John Patrick Shanley + Polly Young-Eisendrath

“You dream of outer space of distant seas of unknown people. What could be more unknown than your own tongue whispering the unlying truth in your own ear.” –John Patrick Shanley
Writer John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck, Doubt) and Jungian psychoanalyst Polly Young-Eisendrath had one of the richest onstage encounters in 2009’s Red Book Dialogues. This time instead of investigating Jung’s fantastical inner life they place Shanley’s sometimes very public dream life under the microscope.
John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. Shanley was born in the Bronx, New York City. He is a graduate of New York University and a member of the Ensemble Studio Theater. Shanley won the Academy Award and the Writers Guild of America Award for his script for the 1987 film Moonstruck. In 2005 Shanley’s play Doubt: A Parable was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2008 he directed a film version of Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams.
Polly Young-Eisendrath, PhD, is a Jungian analyst and psychologist and the author of fourteen books that have been translated into more than twenty languages. She is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont, Consultant in Leadership Development at Norwich University, and in private practice in central Vermont. A veteran speaker and teacher, she has appeared on Fresh Air and The Diane Rehm Show and is chairperson of Enlightening Conversations: Buddhism and Psychoanalysis Meeting in Person, a non-profit organization that hosts conferences around the country. Her most recent books are The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance (Little, Brown, 2008)and The Cambridge Companion to Jung: New and Revised, of which she is co-editor with Terence Dawson(Cambridge University Press, 2008). Young-Eisendrath is a long-time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and Vipassana and is certified as a facilitator in the Vipassana tradition of Shinzen Young.