Dancing with the Creative: In Conversation with Sharon Heath

Abstract

Sharon Heath, Jungian analyst and novelist, and Pamela Freundl Kirst, Jungian analyst and writer, explore Ms. Heath’s fiction-writing and the nature of the creative process. The two women, friends from the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, speak intimately, contemplating ways to be in relationship to the imaginal realm and the void that precedes creation. The interview illuminates the profound connection between psyche and imagination and the nourishing link between dreaming and creativity. The deeply feminine nature of creation, including the power and importance of love, suffuses Heath’s writing and her creative process. She recounts the joys and terrors of venturing into the internal worlds of fictional characters and the numinosity of that journey. The conversation touches profound places: what it means to be human given the knowledge of the limits of our lives and the gifts that come from cultivating an enduring relationship to psyche.