PSYCHO-COSMOS — EMMALEA RUSSO

Psycho-Cosmos begins in late January 2025, but you can sign up at any point throughout the year and get access to the live monthly zoom workshops as well as recordings to all previous classes and course materials. This is an ongoing, generative monthly workshop series exploring connections between astrology, psychology and psychoanalysis, and the creative process. Classes are held via zoom on the last Sunday of each month in 2025. All sales are final. *If you would like a payment plan, please email me! emmalearusso at gmail dot com DETAILS Both astrology and psychoanalysis are frameworks for deeper and more nuanced understandings of ourselves, our desires and limits, and one another. Both astrology and psychoanalysis are also often maligned as quackery or pseudoscience. This workshop series will place various psychological themes in relation to astrological houses, planets, and images and seek to make unexpected and generative links between these fields. We’ll come together once a month via zoom in order to traverse the psycho-cosmic arena with an eye on the generative, strange, and messy edges where the psychoanalytic and the cosmic overlap and diverge. 12 workshops. The last Sunday of each month for all of 2025. COURSE STRUCTURE AND DETAILS There are no prerequisites or required reading and participants are encouraged to find their own interests within the course topics and follow them. There will be a group discord where I will share my sources, reading recommendations, slides, and where participants can share notes, work, and chat with one other. The course structure: a lecture/slideshow for the first hour, with Q+A and group discussion during the second half. *NOTE: Participants are encouraged to attend live. But classes will be recorded. This course is for: -anyone curious about, annoyed by, or obsessed with astrology and/or psychoanalysis -astrologers, therapists, or other practitioners -artists looking for different and unexpected ways to approach their work -those who want a jumpstart into new creative work or research Come away with: -a deeper understanding of the origins of both psychoanalysis and astrology -plenty of readings and paths for further study -increased critical thinking skills -deeper understandings of the works of key figures in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and astrology, including Jung, Freud, James Hillman, Dane Rudhyar, Liz Greene, and others. -tools and language for understanding your own astrological chart, readings, and life in both psychological and cosmic terms -an incredible reading list SAVE THE DATES! *All dates are 2025 and all workshops are SUNDAYS 2 hours each, beginning promptly at 11am ET JANUARY 26, 2025 FEBRUARY 23, 2025 MARCH 30, 2025 APRIL 27, 2025 MAY 25, 2025 JUNE 29, 2025 JULY 27, 2025 AUGUST 31, 2025 SEPTEMBER 28, 2025 OCTOBER 26, 2025 NOVEMBER 30, 2025 DECEMBER 28, 2025 SCHEDULE AND MONTHLY THEMES *All dates are 2025 and all workshops are SUNDAYS *Texts listed are some possible sources I will be using that month. Some PDFs will be provided in the class google drive. 2 hours each, beginning promptly at 11am ET. JANUARY 26, 2025: ASTROLOGY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS Freud said: “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.” This first class is an intro to thinking about psychoanalysis and astrology together, from the perspective of the creative. Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice by Demetra George; The Astrology of Personality by Dane Rudhyar; Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis by Steven Marcus; Erich Neumann’s Art and the Creative Unconscious; Studies on Hysteria by Freud and Breuer; The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fleiss. FEBRUARY 23, 2025: HOROSCOPES: THE HOUR, THE ZODIAC, AND PERSONALITY Horoscope, from horoskopos, means ‘hour marker.’ We’ll discuss the 1st house, how the birth chart is set up, and the psychoanalytic hour. The Ego and the Id by Freud; Jung’s writings on the Self; The Astrology of Personality by Dane Rudhyar; “Hysteria and the Origins of the Psychoanalytic Hour” in Cassandra’s Daughter: A History of Psychoanalysis MARCH 30, 2025: THE (UN)CONSCIOUS AND THE NATAL CHART Sun and Moon, dark/light, Jung’s writings on astrology and alchemy, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams; Freud and Jung on the unconscious. APRIL 27, 2025: THE PLANETS, COMPLEXES, INDIVIDUATION First chapter of Liz Greene’s Jung’s Studies in Astrology; Jung’s case study of Miss X; Jung/Freud split and their letters; Dane Rudhyar’s writings on analytical psychology in The Astrology of Personality. MAY 25, 2025: SATURN: MOURNING AND MELANCHOLIA We’ll discuss the planet Saturn in astrology, Freud’s seminal essay “Mourning and Melancholia” and consider Lars von Trier’s movie Melancholia . Liz Greene’s Saturn: A New Name for an Old Devil; Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia”; Lars von Trier’s Melancholia; Julia Kristeva’s Black Sun; Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists : A Documented History from Late Antiquity Through the French Revolution by Rudolf and Margot Wittkower JUNE 29, 2025: SEX, DEATH, AND THE ENTRANCE TO THE UNDERWORLD We’ll discuss sex and death, eros and thanatos, and the 8th house in astrology, called by the ancients the ‘gate to hell,’ and mysterious ruler of topics such as sex and death. The Erotic by Lou-Andreas Salomé; writings by Sabina Spielrein; Bataille’s writings on eros and death; Freud on the death drive; selections from Jamieson Webster’s Disorganization and Sex JULY 27, 2025: UNDERWORLD AND UNCONSCIOUS: PLUTO, DREAMS, TRASH HEAPS The Dream and the Underworld by James Hillman; selections from Hal Foster’s Compulsive Beauty; surrealism; Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life ; The Astrology of Fate by Liz Greene. AUGUST 31, 2025: MOON, MOTHER, MATTER “Leonardo da Vinci and the Mother Archetype” from Erich Neumann’s Art and the Creative Unconscious; “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood” by Freud; Camilla Paglia’s “Erich Neumann: Theorist of the Great Mother”; Paglia’s “Amazons, Mothers, Ghosts” from Sexual Personae; The Mother in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Elissa Marder. SEPTEMBER 28, 2025: MADNESS, DREAMS, AND THE 12TH HOUSE "Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you,” wrote Jung. We’ll explore the 12th house in astrology, notions of madness, and Freud and Jung’s self-examinations and descents into dreams and madness, alongside the writings on artistic practice and psychoanalysis by the poet H.D. and the visual artist Louise Bourgeois. Freud’s self-analysis, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud and Jung on madness, selections from The Red Book by Jung; James Hillman on lunacy; Louise Bourgeois and H.D. on psychoanalysis and the creative process. OCTOBER 26, 2025: PSYCHOANALYSIS + ASTROLOGY AS ART: MERCURY, FICTION, AND CASE STUDIES Healing Fiction and Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman; Jung’s writings on Alchemy and Mercury; Freud’s Dora: A Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria; Freud’s “Creative Writers and Daydreaming,” and Jung’s Miss X. NOVEMBER 30, 2025: NEPTUNE AND THE OCEANIC FEELING Liz Greene’s The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption; selected writings by Freud on the oceanic feeling; Jung on the collective unconscious; William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience; James Hillman’s Insearch: Psychology and Religion DECEMBER 28, 2025: ON THE COUCH AND IN THE ZOOM ROOM: PRACTICING AND STUDYING ASTROLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS Discussion of methods of practicing and studying astrology and psychoanalysis. And optional class presentations of topics discussed in class and/or work completed or worked on during the year.