Using IconiCards in a University Class

I used the IconiCards today in an upper-division, undergraduate university class I’m teaching: Seminar on Myth, Dream, & Symbol.  I had one of my Teaching Assistants give a presentation on Carl Jung’s typology (Introvert/Extravert: Feeling/Thinking, Sensation/Intuition).  After she finished with the cognitive part of the presentation, I spread the entire IconiCard deck face-up on the floor in three large concentric circles.  Students were instructed to silently walk around the circle and allow two cards to “choose them.”  One card would represent their Extraverted side and the other their Introverted side.  

I’m coming from the notion that we each have both introverted and extroverted sides to ourselves.  One or the other may be more prominent depending upon situation in which we find ourselves.

Next, I asked my students to silently pick up their two cards and return to their chairs and, using pen and paper, dialog with each of their two cards around the following questions:  1.  What is your strength? (i.e. how does this archetypal quality support me, contribute to my success, etc.) 2.  What is your vulnerability? (i.e. what is the downside of this quality in my life, where does it trip me up, etc.)  3.  What is your future potential? (i.e. as I grow and  the quality represented by this card reaches it’s fullest and best realization in my life, what might that look like?)  Students had about 10 minutes or so to dialogue on paper.  They then were instructed to divide into trios and to share with one another.  After a lot of animated sharing, I called them back to the larger circle and invited some feedback about the process.  They all agreed this was an excellent “ice breaker” and a great way to get to know other students in the class and to be more comfortable with them.  Then several shared the details of their work with their two cards.  For example, I believe one young woman chose Troublemaker for her extraverted side and Hermit for her introverted side.  She was able to talk very meaningfully about the upside and downside of both of these qualities in her life, and how they might ideally manifest in her life when they came to full flower.  Later on in the course, I’ll be exposing them to some traditional Tarot decks.  However, I felt that the IconiCard deck would be a very non-threatening, non-strange way to introduce them to the symbolic/archetypal domain.  And, it also served as a vehicle to experientially concretize the concepts of Introversion/Extraversion. 

Not exactly a market research application but certainly another validation of the effectiveness of the IconiCards to evoke deeply meaningful material.