On April 1, 2020, Dr. Murray Stein, internationally known Jungian analyst and author, was interviewed by Dr. Robert Henderson on the subject of the coronavirus found here.  In the interest of exploring further the powerful images and ideas found in this seminal interview, Pacifica will offer a series of new interviews with Murray, designed to address the pandemic from a depth perspective. In this first interview, Murray will be interviewed by Dr. Pat Katsky, a Jungian analyst, Pacifica faculty member, and former Pacifica provost.

Read More

A guest post by Mary A. Wood, Co-Chair, Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life Program

“And no bird weeping a lament / no bird crying the song of its honey voice / in the leaves of Spring’s many flowers / could outrun him / Pan, in song” –“Hymn to Pan,” The Homeric Hymns

"Masked God." Mixed media collage, by Mary A. Wood

Read More

Part III of III

by Angela Borda

I was fortunate to recently sit down with Professor Bennett, an integral member of Pacifica’s faculty, for many years the Co-Chair of the M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and now the Chair of a new program Pacifica will be proud to offer in Fall 2020, the PsyD in Counseling Psychology. This is part 3 of a three-part interview.

How long is the PsyD Program and is clinical training required?

The PsyD is designed to be completed in four years total: three years of curriculum plus one year of pre-doctoral internship. The PsyD will require students to complete 1000 hours of practicum, generally during years two and three of the program, followed by 1500 hours of internship generally taking up year four of the program. Read More

Part II of III

By Angela Borda

I was fortunate to recently sit down with Professor Bennett, an integral member of Pacifica’s faculty, for many years the Co-Chair of the M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and now the Chair of a new program Pacifica will be proud to offer in Fall 2020, the PsyD in Counseling Psychology. This is part 2 of a three-part interview.

what is so unique about the new PsyD in Counseling Psychology program?

It’s a rare opportunity to get doctoral level training in applied professional psychology that’s informed by psychodynamic depth-psychological principles. I would say that psychodynamic perspectives have become scarce in higher education, and this program uniquely combines an applied clinical focus to valuable perspectives that reflect the role of the unconscious and imaginal to our individual and collective psychological lives. I would say that the new PsyD reflects the momentum of a long-established highly successful M.A. program that has a proven history of providing both sophisticated clinical training that allows graduates to hit the ground running in a variety of applied clinical settings, while also training our students to be able to tolerate strong emotional experiences and to develop and elaborate capacities for interpersonal attunement.

Read More

Part I of III

By Angela Borda

I was fortunate to recently sit down with Professor Bennett, an integral member of Pacifica’s faculty, for many years the Co-Chair of the M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and now the Chair of a new program Pacifica will be proud to offer in Fall 2020, the PsyD in Counseling Psychology.

For those who may not know, please tell us the basics of what a PsyD is and how it differs from a PhD in psychology?

PsyD stands for “doctor of psychology” and it is one of the three doctoral degrees commonly earned by licensed psychologists (PhD, EdD, and PsyD).  as with the PhD degree, PsyD graduates are entitled to the “Doctor” form of address. The PsyD is based on the so-called “Vail Model” or scholar-practitioner model articulated at the 1973 Vail Conference on Professional Training in Psychology.  It was designed to represent doctoral degrees which are focused on clinical practice rather than research, and to address the academic and training requirements of such a focus.  In practice, psychologists with the PsyD, PhD, and EdD degrees show a lot of overlap in terms of what they do professionally.   

Read More

A guest post by Dr. Joseph Cambray, President.

Our most recent Pacifica Experience Day was the first time we attempted to offer a recruitment event fully online, and I am happy to report that we had a rich, full engagement.  I set aside most of my usual introductory remarks, as I thought it more important to try applying some relevant depth psychological reflections to the crisis of our emerging global novel coronavirus pandemic.  I feel that it might be valuable to share them here.

Read More

A guest post by Keiron Le Grice, Ph.D.

The following article is based on notes made for an online presentation for Pacifica Graduate Institute on March 20, 2020.

In response to the exceptionally testing circumstances we now find ourselves in, as we try to deal with the traumatic impact of the coronavirus as it aggressively spreads around many parts of the world, I wanted to share some reflections on how we might gain a larger perspective on what is happening, and what we’re passing through, in terms of the archetypal patterns of history. At the same time, these reflections give a sense for the kind of things we are concerned with at Pacifica, the ideas we’re exploring in courses and in the classroom, and some of the ways in which we’re trying to understand and illuminate human nature and our place in the world at this critical moment of our collective history.

Read More

By Matthew Bennett, Psy.D.

A feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and — together with fear — the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that lay ahead. —Camus, in The Plague (on quarantine)

We have been here before.

I’m going to eschew the contemporary technical terms: epidemic, pandemic, disease vectors.  “Plague” will do nicely.  We’ve only known what a pandemic is for a few decades, but we’ve known about plagues for many thousands of years.

Read More

A guest post by Juliet Rohde-Brown, Ph.D.

As Pema Chodron has said “fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” We are being challenged right now. How we move through this COVID-19 fear will say much about what we are willing to face. In recent times, one need only spend three minutes on most social media venues before witnessing vitriolic language and divisiveness, whether it be political or other contexts. However, this virus has opened us to consider another way.

Read More

A guest post by Mary Watkins, Ph.D.

I am hoping you are each well and taking great care to protect yourself and to help your family, friends, and neighbors in need. Our struggle with Covid-19 is both physical and psychological. As our daily routines are upended and many of us are working and conducting our lives from home, there are important healing and centering mind-body practices that we can learn and then pass on to others.

Read More