Does the soul still live here?

Lecture: Does the soul still live here?

Lecturer: Gian Piero Quaglino (IPAP - Institute of Analytical Psycology and Psychotherapy, Ivrea)

Date: Friday, June 6, 2025, 6:30 p.m.

Place: Monte Verità (Ascona), Auditorium

Cycle: Eranos-Jung Lectures 2025 - A Jungian Lexicon for our Times: Guilt, Soul, Conflict, Time, Care, Knowledge

Language: Italian

Moderator: Fabio Merlini (Fondazione Eranos, Ascona / SUFFP, Lugano)

Followed by discussion with the audience and aperitif

The video recording of the conference will be viewable on the official YouTube channel of the Eranos Foundation.

Lecture Presentation

A difficult question that, however, all too easily leads, these days, to disconsolate answers. Religion seems to have curiously become aphasic about the Soul, philosophy has opted for cogito with conviction worthy of a better cause, science celebrates itself by relegating it to the previous world of beliefs and superstitions. Among the sciences, even psychology, which supposedly has the soul in its name, seems to have completely disregarded it, but perhaps one could also say denied and betrayed it. Fortunately for us, there are still some exceptions, first and foremost those who follow the safe path traced by the thoughts and works of Carl Gustav Jung. “The Soul is life itself” affirms the great old man of Küsnacht and Bollingen without uncertainty or embarrassment. And from here he weaves the thread of the many faces that illuminate its presence among us. So let's try to restore the Soul, in a Jungian perspective, all its depth of field, its (our) necessity, its (our) obligation, its (our) fatality. So that the Soul is no longer to be considered as a faded relic of the past, but rather as a flourishing promise for the future.

Lecturer' Bio-bibliography

Gian Piero Quaglino, Full Professor of Social Psychology, Dynamic Psychology, and Psychology of Education, taught for over thirty years at the University of Turin (1977-2010). Since 2016 he has been a founding member of the Institute of Analytical Psychology and Psychotherapy (IPAP), School of Specialization in Psychotherapy, in Ivrea. In this context, he is a professor of Fundamentals of Analytical Psychology and Analysis and Interpretation of Dreams, as well as director of the School of Lifelong Learning. He has dedicated Pagine junghiane (2025) to the thought of C.G. Jung and, in collaboration with A. Romano, the volumes A spasso con Jung (2005; new edition 2021), A colazione da Jung (2006), and Nel giardino di Jung (2010), and he edited the collections Jung. Aforismi (2012) and Jung. Aforismi dell'inconscio (2014). With R. Bernardini and A. Romano, he edited C.G. Jung's unpublished The Solar Myths and Opicinus of Canistris. Notes of the Seminar given at Eranos in 1943 (2014-2025). After Meglio un cane (2015), he began publishing a series of volumes, both non-fiction and narrative, of which I quaderni di Eduardo Descondo (2018), Nuovi quaderni di Eduardo Descondo (2019), Abitare la soglia (2019, by Eduardo Descondo), Incerti versi diCarlos Albasuelo (2019; new expanded edition 2024), Premiata ditta Caso&Destino. I quaderni di Eduardo Descondo Vol. III (2020), Lettera a Mirul di Lumir Medana (2020), Ombre, buio (e Bob Dylan) di Marcelo Malavista (2021), and Istituto Pesaventa. I Quaderni di Eduardo Descondo Vol. IV (2023)

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On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of C.G. Jung (1875-1961), the Eranos Foundation dedicates its Eranos-Jung Lectures - the public conferences held at the Monte Verità Conference Center in Ascona - to the exploration of a Jungian micro-lexicon, with which we wish to map some problematic nodes of our present. These are six words - Guilt, Soul, Conflict, Time, Care, Knowledge - to which Jung, during his intellectual and human journey, dedicated pages of great clarity and depth. For us today, they are precious notions through which we can shed light on ourselves, on our relationship with others and with the surrounding world. In this way, Jung will accompany us on a journey of discovery inside and outside ourselves, to help us better understand what went wrong in the process of civilization to which we owe both our power and our fragility, in the face of a reality that no longer seems to respond as we would like to our hegemonic designs.