The Workshop will provide an opportunity to explore the relevance of fearful Medusa to our own experience. As self. As other. To speak of her as fearful is, of course, to see her as inspiring fear in others and at the same time as reflecting what it is like to be overwhelmed by fear oneself. So we will want to look at what it might mean to recognize what she represents as part of ourselves? And also as outside ourselves, as embodied in others. Do we respond to female power and vulnerability – in ourselves or in others – with awe, with envy, with pity, or with a longing to annihilate?

Please note this workshop ends at 1pm with a 15-minute break.

Speaker Biography:
Christine Downing, Ph.D, has been teaching at Pacifica Graduate Institute since 1987, primarily in its Mythological Studies program. Before that for almost twenty years she taught in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University (a good part of the time as Chair of the Department) and concurrently served as a member of the Core Faculty at the California School of Professional Psychology. Christine has also taught at the Jung Institute in Zurich and lectures frequently to Jungian groups both here and abroad and at American and European universities. Her many books include The Goddess, Journey through Menopause, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, Women's Mysteries, Gods In Our Midst, The Long Journey Home: Revisioning the Myth of Persephone and Demeter for Our Time, and Psyche’s Sisters: Re-Imagining the Meaning of Sisterhood.