Viewing and Discussion: A Scanner Darkly 

Friday July 8, 7-10 pm

August Cwik, Psy.D.

$15 pre or drop-in

Philip K. Dick - psychological science fiction writer extraordinaire who has had a number of his other stories made into big Hollywood movies: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and Paycheck, to name a few - considered the book, A Scanner Darkly, to be his masterpiece.  Ostensibly a paean to anti-drug use - Dick himself experienced a psychotic break due to drug use - it is so much more.   Director Linklater uses the rotoscope animation first developed for Waking Life to excellent means here.  The "live" filmed footage underlying the animation breaks through every so often creating an eerie dual reality. Even in choosing his cast, Linklater picked actors well known for their history of drug use: Keanu Reeves, Wynona Rider, Woody Harrelson, and Robert Downey, Jr. The medium becomes the message.    And it is precisely this question that Dick tirelessly asked over and over again in many of his stories:  What is real? The dialogue is often funny as it displays the illogical nature of altered-states of consciousness.  But it is basically the story of an undercover officer as he becomes addicted to a drug that causes chronic users to develop a split personality, cognitive problems, and severe paranoia.  Ironically, he ends up assigned to surveillance over the group he has infiltrated, including himself.  What evolves is a dark night of the soul journey through a shadow land with a terrifying decent into loss of the subject/object relationship itself.  Be prepared to enter:  through a glass darkly - and into the disturbing mind of Philip K. Dick.  

 Fairytales IV

Saturday July 9, 1-4 pm

Laura McGrew, L.C.P.C.

$40, CEUs: 3

The last in this series, Fairytales IV will explore The Story of the Youth Who Went forth to Find Out What Fear Is and a mystery fairy tale.   Fairy tales expose the archetypal realm, insisting that we allow our individual stories to become universal.  In this workshop we will continue to work with fairy tales as if they are the 'collective dreams' Jung defined them to be.   In their 'once upon a time' reality, we will see how the personal and the impersonal worlds weave in and out of each other uniting the past and present. Marie Louis Von Franz said that fairy tales are 'true and untrue'- 'neither and both' and 'must never be resolved intellectually.'  As we work through several tales, we shall learn if these ideals hold relevancy for us today.  This workshop will be seminar-style where we will all actively participate, hopefully have fun, and gain some insight along the way.  Copies of the tales to be used will be available at the Center at no cost.   Participation in previous Fairytale class is not necessary to attend.

Viewing and Discussion:  Inglourious Basterds

Friday August 5, 7-10 pm

Michael Losoff, Ph.D.

$15 pre or drop in

Inglourious Basterds is a war film like no other.  It is dark comedy, a spoof on the countless World War II movies familiar to us all, and one that provides an impossible happy ending in which the film's "basterds" make sure that the war's bastards get everything they deserve and then some.  The film's director, Quentin Tarantino, famous for drawing characters bigger than life in his films, has in Inglorious Basterds created three iconic figures to tell his story: the Nazi Villain, the Military Hero, and the Jewish Heroin (as a girl, a victim of the villain).  He then provides them with dialogue, actions, scenes and images so much larger-than-life (literally so in one breathtaking scene) and so deeply affecting, that the viewer, whether Jew or Gentile, is drawn into that psychological space where the collective and the personal intersect.  The film culminates in a scene that, at least in this viewer's opinion, was likely meant as a "Grand Catharsis" not only for Jews but for all Western culture.  Join us for a viewing of this riotous powerful film and for the inevitable, stimulating discussion of its content, especially of Tarantino's use of archetypal figures and our reactions to them.