com or text 0917-8155570.