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The Girl on the Moon
Feature story by Kerry Rutherford
Kathleen Moreau, a Jungian Analyst living in Bryan Ohio, remembers going to a friend's house for dinner when she was about 9 years old. She clearly remembers thinking how different her friendŐs experience of life was from her own. Now, looking back, she sees that she started gathering stories then, although not totally conscious that she was doing so. Paying attention to other people's stories, and descriptions of their unique experiences, was a trait that gave Kathleen an affinity to a basic concept of Jungian psychology: that psychic reality is just as valid as physical reality.
Carl Jung was a young medical student when he met a patient they called The Girl On the Moon. Instead of trying to 'fix' the girl by convincing her she was not on the moon, like the rest of the doctors were doing, he asked himself what it might be, in her life, that made her need to go to the moon. He talked to her with the attitude that her story and experience was true to her. He listened, eventually discovering that she had been molested. Finally the girl decided to come back, emotionally. One thing that drew Kathleen to Jung was that when she read his work, it was so familiar. "I already thought that," was a common experience.
Her own journey is an interesting one. Kathleen was born in Canton, Ohio, and received degrees in sociology and psychology from Malone College in 1974. It was at Azusa Pacific University in California that she received a Masters in Marriage and Family Counseling in 1979. In the '80s as a practicing therapist in Ohio, she saw clients recovering from trauma, addiction and abuse. It was during that time that Kathleen heard an inner voice ask, "Are you living the life that is yours?" The answer was no.
Over several years, Kathleen traveled to Israel and England and then in 1989 she attended a two week workshop on Jungian Studies in Zurich. She returned to Ohio and continued her practice focusing on individual and relationship counseling, but closed her practice in 1995 to return to Zurich and study to become a Jungian Analyst. Although she could have studied in the United States, Kathleen felt she needed to be in Zurich, at the source. Her four and a half years in Zurich were a manifestation of the theme, Live the life you love. "It was a luxury to spend time with myself," Kathleen remembers. "I had what is called a liminal experience: a right of passage or a journey crossing the threshold of liminal space, which is defined as a wilderness, like the Dark Night of the Soul. Old concepts and beliefs no longer hold meaning and concepts held before are suspended in that space. Coming through it is like a rebirth." Kathleen wrote her thesis on "The old ways are lost...A long nightŐs journey into day."
She is now a Diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute-Zurich. The Institute does not award a PhD, although some states do recognize the diploma as such. The training is very specialized and there are less than 3,000 Jungian Analysts, worldwide, in the fifty-five years of the Institute. Kathleen is now a practicing Jungian Analyst who also teaches workshops in which she can facilitate an experience for participants. Some workshops involve discussions of archetypes (characters or images that involve universal themes) in movies and plays using psychodrama techniques. One such workshop is called Archetypes and the Wizard of Oz. Kathleen Moreau can be reached at 419.636.0756.