Today, we will be chatting with EWP core faculty Helge Osterhold about the uniqueness of the EWP container and how he facilitates transformative pedagogy in the classroom. We then explore Jungian notions of East-West spirituality and address the importance of individuation in contemporary approaches to the activist-scholar paradigm. The interview ends with Helge outlining his recent paper “The dance between individuation and death anxiety: an interdisciplinary reflection on cultural polarization in apocalyptic times”.

Dr. Helge Osterhold is a psychotherapist and integrative educator. Teaching graduate level psychology courses since 2006, he joined the EWP department as a core faculty member in 2017 and offers courses in Jungian Psychology, Archetypal Psychology, Dreamwork, Spiritual Counseling, and the Psychology of Death and Dying. His theoretical and clinical orientation includes transpersonal, depth and humanistic-existential psychologies with a special appreciation for systemic thinking, indigenous wisdom and multiculturalism.

For 10 years, Dr. Osterhold served at the University of California San Francisco - in pediatric palliative care and as an educator on mindful caregiving and clinician resiliency at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and UCSF School of Medicine.

Originally from Germany, Dr. Osterhold received a B.A. in Human Relations, an M.A. in Integral Counseling Psychology and a PhD in East West Psychology and is licensed as a psychotherapist in California. Dr. Osterhold maintains a private psychotherapy practice with a focus on life transitions. He is the author of The Body’s Code – Synchronicity and Meaning in Illness and Injury. Through a depth psychological lens, his book explores how viewing serious health crisis as synchronistic events can provide an understanding as to how such suffering may meaningfully impact and transform psychological, spiritual, relational and professional-creative levels of a person’s life.

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Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP PhD, adjunct faculty, EWP program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)