In conversation, Mary and Susan explore what it means to be creative in a time that calls for resilience, enormous adaptability, the capacity to innovate and to reinvent the self as well as vocation. This conversation introduces this unique MA and outlines its special relevance to times of crisis as well as a way of rebirth and renewal of learning as well as soul.
Our world is characterized by ecological and social challenges as well as technological change. Only a community with exceptionally creativity skills can thrive in such conditions. Pacifica’s M.A. Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life is a Masters in Depth Psychology and Creativity that is specifically designed to enable students to meet these challenges.
Mary Antonia Wood is Co-Chair of the Engaged Humanities and Creative Life program, and the owner of Talisman Creative Mentoring, a practice that supports artists and creators of all types. Through one-on-one consultations, group workshops and classes, Wood assists creative individuals who desire a stronger and more authentic connection to the deepest archetypal sources of creativity. Wood has been a visual artist for over twenty years, working in a variety of media. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions and has been collected by both public institutions and individuals. In addition, she has collaborated with writers and artists on public art commissions. Wood received her doctorate in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute where her thesis was entitled, “The Archetypal Artist: Re-imagining Artistic Expression at the Crossroads of Fate and Free Will.” Wood is currently at work on a book for Routledge based on her doctoral and post-doctoral research on the archetypal forces that shape a creative life.
Susan is Chair of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life MA, earned her Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle and her MAs from the University of London and Oxford University. She was the first Chair of the International Association of Jungian Studies (IAJS). She is author of many studies of Jung, literary theory and gender including C.G. Jung and Literary Theory (1999), Jung: A Feminist Revision (2002), Jung as a Writer (2005), and also edited Psyche and the Arts (2008). Another recent book is C.G. Jung and the Humanities (2010), showing how Jung’s work is a response to the creative, psychological, spiritual, philosophical and ecological crises of our age. In 2012 her book, The Ecocritical Psyche: Literature, Complexity Evolution and Jung was published by Routledge, showing how the Jungian symbol is a portal to nature. Susan’s work is not so much “about” Jung as an attempt to develop his special insights into myth, technology, the feminine, nature and the numinous for today’s wounded world.
