Back to Magic School: Personal Mythologies for Today

Tutor Kenneth Rees is running a two-Saturday course on Personal Mythologies for Today in central London this autumn.

Here is the information about it:

This two-day workshop/seminar will consider the recovery of one’s ‘personal myth’ as part of modern society’s quest for the ‘self’. It will explore whether issues such as personal identity can be productively pursued through the cultivation and evolution of personal mythologies. The course will be partly experiential, involving a range of exercises including drawing, role play and drama, as well as reflection on which societal and familial myths we relate to in our lives – to what extent do we allow individual and cultural myths to live us and how far do we live and mould them? How functional are our present personal myths, etc? An analysis of the concept of personal myth will be presented and students will work within the interfaces between myth, psychology and spirituality to help see through contemporary confusions.

The development of a mythological perspective on society and on oneself is encouraged, in respect to the guiding myths of one's family upbringing, culture, social class, and political or religious ideology. Gaining awareness of such control systems helps us to see how they impinge on us all and may assist in realising a sense of authentic selfhood in contrast to the array of pseudo-selves promoted by a range of narratives – familial, political, religious, social media, New Age and the like.

By the end of the course students should be in a better position to evaluate the effects of wider sociological and psychological influences on themselves and should be able to diagnose what changes they may want to make (if any!) in terms of current life-styles, life choices and overall attitudes. Thus an overall course goal is to enable individuals to realise a more fulfilling personal myth, and achieve an increased understanding of how personal identity is constructed.

Venue: The Mary Ward Centre, Queen Square, London WC1 (nearest tube stations – Holborn, Russell Square)
Dates: Saturday 12 October and Saturday 19 October
Time: 10.15am – 5.30pm
Course No: 453
Fees: £57 Cons: £20
Enrolment: 0207 269 6000 (or online)
Enquires: 0208 671 6372
Website: www.marywardcentre.ac.uk

The photo shows the Mary Ward Centre