prog041610

Lecture: Dreamer, Poet, Lover - Storytelling
and the Story of Aengus

Robin van Loben Sels, Ph.D.

Aengus, an old, Celtic dream-like god, is also the god of all dreamers. A contemporary Scottish lullabye has "Dream Angus" "hurtlin through the heather," ﬂinging dreams to gods and people alike. Aengus is also Lord of Poets and Master of Love, and Emma Jung called him an elemental person of the psyche. W B. Yeats wrote his enigmatic poem, "The Song of Wandering Aengus," in 1897. For those who dream, respond to poetry, or fall in love, Aengus is alive, well, and relevant to personal life, our time and today's psyche. In 2006, Alexander McCall Smith wrote a lovely little book called "Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams." From McCall Smith's version, I will brief you on the myth of Aengus and contrast his mythic personality with Hermes - Mercurius, the familiar patron saint of psychoanalysis. I will also address the importance of on-going oral-narrative activity at a time
when we are informed and enthralled by objective neurobiological and cognitive studies. In or out of therapy, we know ourselves and each other through subjective stories. Consciousness may be something we do, or make, through telling these stories, and individuation is woven from the life-long series of subjective stories unfolding in our dreams.

Robin van Loben Sels, Ph.D. is a Jungian Analyst and poet who has recently moved to Albuquerque. Robin has lectured internationally, and taught at the C.G. Jung Institute of New York as well as at The Center for Advanced Studies in Depth Psychology in Katonah, NY.. She is past co-editor of Quadrant: the Journal of the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology. She is the author of A Dream in the World: Poetics of Soul in Two Women, Modern and Medieval, and Wanting a Country for this Weather and Other Poems.