OPUS Archives and Research Center

OPUS Archives and Research Center^[1][2][3][4] holds the archival collections of scholars in the fields of mythology, depth psychology and archetypal psychology. The archival collections housed at OPUS include: Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas, James Hillman, Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Joseph Wheelwright, Marion Woodman and Christine Downing. OPUS also holds the libraries of Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas on the Pacifica campuses as well as the book collections of John A. Sanford and William Henry Barnes. The painting collection of Katherine M. Sanford is also a part of the OPUS repository.

OPUS Archives and Research center is a 501(c)3 non-profit located on the campuses of Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California.

Mission

The mission of OPUS Archives and Research Center is to preserve, develop and extend to the world the archival collections and libraries of eminent scholars in the fields of depth psychology, mythology and the humanities, particularly as they inform issues of social justice and environmental sustainability. The Center is a "living archive," supporting interdisciplinary dialogue, education, grants, research opportunities and public programs.^[5]

History

OPUS Archives and Research Center was initially established as the Center for Depth Psychology in the early 1990s.

Collections at OPUS

Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987), mythologist and Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College, was one of the most well known scholars in the study of mythology and its significance in exploring, defining and understanding the human experience.^[6]

Through his 38 year career of teaching at Sarah Lawrence College and delivering hundreds of lectures to other audiences, including institutions such as Eranos and Esalen, Campbell demonstrated his vast breadth of knowledge and interest in mythology. Some of the most well known of his publications include: The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949), the 4 volume set of The Masks of God (1959–1968), Myths to Live By (1972) and the 2 volume, 5 part Historical Atlas of World Mythology (1983–1989). Additionally, he edited six volumes of selections from the Eranos Yearbooks published by the Bollingen Foundation, and four volumes of the posthumous works of the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer including Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (1946).^[7]

Holdings and Library

The Joseph Campbell Collection includes his personal library from the time of his death, containing nearly 3,000 volumes in the fields of mythology, literature, art, philosophy and religion. A number of the volumes are rare and many of the books contain Campbell’s marginalia. An online catalog of the Campbell library is available on the OPUS Archives & Research Center website.^[8]. The Campbell Collection includes personal artifacts, art, re-mastered audio tapes of lectures, video tapes, manuscripts, research papers, photographs and memorabilia amassed during the decades he taught at Sarah Lawrence College and lectured around the world. All of these items have been turned over to Opus Archives and Research Center by the Joseph Campbell Foundation.

Marija Gimbutas

Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994), former Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at UCLA, contributed to what is considered to be one of the most significant academic watershed moments in women’s studies with her archeological and philosophical work on Neolithic culture and religion. A Lithuanian-American archeologist, she is best known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe,” (Old European culture) a term she introduced. Old Europe referred to both the geographical area and social structures that existed before the Indo-European influence, and was based her work on the cross-disciplines of archaeological artifacts, linguistics, ethnography and folklore that led her to posit the thesis that the European prehistoric culture was female-centered and worshiped a Mother Goddess as giver of all life. Her last book, The Civilization of the Goddess, which synthesizes the work and theses of her previous books - Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe 1974/1982 and The Language of the Goddess 1989/1991. ^[9]

Holdings and Library

Gimbutas' library includes an extensive collection on archaeology, as well as numerous volumes about religion, anthropology, linguistics, mythology, folklore, and art. Lecture notes from her years of teaching, figurines from her personal collection, and manuscripts of her articles and books which include: The Balts, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, and The Civilization of the Goddess. Also available in her collection are over 12,000 images of the professor's photographs of prehistoric sacred figures and research files on the European Neolithic cultures of Old Europe and symbols.

James Hillman

James Hillman (1926) is an American psychologist, a leading scholar in Jungian and Post-Jungian thought, and is considered by many to be one of the most radical and original living critics of contemporary culture. The field that he founded, Archetypal Psychology, emphasizes the importance of imagination both in the experience of psyche and in life itself. The body of his work is composed of scholarly studies in several fields including psychology, philosophy, mythology, art, and cultural studies. His groundbreaking book, Re-visioning Psychology, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and his book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, was on the New York Time’s best seller list for nearly a year. His works also include The Myth of Analysis, Healing Fiction, The Dream and the Underworld, The Force of Character, and Suicide and the Soul, among many others.^[10][11]

Holdings

The James Hillman Collection is composed of manuscripts, drafts, research files and publishing agreements for James Hillman’s books, essays, lectures, and collaborative volumes up until the year 2000. It also includes unpublished lectures and writings, as well as audio versions of seminars and lectures; and correspondence with friends, scholars, colleagues, and artists.

Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Joseph Wheelwright

Jane Hollister Wheelwright (1905–2004) and her husband Joseph Balch Wheelwright (1906–1999) were Jungian Analysts who studied with Carl Jung and Toni Wolff in Zurich during the 1930s and practiced in San Francisco beginning in 1941. They were among the founders of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, and Joseph served as president of the International Association of Jungian Psychologists. They were major figures in the dissemination of Jung’s ideas in America. Jane’s practice and work focused on the connection between wilderness and psyche and also the psychological processes of death. Joseph taught psychiatry at the UC SF Medical Center for over 30 years, which became a leading psychiatric training institute in the nation. In later years, they spent much time living on land that had been part of the Hollister Ranch, located west of Santa Barbara, where Jane had grown up.

Holdings

The collection includes correspondence, extensive drafts and transcripts of speeches and articles, interviews and original drafts of books and articles authored by the Wheelwrights. Correspondence in the collection includes original documents from Carl Jung, Toni Wolff, Marie-Louise von Franz, James Kirsch, Joseph Henderson, Michael Fordham, Gregory Bateson, Erik Erikson, and Joseph's brother George Wheelwright, a co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. Joseph's writings include drafts of numerous lectures on the subjects of geriatrics, psychological types, the Student Mental Health Clinic at the University of California at Berkeley, the Gray-Wheelwright Type Test, and the book St. George and the Dandelion: Forty Years of Practice as a Jungian Analyst (1982). Jane's writings include lectures on masculinity and femininity and the books The Ranch Papers: a California Memoir (1988); The Long Shore: a Psychological Experience of the Wilderness (with her daughter Lynda Wheelwright Schmidt) (1991); and Death of a Woman (1981), about psychotherapy with a terminal cancer patient.

Marion Woodman

Marion Woodman (1928), LLD, DHL, Ph.D, is an international teacher and workshop leader, author, lecturer and Jungian Analyst. With over half a million books in print, she is one of the most widely read authors on analytical and feminine psychology of our time. A graduate of the Institut Zürich (C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich) in 1978, Marion Woodman was in private practice until 1992 when she began her treatment of cancer and focused on writing, lecturing and holding workshops. Throughout her career she has focused on the relationship of psyche and soma and this specialization, particularly as it manifested in the experiences and lives of women, was groundbreaking in the field of Jungian studies.^[12]

Holdings

The collection is composed of both personal and professional effects. It includes lecture notes and correspondence (professional and personal), audio and video lectures. Personal mementos in the collection include scrapbooks and photograph albums from Marion Woodman’s youth. The collection also includes a manuscript of Leaving My Father’s House, and her personal library collection that includes volumes of Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot and the Collected Works of C.G. Jung with and without marginalia.

Christine Downing

Christine Downing (1931) is a scholar of religion, mythology, depth psychology and feminist studies. She began her teaching career at Rutgers University in 1963. In 1974 she moved to California to teach at San Diego State University where she remained for eighteen years, ten of which she served as chair of the Department of Religious Studies. In 1974, when Dr. Downing became the first woman president of the American Academy of Religion, she gave her presidential address on "Sigmund Freud and the Mythological Tradition," a presentation which marked an important early public expression of her life-long scholarly emphasis on Freud. During her years in San Diego, Dr. Downing also served as a core faculty member at the California School of Professional Psychology. This assignment led her to return to school to pursue a master's degree in family therapy.^[13] In 1994 she assisted in the development of the curriculum for the newly established Mythological Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Holdings

The collection contains memento folders from 1955 through 2006, documentation of her creative process for the nine books she has written, the five she edited, and numerous others that are in different stages of completion. Additionally, the collection holds a significant body of correspondence, both personal and professional, lecture outlines and notes, syllabi, and recordings of many of the courses she has taught over a period of more than four decades at Rutgers, San Diego State University, California School of Professional Psychology and Pacifica Graduate Institute. A list of the holdings in the Downing Collection is available on the OPUS website.^[14]

Katherine M. Sanford

Katherine M. Sanford (1917) is a Jungian analyst and author of The Serpent and the Cross which is a collection of 62 paintings she did over 30 years of Jungian analysis and inner work.^[15]

Holdings

The Sanford Collection consists of the original paintings that are published in The Serpent and the Cross. When describing her work, Katie says, "These paintings, like the weeds in the stream, have helped me pull myself from the grip of an unconscious archetypal identification into life. As a lifesaving undertaking, these images and related commentaries demonstrate the transformative power of active imagination and illustrate how I experienced this conscious interaction between ego and archetype within my own individuation process".^[16]

Rare Book Collections

John A. Sanford

A parish priest for 19 years before starting his private practice as a psychoanalyst, John A. Sanford (1929–2005) focused his work on the intersections between inner growth as offered in depth psychology and Christianity. He studied with Fritz Kunkel and completed his training in Jungian analysis at the C.G. Jung Institute in Los Angeles. Books he authored include The Invisible Partners, Healing and Wholeness, Fritz Kunkel, The Strange Trial of Mr. Hyde, and Mystical Christianity: A Psychological Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. ^[17]

Holdings

The Sanford Rare Book Collection focuses on Christianity. A complete list of books is available on the OPUS website.^[18]

William Henry Barnes

A pioneer attorney from Ventura, California, Judge William Henry Barnes, like other individuals in the late 19th and early 20th century, had a fascination with spiritualism. His rare book collection contains over 80 books covering various aspects of topics related to the esoteric field.

Holdings

The W.H. Barnes Rare Book Collection on Spiritualism is available on the OPUS website.^[19]

References

1. ^ Santa Barbara NewsPress article on OPUS libraries, prior to OPUS' official name change, 3/21/04
2. ^ http://www.pacifica.edu/opus_archive_research_center.aspx
3. ^ http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=71&p16_sectionid=2
4. ^ http://www.opusarchives.org/clonch_fieldwork.pdf
5. ^ http://opusarchives.org/our_mission.shtml
6. ^ Campbell, Joseph. The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. Ed. Phil Cousineau. Centennial Edition. Navato: New World Library, 2003. 251.
7. ^ Campbell, Joseph. The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. Ed. Phil Cousineau. Centennial Edition. Navato: New World Library, 2003. 233.
8. ^ http://opusarchives.org/campbell_holdings.shtml
9. ^ http://www.marijagimbutas.com/biography.html
10. ^ http://www.pacifica.edu/innercontent-m.aspx?id=1768
11. ^ http://www.springpublications.com/uniformedition.html
12. ^ http://www.mwoodmanfoundation.org/bios.html
13. ^ http://pacifica.edu/innercontent-m.aspx?id=1880
14. ^ http://opusarchives.org/downing_holdings.shtml
15. ^ Sanford, Katherine. The Serpent and the Cross. Blaine, WA: Coral Publishing, 2006. p1.
16. ^ Sanford, Katherine. The Serpent and the Cross. Blaine, WA: Coral Publishing, 2006. p2.
17. ^ http://www.innerexplorations.com/catjc/5.htm
18. ^ http://opusarchives.org/sanford_holdings.shtml
19. ^ http://opusarchives.org/barnes_holdings.shtml

Sources

External links

Organizations:

• OPUS Archives and Research Center Website
• Pacifica Graduate Institute
• Joseph Campbell Foundation
• Marija Gimbutas Website
• The Marion Woodman Foundation

General:

• Mythos and Logos
• James Hillman interview "On Soul, Character and Calling"
• James Hillman live at Mythic Journeys - video
• Joseph Campbell Interview with Bill Moyers

Publications

• Spring Journal - James Hillman publications