WOMEN OF TRACHIS BY SOPHOCLES: A DRAMATIC READING

Program participants will perform a dramatic reading of Women of Trachis by Sophocles eliciting and exploring deep emotional chords expressing vulnerability at the core of relationships. Psychological issues in the context of cultural attitudes toward women presented in the play show striking relevance to case examples of dysfunctional relationships today. Specific study and analysis of adverse impacts upon women in the cultures of states at war, insufficiently perceived until recently.  This presentation addresses not only the impacts on the families but also the more enduring impact on cultural attitudes manifested in the position of women in culture. Overall attitudes toward women that persist as a significant factor in social, economic, and political struggles today derive in part, from the long history of the treatment of women in cultures worldwide. This program analyzes less obvious but powerfully destructive unconscious cultural attitudes utilizing in-depth presentation of the issue through the ancient Greek play by Sophocles: Women of Trachis. This program and this play focus upon the human dimension of war’s impacts on women and children of those waging war. 

 

 

PAUL WOODRUFF, PHD, is a classics scholar and professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He has led several audiences in readings of ancient Greek plays at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco in dynamic ways that bring these works to life.

KAREN NAIFEH, PHD, is an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Her analytic practice with adults is located in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Burlingame, CA. Her areas of special interest are trauma, the shadow, and alchemy. She holds a doctorate in medical psychology as well as clinical psychology and was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF for 11 years where she did research in the areas of sleep, meditation, and biofeedback.

SAM NAIFEH, MD, is an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of  San Francisco. His analytic practice is located in San Francisco and San Mateo, CA. Areas of special interest are addiction, emotional development, and self-regulation, group dynamics, the study of myth and method in analytically-oriented psychology, and the origins of psychological thought in art.