MAGNT’s purpose is to provide a space where individuals seeking understanding

of themselves and their world come together

to learn, to play and to connect.

"We're sick!" from the song, Officer Krupke, West Side Story

"I still can't say whether it helps; but then I've only been in analysis for 16 years."
Alvie Sargent in Annie Hall

We in the West are living in what has been dubbed the Age of Therapy. Even the tabloids now speak "knowingly" of Bill Clinton's sex addiction and George W. Bush's father fixation.

Whereas those engaging in "abnormal" behavior were once seen as messengers of the gods, we now prescribe prozac, neuro-linguistic programming, or psychoanalysis. And yet the medical model which forms the basis of psychotherapy in its many varieties seems at times to fail. Is the shaman in the rain forest -- or in Edina -- really suffering from associative disorder? Is it illuminating to describe Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot as sick? And if protracted, arduous, several-times-a-week psychoanalysis is the only way out of crippling infirmity, what about the vast majority of humankind for whom limited financial resources and demanding life style make that choice an impossibility?

In this MAGNT meeting, we will consider the gifts psychotherapy can provide. We will consider the viewpoint of James Hillman and Michael Ventura who, in their book We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse, argue that psychotherapy got off at the wrong stop. We will watch an excerpt from Duet for One, arguably the most trenchant portrayal of psychotherapeutic encounter ever portrayed in a motion picture. And we will share our hopes and our fears.

Conversation Facilitators:
David P. Gordon, a Freudian oriented psychoanalyst in private practice in the Twin Cities area.
Ira L. Gordon, a Jungian oriented astrological counselor, a playwright, and a dancer.