ARAS Connections: Image and Archetype

… a thrilling piece of narrative art - The Weekend Australian

The Long Weekend was first written for the Singer & Kimbles book The Cultural Complex, 2004.

This video of the graphic novel version captures the dreamlike feel of life inside a cultural complex.

Visual, raw and heated, Alice Springs is a town in the heart of aboriginal Australia, a place of creativity and disintegration where fractal forces of present trauma and ancient myth reincarnate and mingle like bread and wine.

Some places in the world incarnate deep histories, fierce tensions, fluid potential and good humour - the best of towns, the worst of towns.

For Australia, Alice Springs is such a place.

“The fourteen chapters in The Dream and Its Amplification illustrate the many ways in which the meaning of dreams can be deepened by a variety of approaches to amplification. Each of the contributors to this volume has chosen a particular direction, whether art and poetry, myth and fairytale, culture and religion, or initiation to the stages of our life, to paint a kaleidoscopic gestalt of the dream and its amplification.”
 

Picking up this book, this world of dreams, we are offered direction, guidance through example, encouragement to explore and use our imagination. But first, do we pass silently by the sleeping giant on the cover, or do we awaken him? Do we delve into the crystal blue water that washes away our blurred vision and leads us down into the realm of psyche and of dreams? Yes, we open the door and embark on a journey through the minds of fourteen Psychoanalysts. Run! some might say, but no, curiosity compels us to remain and go inside.

Read A look at The Dream and Its Amplification in its entirety here.

I will always remember when Charles Taylor first came into the office at ARAS some 25 years ago, carrying a well-worn briefcase that he never changed. During that first meeting he told me that he had volunteered to take on the role of Executive Director, because hiring such a person would eat up the entire budget and more. So he arrived as the servant of something he was so passionate about, in his own modest, humble way. And in the end he not only saved the Archive from closing down, but brought on wonderful new developments as the extraordinary leader he turned out to be for many years to come.
 
But all I knew back then was that he was a Jungian analyst and so we began our work together. He brought me into the mysteries of accounting and budgets, note taking, record keeping, organizing, administrating. He was as generous with his knowledge as with everything else he did – but he was also a strict taskmaster. He wanted things to be done right, and he inspired everyone to do things in the best way we could. I also got to see Charlie’s wonderful sense of fairness, always with the goal of the best way to proceed, making him a master negotiator, often finding a solution that nobody else had thought of. And so the years went by, and the Archive began to bloom, branching out, publishing books, getting known in the world – the last book called The Book of Symbols can now be read in seven languages and continues to be a bestseller. The book was dedicated to Charlie.
 
Then there was another side of him - his passion for the inner life and its rewards. It would happen during a meeting that he would tell a particularly powerful dream and we followed him along on his journey while he was writing the book on Dante’s Divine Comedy. At times it felt like Beatrice was there in the room with us. I think Charlie was drawn to ARAS, because it held the mystery of feelings that numinous images bring. Since describing what Charlie meant to all of us at ARAS would take volumes, I will use the archetypal images that he so honored, to evoke his presence: Charlie was a servant, a man of humility, a leader, a savior of worthy enterprises, a master administrator, a diplomat, a writer, a speaker, a teacher, a therapist and healer, a man of vision and heart - and during the many years we worked together he became a very good friend.
 
Ami Ronnberg
Co-Editor of ARAS Connections