ARCHETYPES OF FEMININE SEXUALITY: THE REPRESSION OF DESIRE AND JOY

Workshop Leader: Rachel Fitzgerald

Date: February 27, 2004 9am-5pm

DESCRIPTION: A rediscovery of the feminine principle is taking place among women, one characterized by interest in the great Goddess figures whose contradictory aspects transcend the opposition between nature and mind by embodying both.  This workshop will focus on the energy of desire and joy in archetypal and contemporary imagery.  What might the drama of release of this energy look like?  What does it look like in a mix of Coatlicue, Baubo, Lilith, and Sophia with Carol Gilligan, Betty DeShong, Meador, Shelley Taylor and Valerie Hunt?

"I want to explore the possibility that this vast world of the feminine, with its particular worldview which informs beliefs and actions, with its distinctive forms of initiation and transformation, with its intense bonding between and among women, is largely unknown to us but lies waiting in the psyches of women and appears regularly in women's dreams as a call to individuation along a path we, as a culture, have long since abandoned.   This world of the feminine opens in the imagination from a basic core experience of primary relationship to the archetypal feminine. 

-- from Uncursing the Dark Treasures from the Underworld. 

Rachel Fitzgerald, Ph D in Clinical Psychology, is a family therapist in private practice in Berkeley and Sacramento. She directs seminars and retreats for groups using Jungian typology and archetypal images and patterns in business management and in spirituality.

A researcher on the quality of life for women, Rachel developed with Phyllis Krafft-Sherlock, the Q Sorts to measure masculine and feminine archetypal identifications. She also developed the Archetypal Pattern Locator to measure Toni Wolff 's and Carl Jung's imagery. For the last 10 years Rachel has been exploring healing modalities with a group of therapists, bodyworkers and spiritual directors and for the last three years she has worked with the Con-spirando Collectivo, a group of South American women working with women to deconstruct oppressive mythologies.

 Rachel is a former adjunct professor of psychology at Loyola-Marymount, Seattle Pacific University, the University of San Francisco and as a member of the international CAPT faculty Rachel developed a workshop applying Jungian typology to expressions of spirituality.

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