I believe creativity, that symbolic function of the psyche, is evolutionary and plays a key role in our individual and collective survival.
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Susanna Ruebsaat (PhD, MA, BFA, BCATR, RCC), RCC-ACS (Provisional) is a faculty member at City University in the Masters in Counselling Program (doctoral mentor), and aJungian oriented therapist specializing in depth psychology from a mythopoetic perspective.
She offers workshops, clinical counselling, art-therapy sessions, clinical supervision and mythopoetic mentoring.
Her therapy sessions (with or without art making) and group workshops explore life narratives (personal myths), and the process of transformation and individuation.
Your hands can still move, despite the trauma,
despite the self-story.
They can still find an image, even in the dark.
Through art and mark-making, we tap into the larger fields of myth, of archetypal stories and into the unconscious.
That’s where the conversation starts, where the transformation of the story begins.
First Book
Mourning the Dream/Amor Fati. An Illustrated Mythopoetic Inquiry
” I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all. In fact, it reminds me of Christian Gaillard's work The Soul of Art. Susanna Ruebsaat’s book is an exceptional blend of art, image, and meaning."
—David H. Rosen, author of Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul through Creativity
What was the dream?
Where and when did I lose it?
Is its mourning complete?
Will it ever be complete?
Did I really lose the dream?
To whom or what did I believe I lost it?
Is it possible to find it again?
These questions offer the structure and nature of myth. They are the myth. Every myth holds loss. Loss is often the beginning of a myth, the events that form the very substance and structure of our myth: The fairy tale that takes us deep into the forest of life where we are lost amongst those trees whose roots reach to the core of our being.
Everyone has a tale. What is rare is the courage to follow this tale to the dark place it leads us to. Shadowlands. Descent. Abduction from ‘reality’. Depth Psychology is interested in Psyche's story after the descent.
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The inner figure of the blind victim, the one that has the power to withstand the dark pull of the archetypal dynamic of illness/wholeness, was particularly active for a long period of time after I initially lost my eyesight.
She kept looking for what I could not see, checking each eye over and over again separately, crying out in despair to the other eye to see if it could not grasp what this one could not.
As a metaphor pointing to something not seen—shadow material not identified with—the soul of my blindness kept reaching out past her claustrophobic confinement to the blackness pressing in on her.
She was relentless in her efforts to stay connected to the “not-me” that might help her learn how to see in another less literal way.
I reflect now on how seeing and my sense of identity became symbiotic in that, what I could see I felt was still a part of me; I could still be whole. I still had a relationship with these parts of my experience. And what I could not see was lost to me forever vanished, as if my very sense of myself was suddenly unavailable, absent. Dead.
“Rarely have I seen the inner dimension of visceral experience brought so tangibly to light as in Mourning the Dream—Amor Fati. Dr. Ruebsaat poignantly, poetically, and with remarkable transparency, explores hidden corners of her psyche while engaging in a dialogue with her readers that supports their own self-exploration. Ultimately, this powerful work of image and soul reaches beyond the realm of individual healing to offer the promise of helping to heal the splits and wounds of our culture at large.”
—Steven M. Rosen, author of Dreams, Death, Rebirth”
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Upcoming Workshops
A Mythopoetic Approach
An Arts-Based Experiential Inquiry
The Child Archetype in Individuation
This is an invitation to investigate the pivotal position of the Archetypal Child in relation to the Archetypes of the Shadow and the Self as these present themselves in Attachment Theory.
Let us explore the colours and shapes of bringing different theories into relationship with our experiential practices. Within this arts-based research framing we have the luxury of creating a secure yet expansive space within which to discover and further articulate potent symbolic dynamics through art-making.
Please join us in this exciting combination of theory and practice.
Attachment Styles
1. Secure Attachment (Healthy Autonomy)
2. Avoidant Attachment (Dismissive)
3. Ambivalent/Anxious Attachment (Preoccupied)
4. Disorganized Attachment (Disoriented or Unresolved Trauma)
Archetypes
1. Child
2. Shadow
3. Ego
4. Self
Ego-Self Axis as core separation and uniting structure of Individuation. Separation is a necessary part of individuation and not a pathology.
Complexes
The wounded parts of our narrative especially in relationships.
Jung described a "complex" as a 'node' in the unconscious; it may be imagined as a knot of unconscious feelings and beliefs, detectable indirectly, through behaviour that is puzzling or hard to account for.
Trauma is “broken connections.” Each of the insecure attachment styles can lead to trauma, because they inhibit our ability to form and maintain connections, especially in the face of overwhelming circumstances or stress (based on current Attachment Theory). Bringing a a Depth lens to the notion of attachment however brings into focus the necessity of separation as an essential step in the individuation process and offers a less pathologizing perspective to each attachment style.
Sunday Jan. 22, 2022 3:30-5:00 Pacific time on zoom
Fee: $60 (sliding scale available for financial hardship)
Please register at susanna.ruebsaat@outlook.comThe necessity of projections.
Alchemical Relationship: Ensouling Projections
Projection as Imaginal figure
An embodied inquiry of:
The necessity of projections.
The image in the mirror tells me who I am. Or does it?
What would it be like to “see through” a projection into its essence?
Could this image point me to a part of myself I am both looking for, and giving away?
Is the act/art of projecting a way the psyche manages its homeostasis through keeping within certain pre-set limits the parts of the self it can handle at any given time or circumstance?
Could these be processes living in the unconscious and insisting on expression and embodiment?
Aspects of the self I am not identified with I may be wanting to rescue, disown, off-load, reclaim, or mirror back as self-images through seeing them outside of myself as other?
Projections can feed me or drain me of my life force.
Sunday Feb. 19, 2022 3:30-5:00 Pacific time time on zoom
Fee: $60 (sliding scale available for financial hardship)
Please register at susanna.ruebsaat@outlook.com
An arts-based experiential inquiry:
the Trickster Archetype in Individuation.
This is an invitation to investigate the pivotal position of the Archetypal Trickster in relation to the Archetypes of the Shadow and the Self as these present themselves in Attachment Theory.
Archetypes
1. Trickster
2. Shadow
3. Ego
4. Self