In 2023, Melbourne based researcher Dr Ariel Moy and Jungian Analyst Annette Lowe, made a Joint Presentation to the international conference at the C. G. Jung Institute, in Zurich, celebrating the Institute’s 75th anniversary. 
 
The call went out internationally for research papers dealing with interdisciplinary perspectives on “the crucial topic of emotion and its relevance for analytical psychology: ‘I Feel, Therefore I Am.’

C. G. Jung’s ‘complex’ theory is based on the study of emotions and their embodied symptoms. Beyond their importance for the individual life, the emotions help us to perceive and understand collective and archetypal dynamics in society.

Tonight’s lecture: “We Feel, Therefore We Are: “The Mother-Child: “Us” is the outcome of Dr Moy’s doctoral thesis which investigated whether the holding of infant children (a key ‘attachment’ behaviour) is also important for the mother in developing her selfhood? As a mother feels felt by her child, she experiences deep relational being, purpose and reward.

The mother also develops three unconscious images: of the Child; of the Self-as-Mother; and of the mother-child relationship. Dr Moy terms this the Mother-Child ‘Us’; a relational ontology made real everyday through intimate mother-child encounters.

Annette Lowe will connect Dr Moy's findings with both classic and more recent writing on the developmental psychology of the infant. She will briefly review some of the neurobiology of the mother-child 'Us', and then look in more depth at the archetypal background of both the Mother and the Mother-Child 'Us'.