Fred C. Olsen, M.Div. began his professional career in the Fall of 1965 following graduation from Seattle Pacific University with a B.S. in Mathematics. Expecting to be called up in the draft to serve in the Viet Nam conflict, Fred traveled by Volkswagen from Tacoma, Washington to the East coast in order to visit his sister in Washington, D.C. and grand parents in Brooklyn, New York before expecting to head off to the jungles of South East Asia.
Instead, Fred landed a research assistant job in a Washington, D.C. think tank where he worked on a variety of government studies related to complex policy decisions for various Federal agencies. Because he was working on defense related contracts, Fred qualified for an occupational deferment.
In 1967, Fred accepted a position with RCA International Service Corporation on a traveling team of technicians and engineers which was gearing up to calibrate satellite tracking stations for the NASA STADAN (Space Tracking and Data Acquisition Network), based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
In this position, Fred traveled regularly to many countries, where he was able to gain a unique view of a world in ferment during the late 1960s and early 1070s.
Involvement in a socially conscious church community in Washington, D.C. which held a vision for deep involvement in society and especially the inner-city, civil rights, emerging women's issues and conscious responsible action in the world played a major role in transforming Fred's view of the world and his role in it.
Books like Toffler's Future Shock and Meadow's Limits to Growth among other factors influenced Fred to leave the space program to seek ways to "make a difference" in the world.
Founding an intentional multicultural house in the Washington D.C. inner city so as to listen more closely to the patterns and issues bubbling below the surface of society was accompanied by the exploration of a diversity of writers.
Fred was introduced to the writings of Carl G. Jung during this phase and ran across the quote featured on this site. "The inner image is a complex function made of many functions that represent the state of the psyche." This quote from Jung created the impetus for the exploration and development of what is now called the "Inner Image Method."
The air seemed filled with a desire for "change." Fred observed that change is a linear function with its roots in the implicit psychological, spiritual and cultural programs of the time and unconscious held by the society. He assumed that the very programs that produced the problems people wanted to change were the same programs from which solutions were incubated. Hence, a circular repetition of the underlying problems and conflicts was the inevitable result.
The question was then, how do we arrive at fundamental "transformation."
At NASA, Fred's focus was on identifying the "highest" information that reflected the state of the system. An example was a measure of the ratio of signal to noise and the data quality associated with a range of readings of the ratio of signal to noise.
If the "inner image" is indeed the highest information source in the human psyche, both personally and collectively, what happens when the image changes. More importantly, what is the process by which the image forms and transforms in the human psyche.
Jung's concept of the "transcendent function" sheds light on this problem. The place at which the opposites meet in a balanced tension and equal relationship, is the place where transformation is possible. If the conscious "ego" dominates, then we are back in the previous dilemma. If the "ego" succumbs to the authority of the image, transformation is also sublimated and avoided.
Locating the place where the conscious self and the inner image meet, play and dance is then the goal of a viable process of transformation.
The Inner Image Method described in this site lays out the process that has evolved over the last few decades of exploration and refinement of this approach.
Generally speaking we can differentiate "representational" methods from "transformational" methods of working with symbols, dreams and other expressions of the "inner image." Methods that seek interpretation and analysis of symbols, or insight, or artistic representations of the "inner image" fall under the "representational" category.
Methods that directly focus on arriving at a fundamental shift, healing, or transformation of the soul-personality, fall under the catagory of a "transformational" approach.
The methods, articles and accounts portrayed on the pages of this site seek to portray one particular method designed specifically as a "tranformational" approach for working with dreams, emotional issues and even physical symptoms manifested in the human mind-body system.
