Students in the Dreamwork class surprise their instructor by showing up for class in their pajamas! They bring a robe for Dr. David Bona (seated on the left).

A Pacifica classroom: "A room full of intelligent human beings sailing on the edge between the known and unknown." (Michael Glock, Alumni)

One of the most popular third year courses is Alchemy and the Mystery Traditions, taught for the last several years by Thomas Elsner. In this course, students will:

1) Understand the relevance of alchemical symbolism to the cultural and

theoretical underpinnings of depth psychology.

2) Situate their own ways of knowing, and their own cultural

perspectives, in relation to culturally diverse perspectives

and practices.

3) Demonstrate an ability to distinguish between literal modes

of thinking and symbolic/metaphorical consciousness.

4) Consider the contemporary extension of depth psychology

into its possible relationship with quantum physics.

CLASSROOM STORIES

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion."

~ Barry Holstun Lopez

Read the Dreamwork syllabus

Dr. Betsy Perluss is a wilderness guide for the School of Lost Borders (www.schooloflostborders.com), a training center for wilderness rites of passage located in Big Pine, CA. in the spring, she made the outdoors her classroom by taking second year students on a fieldtrip to Ojai to learn in and with nature. Read her Ecopsychology II syllabus.

"I had very soon seen that analytical psychology coincided in a most curious way with alchemy. The experiences of the alchemists were, in a sense, my experiences, and their world was my world. This was, of course, a momentous discovery." (C. G. Jung)