Rehabilitating the Heart: A Jungian Psychoanalytic Exploration of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale The Snow Queen by Elizabeth Colistra, PhD

Psychoanalytic Explorations is a series in which faculty members and students of the NOBPC, as well as interested members of the community, present and discuss issues of current concern to them. The focus will be on clinical practice, theoretical challenges, and non-clinical applications of psychoanalytic theory; all presentations are intended to deepen attendees’ ability to think psychoanalytically. Each session will begin with a presentation followed by questions and answers and open discussion, with the intention of facilitating relaxed, informal peer exchange.

Psychologists, Social Workers, and Licensed Professional Counselors may also receive continuing education credit for this activity if their accredited associations or boards recognize CME credits.

Discussion begins at 11am Central Time at NOBPC or Zoom

According to Bruno Bettelheim, “Psychoanalysis was created to enable man to accept the problematic nature of life without being defeated by it, or giving in to escapism. Freud’s prescription is that only be struggling courageously against what seem like overwhelming odds can man succeed in wringing meaning out of his existence.” This is also the message that fairy tales deliver: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, archetypal, and an intrinsic part of human existence. However, if one engages consciously in the struggle, one may discover that it is a meaningful suffering, not simply a meaningless one.

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Snow Queen, follows the story of a young girl and boy and the trouble they both get into regarding their hearts. It is the heart which allows us to experience feeling values of love, empathy, compassion, and relatedness. In Jungian psychology, is is the realm of the archetypal feminine principle. The Snow Queen teaches us the dangers of being too one-sided, either too naively in the heart, or too cooly in the mind. Separated and eventually conjoined, the heart and mind both require distillation and refinement. If we can submit to his process, not only does it lead to the rehabilitation of the heart, but a chance for love and insight to reign together equally and powerfully in the psyche of individuals and the larger collective consciousness

Elizabeth Colistra, PhD is a certified Jungian psychoanalyst in New Orleans who offers a unique perspective on psychoanalytic discourse given her Jungian training and clinical practice.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the clinical relevance for use of fairy tales in psychoanalytic practice
• Demonstrate the ways in which fairy tales help make internal processes more comprehensible and meaningful by externalizing these processes in the figures of the story and its events
• Describe the process of development out of an original undifferentiated state into one of integration of opposites within the personality through the use of the fairy tale

Please join us at NOBPC or via Zoom. Participation is open to all. In-person space is limited so please register early.

Please click HERE for online registration. If you prefer to pay by check, please email nobpcenter@gmail.com.

Fee for 1.5 CME credits:

• NOBPC members $25
• Non-members $35
• Students $10

Zoom registration ends 24 hours before the event.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and NOBPC. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME’s identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support.

Optional Readings:

• Cunha, I. (2021). The Jaguar, The Fire, The Man: A Jungian Interpretation of a Brazilian Indigenous Tale. Psychological Perspectives, Vol. 64, issue 3, (pp. 369-382).
• Newton, L. (2019). Resolving a Split in Feminine Development: The Pretty and the Ugly Maidens. Psychological Perspectives, Vol. 62, issue 1, (pp. 79-88).
• Takenaka, N. (2016). The Realization of Absolute Beauty: an interpretation of the fairytale Snow White. Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol 61, issue 4, (pp. 497-514).