Arnold Mindell: Author, Teacher, Psychologist, Dreamer -- PART 3: The World is My Family

Part 3: The World is My Family This lively and informal interview with Arny Mindell was filmed in December 2021. It is a broad discussion of his life and work creating “Process-oriented Psychology”. Arny’s interview with Cathy Bernatt was filmed by Jerry Grant, with love and support from Amy Mindell. Part 4 of this film will be uploaded soon. (Please note that a separate film about Amy and Arny’s relationship will be uploaded in the near future.) In Part 3, we learn about Arny’s life as a physicist, some of the fascinating projects he got to work on and his ultimate decision to follow his dreaming to study Jungian analysis and eventually develop Process-oriented Psychology (Processwork). Arny shares about his special relationships with two of his Jungian analysts: Franz Riklin (Psychiatrist and President of the Jung Institute in Switzerland and nephew of Carl Jung) and Marie-Louise von Franz (Jungian Swiss psychologist known for her psychological interpretations of fairy tales and work with dreams). We meet Cleopatra, Arny’s dog, discover how she helped advance Worldwork through Arny’s one-on-one work with World leaders, and how she saved his life one day. Arny speaks about the evolution of Worldwork and shares a few profound moments in Worldwork seminars around the world. Amy joins and shares aspects of Arny never shared before. Returning to family, Arny shares touching stories of how his father and his mother each influenced him and his development. Below is a breakdown of topics with time codes. If you click on a time-code, it will take you to that section of the video: 01:09 COLLEGE, JOBS, MIT & Ph.D I would like to ask you, Arny, to share with us about some of the jobs you had before physics, you went to study or maybe it was while you were studying physics. Tell us about your job at the Knowles Research Lab. 03:41 Do you want to share more about your time at MIT as a physicist and things that may have happened, that would be interesting for people to know about? 05:14 What did you do your Thesis in? 05:37 What do you think today about synchronicities? 08:00 ON CREATIVITY 10:14 Are those ways…whether it’s moving, or painting, or writing…are those ways of following the dreaming in that way, of bringing like our unconscious, conscious? 11:24 MEETING FRANZ RIKLIN & MARIE-LOUISE VON FRANZ Who’s Franz Riklin? How did he come into your life? Isn’t there a story about that guy? 18:28 CLEOPATRA, WORLD LEADERS AND WORLDWORK Did you have any pets growing up? 23:20 How did world leaders find you? 24:16 Could you, without divulging confidentiality, just share a little bit more about the kinds of themes that they would come to you to work on…and the kind of help you gave them that maybe made a difference in terms of what they did? 26:01 THE ONGOING DEVELOPMENT OF WORLDWORK What questions do you have about Worldwork in your continuing empirical research? And what do you feel are the future developments of Worldwork? 28:25 Can you just share a little bit about, what you feel about that bear chasing you around the world? 30:14 Can you tell us about some of those experiences that you had? What have they taught you, how they informed the development of Processwork? 31:10 What were the things you actually learned that helped you follow yourself deeper and deeper? 32:27 How’d you become interested in that? 34:14 THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND BEING OUT IN THE WORLD How has life been for you over the time of the (Covid-19) Pandemic? 35:25 Can you give any hints about what you’re working on now, what the dreaming is telling you to work on right now? 36:03 AMY JOINS ARNY 40:03 You get involved in conflicts on the street too, right? 40:36 ON THE SUBJECT OF FAMILY What kind of good trouble, or not good trouble, did you get into with your brother Carl together, as you were growing up? 41:21 When you think about your mother and father: In what ways did each of them influence you in your own development as a human being? 45:04 Do you have memories that fascinated you as a little boy? And things that disturbed you? 45:47 What was it in your character, your deepest being, that enabled you to transform that horrific big event into creating more consciousness around international world issues? What was in your character as a little boy that enabled you to do that? 47:00 At some point you said that you learned how to fight. What’d you mean? Did you take boxing or martial arts?