November 10, 2022

“How can I speak more authentically, when the language I was brought up to speak does not fit, yet its words are the only ones I know? …I cannot get away or separate myself from my alien culture, as I am part of it: born of warlike people in a waring age and, like them, divided and contentious.” — Claire Douglas

I recently found a used book by one of my very favorite Jungian authors that I’d long meant to read. I brought it to bed with me last night and cracked the covers, intending to read a chapter or two before sleep. Within minutes, I was so overwhelmed by synchronicity and by the clarity of the author’s voice that I closed the book again like a stunned child who had just discovered a magical novel with roaring lions and bright streaming light. Sometimes psyche is right where you need it and the energy is astounding.

“Whether one defines oneself as male or female (or as a mixture, as we all are), the world needs authentic voices resonating within it. Authentic voices rise from forgotten circles of relatedness and contribute crucial new and old ways of knowing to this beleagerd planet.” — Claire Douglas

Claire Douglas, a Jungian analyst in California, has helped to break down old stifling language and prisons of understanding. We all need new, authentic voices and new ways of knowing. Ways of knowing that draw from the ancient and the deeply personal; from the deep center of one’s being and from the friction of opposition.

At the core of Jungian psychology is an understanding that we are all, as Douglas puts it, a mixture of male and female, of the masculine and feminine. And yet, the Jungian field has struggled to truly make sense of what this means within patriarchy for the lived experiences of heterosexual cis men and cis women. Let alone for the experiences of trans people. And yet. This is an area of learning that can blow open the doors of understanding for each of us.

I am truly honored, therefore, to finally be able to announce a new salon that has been in the works for some time: Trans Ways of Knowing. Coming up on Saturday, December 3rd, we’re proud to offer our community and the Jungian world at large an opportunity to see through political rhetoric on trans people and the old ways of knowing about gender and learn from three trans artists, academics, and artists about their lived experience and deep philosophical and psychological understanding.

In this two-hour special event, Cybele Brandow, Rae Davis, and tyler redskye (all members of the Salome community) will share some of their experiences on the path to individuation as trans people, convey ways in which imagination and dreamwork has supported and confirmed their trans identities, and how Jung’s understanding of the Transcendent Function mirrors trans identity and the emergence of “the third” within the gender binary.

We would love your presence at this important event. Please join us and spread the word within your communities. I feel confident that it’s an event you won’t want to miss.

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies