The twelve week online course focuses on how you relate to yourself and others, and how others relate to you. To help you uncover the dynamics that govern your relationships we identify your unconscious motivations and archetypal imprints through exploring your transference and counter-transference onto others, and your relationship to the world and yourself from the archetypes of the Anima (Eros) and Animus (Logos).

Transference is a projection of a relationship dynamic that you as an individual unconsciously hold, onto another person. Usually this relationship dynamic mirrors the one you have with one of your parents. Unconsciously you project your relationship dynamic with either your mother or your father, or a combination of both, onto others. In therapy this occurs spontaneously, but it is also prevalent in our normal day to day relationships with lovers, friends, colleagues, those in positions of authority and others.

Where it becomes really “interesting” is when you transfer onto someone, they typically start acting out and adopting the behavior you have unconsciously transferred onto them. In other words, if you are transferring onto the other person your relationship dynamic with your mother (for example), that person may relate back to you as though they were your mother – with the same relational dynamic! This is called counter-transference.

This explains why oftentimes you get the same type of response from different people and have the same pattern repeating itself in your romantic relationships, professional life or with friends and family.

Navigating relationships is not easy. We often find ourselves in the same pattern with romantic partners as we had in previous relationships. We may consciously decide to behave differently or try to meet someone totally different, but somehow end up with the same outcome. Are people just generally selfish, dismissive, belittling, nasty or emotionally unavailable and so on?

The truth is that YOU are getting this result again and again. The question is, WHY?

As a metaphysical concept, the transference-countertransference phenomenon has been used as a way to conceptualize the human tendency to personalize any relationship, even one to transpersonal realities… No human relationship can avoid the impact of the human unconscious, whether it is deemed a positive or negative contribution.
A. B. Ulanov

This course will explore this phenomenon in detail. To help you identify, understand and ultimately heal dysfunctional or simply less-than-ideal relational dynamics.

We will also investigate the archetypal imprints of the Anima and Animus which determine how you relate to your inner world and the external world. These concepts from Jungian Psychology will help you understand why you may struggle to be effective in your communication or self-expression. Uncover and understand where your psyche is sabotaging your relatedness to yourself and others. Re-imagine an identity in which these issues are integrated and accommodated and no longer sabotage you and your relationships.

The contrasexual archetypes galvanize the deepest issue of individuation – that process of differentiating out of unconsciousness one’s individual personality in relation to other persons. Mess or grand experience, connection or disruption, a relation of love or one of hostility – our sexual life is a constant drama in which the contrasexual archetypes [i.e anima and animus] play a major role. These are the archetypes that open onto the Self on the individuation journey.
ibid