ENCOUNTERING DIVINE DARKNESS: The Book of Job and Jung's Answer to Job, Melanie Starr Costello

Four Wednesdays beginning March 1st (3/1, 3/8, 3/15 and 3/29)

Course

Melanie Starr Costello

We will read concurrently the Biblical Book of Job—one of the earliest extant sources of ancient Wisdom literature—with Jung’s influential and controversial response entitled, Answer to Job.  Our readings take us into the depths of human suffering, asking us to grapple with the anxious recognition that we live in an uncertain, unstable world; that to be alive is to experience the heartbreak of loss; that we betray and are betrayed; that we participate in a universal struggle against forces of ignorance and destruction within us and without. We will ask: where do we find ourselves relating to Job’s victimization, his disappointment and sense of injustice? How does all of this influence our search for meaning, our image of divinity?  On what ground do we ultimately stand?

Please come to first meeting having read the Introduction and Prologue of Mitchell’s translation of the Book of Job, pp.vii to 37.

Readings:  

The Book of Job, trans. by Stephen Mitchell, HarperPerennial ed., 1992

Answer to Job by C.G. Jung, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. XI (single book form also available at Amazon and elsewhere in new edition edited by Hull and Shamdasani, 2010).

Melanie Starr Costello, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist, historian, and senior Jungian analyst in private practice in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute-Zurich and earned her doctorate in the History and Literature of Religions from Northwestern University. She formerly served as Assistant Professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, was a Trustee for the Consortium for Psychoanalytic Research in Washington, D.C. and is currently Director of Education for the Jungian Analysts of Washington, a member of the Board of the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York and a training analyst for the C.G. Jung Institute-Zurich.  Dr. Costello has taught and published on the topics of psychology and religion, medieval spirituality, aging and clinical practice. Her study of the link between illness and insight, entitled Imagination, Illness and Injury: Jungian Psychology and the Somatic Dimensions of Perception, is published by Routledge Press.