Attending to the Psyche: Jung, Poetry, and Meaning

Attending to the Psyche: Jung, Poetry, and Meaning is a four-session course exploring poetry as a mode of psychological, mythic, and imaginal knowing. Drawing on Jungian thought, myth, ekphrasis, synchronicity, and the practice of holding paradox, the course invites participants to encounter the psyche as it speaks—in images, symbols, correspondences, and tensions rather than fixed ideas. Through close engagement with poetry, images, and reflective writing, participants explore how meaning emerges slowly and relationally, especially in times of uncertainty and transition. The course offers poetry not as interpretation or technique, but as a discipline of attention and a living dialogue between inner and outer worlds. It will be recorded for those who cannot attend the live online sessions.

4-week course outline

Session 1 — Myth: Poetry as the Psyche’s Oldest Language

This opening session situates myth as a living, psychic reality rather than a relic of the past. We explore how myth functions as a deep grammar of the psyche—one that precedes theory, psychology, and even individual authorship. Poetry and myth are approached as parallel forms of symbolic intelligence, both arising from collective and transpersonal dimensions of experience.

Participants will consider how myths continue to shape inner life, creativity, and meaning-making today, often resurfacing through poetic images, dreams, and moments of crisis or transformation.

Key inquiries:

• Myth as an imaginal structure of the psyche
• The poet as myth-bearer rather than storyteller
• Archetypal patterns and contemporary poetic expression

Practices may include:
Mythic reading, reflective writing, and symbolic mapping of personal or cultural myths.

Week 2 — Ekphrasis: Image, Attention, and the Ethics of Seeing

This session explores ekphrasis not simply as writing about images, but as a mode of imaginal encounter—a way of listening to what images ask of us. Drawing from art, icons, visual culture, and symbolic imagery, we approach ekphrasis as a reciprocal practice: the image looks back.

Here, poetry becomes a discipline of attention, training us to stay with images long enough for meaning to arise rather than be imposed.

Key inquiries:

• Images as autonomous psychic presences
• Ekphrasis as dialogue rather than description
• Seeing without mastery; meaning without closure

Exercises:
Guided ekphrastic writing, contemplative viewing, and group reflection on image–word relations.

Week 3 — Synchronicity: When the World Speaks Poetically

This session turns to synchronicity as a poetic structure of reality—moments when inner and outer worlds align in ways that feel meaningful but resist rational explanation. Rather than treating synchronicity as anomaly, we explore it as a mode of correspondence central to imaginal consciousness.

Poetry is examined as a language uniquely suited to these moments, capable of holding coincidence, resonance, and mystery without reducing them.

Key inquiries:

• Synchronicity as imaginal knowing
• Poetry as a language of meaningful coincidence
• Creativity at the threshold between psyche and world

Exercises:
Reflective writing on lived synchronicities, poetic framing of coincidence, and dialogical sharing.

Week 4 — Holding Paradox: Poetry, Tension, and the Art of Not-Resolving

The final session focuses on poetry’s capacity to hold paradox—rather than resolve it. Drawing on depth psychology and poetic form, we explore how poems sustain tension between opposites: knowing and not-knowing, presence and absence, faith and doubt, meaning and mystery.

Rather than seeking answers, participants are invited to practice staying with ambiguity as a generative space—one where transformation becomes possible.

Key inquiries:

• Paradox as a condition of psychological and spiritual growth
• Poetry as a vessel for tension and contradiction
• The ethics of not forcing resolution

 Exercises:
Writing into contradiction, working with fragment and silence, and closing reflections on the imaginal path.

is an award-winning scholar, poet, and editor whose work bridges literature, creative writing, Jungian psychology, and arts-based research. She is the founding director of the London Arts-Based Research Centre and Editor-in-Chief of Indelible, a literary and arts journal that fosters cross-disciplinary creative expression. Awarded the UK Global Talent Visa and endorsed by the British Academy, Roula has been recognized for her contributions to academia and the creative arts. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and in 2022, she received the British Council’s Alumni Award for Culture and Creativity.

Her academic and creative work explores the deep connections between Jungian and literary theory, poetic inquiry, mythology, and transdisciplinary scholarship. Her book Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020) was shortlisted for the International Association for Jungian Studies Book Awards, and her poetry collection Simply Being (Chiron Publications, 2021) has received critical acclaim. She is also a contributor to Patricia Leavy’s renowned Handbook of Arts-Based Research. Roula is an active curator of global academic and creative activities, having organized over 100 conferences and events. Through her Psychreative speaker series and international workshops, she continues to inspire dialogue between the humanities, the arts, and inner life.