Shows
This Jungian Life PodcastWhy You Dream of Intruders: The Hidden Meaning of Break-In DreamsIntruder dreams stage a boundary crisis: something arrives without the ego’s consent, and the dreamer wakes with fear, shame, or outrage. Join Jungian analysts Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, and Lisa Marchiano as we analyze a selection of vivid listener-submitted dreams about intruders. We begin with the word itself, “intrusion,” asking how a visitor can feel deeply unwelcome, but at the same time carry something with the potential to protect, repair or even save us.We cover:How the mind negotiates trauma, dissocia...
2026-02-261h 01
This Jungian Life PodcastDissociation as Design: Why the Mind Sometimes Lets GoDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!Pierre Janet’s term abaissement du niveau mental describes an experience so common we barely notice it: fatigue, highway hypnosis, shock, wool-gathering, or monotony lowers the threshold of consciousness, and then images, memories, and impulses press forward. Jung found this idea useful for understanding threshold conditions that interfere with our normal skills, yet make symbolic material available, with the caveat that it’s only useful when it’s committed to memory and reflected on.What separates a generative r...
2026-02-191h 05
This Jungian Life PodcastCorruption Starts Inside You: Why Malignant Certainty Makes You Dangerous!DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!In this episode, Joseph, Lisa, and Deb explain why Corruption is not only a political problem, but a human one, why Power breaks trust long before it breaks laws, and why the most dangerous people are often the most certain. They reveal the core mechanism behind Corruption and Inflation: when unconscious drives flood the ego, making someone feel exceptional, entitled, and above ordinary rules. They unpack how Corruption escalates quietly, from small rationalisations and moral distortions to full-blown abuse of entrusted Power that d...
2026-01-291h 12
The Goddess School61: Unlocking the Unconscious Through Dream Symbolism with Lisa MarchianoYour dreams hold wisdom that can shift your entire life when you know how to listen.Author and Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano reveals how dreams act as a personal spiritual guide, offering insight, clarity, and perspective when we need it most. She explains how the dream maker communicates through symbolism, why even the most mundane dreams hold powerful meaning, and how dreams help us navigate challenges, relationships, and life transitions. Lisa also shares practical tools for remembering dreams, interpreting them with confidence, and connecting with the unconscious as part of individuation and inner work.This...
2025-11-1939 min
This Jungian Life PodcastTHE QUICKENING: Discovering New Life WithinDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!Dreams about pregnancy and babies symbolize something new taking shape within us, like a creative project, a hidden talent, or a psychological shift that's quietly developing beneath our awareness. These images express the mysterious tension we sense during periods of growth, change, or potential, drawing our attention inward and challenging our current identity or circumstances. When our symbolic baby finally arrives in the dream, it reveals a hidden part of ourselves that is now ready to enter consciousness, creating both excitement and anxiety about how this new aspec...
2025-07-311h 06
This Jungian Life Podcast[SUBSCRIBER BONUS] How Can Understanding Symbols Help Us in Everyday Life?In this free edition of Jung Love, our subscriber bonus content, a Patron asks:"I keep hearing and reading that symbols are healing and transformative for people, but this concept is so arbitrary to me. I need some very specific and concrete examples of how a symbol can help a person in the various dilemmas of life we all can face. Can you please give a few examples in layman's terms?"Support This Jungian Life on Patreon and ask Lisa, Deb, and Joseph your questions for a chance to...
2025-07-2915 min
This Jungian Life PodcastWounds into Wisdom: Carl Jung’s Private LifeDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!Carl Jung’s discoveries are woven into our common understanding. Introvert/extravert, shadow work, typology, persona, and synchronicity pop up in casual conversations all the time. Negotiating with our inner figures, now used by Internal Family Systems, was pioneered by him. Although we have adopted his ideas, few know how they were forged from his personal struggles. Today, we honor Jung’s 150th birthday by sharing stories from his life and how they shaped his groundbreaking insights.Find the dream w...
2025-07-2458 min
This Jungian Life PodcastCalcinatio and the Alchemy of Honest SufferingDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!The calcinatio stage in Jung's alchemy is about being put through inner fire—it's when the ego undergoes a kind of burning away of projections, illusions, and inflated ideas about itself. This stage often brings intense suffering, frustration, and confrontation with parts of yourself you'd rather avoid. It's about staying awake in the heat long enough to discover the truths behind your defenses. Sometimes it's like sitting in hell and roasting. This raw, honest suffering is necessary for individuation. It's not punishment—it's Psyche's way of depotentiatin...
2025-07-171h 29
This Jungian Life PodcastThe Archetypal Brain: Jung from an Evolutionary PerspectiveDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!With Deb and Joe out this week, Lisa speaks with Gary Clark, a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide, about his book Carl Jung and the Evolutionary Sciences.The discussion delves into the influence of indigenous cultures on understanding consciousness, the role of anthropology in Jung's work, and the implications of evolutionary development on human psychology.Humanity's ancient rituals underscore the importance of integrating the primordial emotional brain with the newer neocortex. Reconnecting to these practices in a contemporary setting ca...
2025-02-061h 38The Goddess SchoolEmbracing Outlaw Energies with Lisa MarchianoWhat if the path to your truest self lies in embracing traits you’ve been told to keep hidden?In this conversation, Lisa is joined by Author Lisa Marchiano to discuss her book, The Vital Spark. Lisa explores the concept of "outlaw energies" in women, such as shrewdness and authority, contrasting them with traditionally accepted traits like kindness and nurturance. She highlights how these qualities are essential for personal growth and deeper self-connectionEmbracing these often-polarizing traits can lead to a more complete and authentic expression of who you are. Tune in!
2024-11-1337 min
This Jungian Life PodcastSHADOWLAND: Relentless Pain - the story of Jean CampbellJEAN CAMPBELL is a supermodel who from the outside looks to be living a fairy tale life. Stunningly beautiful, she has modeled on the international stage for brands including Alexander McQueen, Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Of course, nothing is ever so simple (especially in fairy tales).After experiencing a traumatic injury at a young age, Jean had to learn how to live with chronic pain. She underwent multiple surgeries, and confronted despair induced by the extreme physical and emotional challenges she faced. Shadowland is our This Jungian Life forum for exploring the lives of...
2024-09-051h 27
This Jungian Life PodcastTHE VITAL SPARK: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire. Deep in each of us, a Vital Spark fights to free us and set us back on the path. Lisa, Joe, and Deb were joined by more than 300 audience members for their first-ever live podcast to celebrate the launch of Lisa's new book, The Vital Spark: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire. The "Vital Spark" is the core essence of our innermost fiery qualities—creative aggression, fiery sexuality, emboldened disagreeableness, sharp-witted trickery, burning desire, clearsighted shrewdness, empowering anger, and bold authority—that fuel creativity, assertiveness, desire, and personal power. It is the crucial...
2024-02-221h 49This Jungian Life PodcastJUNG'S PARANORMAL ENCOUNTERS: Why did strange events follow him?If we lean into strange experiences with gentle curiosity, we may discover a level of psyche that acts directly on objects.Many of us have uncanny coincidences like thinking of a friend at the exact moment they ring us on the phone, but what about physical things breaking apart for no reason or luminous apparitions at our bedside? We often explain them away to reduce our anxiety, but Jung found them fascinating. He maintained a scientific attitude while accepting strange phenomena he could not explain. Eventually, he created a psychology of radical acceptance that creates space for...
2023-10-261h 18This Jungian Life PodcastLOW ENERGY: Where can we source the drive to take action?Lisa, Deb, and Joe, Jungian analysts and co-creators of This Jungian Life podcast, have introduced thousands of clients to an inner world with unexpected resources. Many people just can’t rally to do what’s necessary and improve their lives. Is it possible they just don’t carry much vitality, or is some inner conflict blocking their access? We share personal stories of ‘energy loss’ and offer insights into purposelessness. Jung tells us inner energy flows according to its own laws, but if we can’t harness it? Prepare to discover why some people are naturally low...
2023-10-191h 40This Jungian Life PodcastREUNIONS: Is there value in remembering our younger selves?Deb and Joe are Jungian Analysts, authors, training analysts, and co-creators of This Jungian Life Podcast. [Lisa was away lecturing this week.]Most of us feel anxious at the thought of reliving the complicated and often painful experiences of our youth. When we receive a school reunion notice, we might be tempted to ignore it. Yet, on an archetypal level, we are drawn to re-unifying our current and past identities. If we accept the invitation, we may find unexpected joy and forgotten memories that restore something inside us.Prepare to discover why we plan and...
2023-10-121h 25This Jungian Life PodcastDream Incubation with Machiel KlerkGuest Machiel Klerk has worked with dreams and healing traditions worldwide; his new book is Dream Guidance: Connection to the Soul through Dream Incubation. Religions, shamanic practices, and depth psychology have recognized the significance of dreams and sought their aid. Dreams open into a deeply intelligent source Jung called the two-million-year-old man. This inner companion is interested in our development and life purpose, and he transports us nightly to worlds of vivid images, fulsome feeling, and embodied experience. Dream incubation invites these encounters into consciousness through a well-defined process: identify a problem, develop a question, and create a ritual...
2022-06-161h 23This Jungian Life PodcastContagion: Pollution, Protection & PurityWhen the archetype of purity is activated, science and psychology intersect. Fear of contamination has deep instinctual roots, evidenced in universal facial expressions of distress and disgust. Religious rules and rituals of riddance have long been practical and symbolic protections against pollution, whether the threat is pathogenic, environmental, or moral. For Jung, this psychological dynamic “is the dissolution of the ego in the unconscious, a state resembling death. It results from the more or less complete identification of the ego with unconscious factors, or, as we would say, from contamination...we then feel in danger of being swamped or po...
2022-01-271h 17This Jungian Life PodcastPORN: Technology, Consumerism & SoulNearly every civilization since ancient times has portrayed explicit sexual acts. Sexuality’s numinous aspect has long brought it into close association with spirituality and religion. The powerful potential of sexual arousal is central to being human and has seized today’s collective via the Internet. Porn is symbolic of the widespread merchandising of desire, from toys to trucks. The unprecedented power of image in today’s world can now drive what Lost Goddesses author Giorgio Tricarico terms our “desiring multiplicities” and quest for limitlessness. Pornography can be addicting, and Jung maintained that “There is no illness that is not at the s...
2022-01-201h 25This Jungian Life Podcasthe Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to SoulDr. Connie Zweig, Ph.D., retired Jungian-psychotherapist and author, joins us to discuss her new book, The Inner Work of Age. She extends her well-known work on shadow into midlife and beyond and provides a map for uncovering obstacles to aging consciously. The transition from Hero to Elder, or role to soul, begins with releasing the ego’s identification with doing and reorienting toward the transpersonal center that Jung called the Self.As we let go of outworn personas and roles, harvest the wisdom of our long lives, and break free of unconscious shadows, the Elder’s gift...
2022-01-131h 27This Jungian Life PodcastLEGACY: Living Toward the Long FutureIs the future relevant? Can we suspend immediate satisfaction in favor of our descendants’ quality of life? Legacy comes from the Latin root legatia: one who is sent on a mission [into the future]. It is an act of benevolent imagination to accompany our choices forward in time and take responsibility for their fruits – by facing the long future we have set in motion, we can choose wisely.We are like King Midas, who nursed the satyr Selenius and was rewarded by the god Dionysus with one wish. Seduced by the fantasy of limitlessness, he wished that all h...
2022-01-061h 00This Jungian Life PodcastMr. Grinch on the CouchDr. Seuss’ case history of the Grinch presents him as “uncheerful, unhealthy, unclean.” We hope that adding an analytic perspective will be helpful in understanding this clinical condition. Alfred Adler would note the inferiority complex underlying the Grinch’s defensive attempt at superiority and power, and Melanie Klein would detect infantile rage and envy. Freud might diagnose the Grinch with Thanatos, the death drive, evidenced in his sadistic attack on Who-ville. Additional obsessive-compulsive traits impelled him to steal every toy, treat, and tree. Dr. Jung’s archetypal perspective notes the absence of eros, affirming Dr. Seuss’ summation of the Grinch’s dis...
2021-12-231h 02This Jungian Life PodcastLibido: Tracking Inner EnergyJung understood libido as psychic energy: desire, will, interest, and passion. Libido includes instincts for fulfilling bodily appetites and engaging developmental tasks. Although energy infuses all human activity, it is not a function of ego alone; for many, a worthy goal has lacked the libido to achieve it. Feelings and actions can veer into symptoms, such as neurosis or addiction. Low libido is often a form of depression, and libido that is too high can be mania. Most often, a problem with libido is experienced as “stuckness,” the stasis produced from conflict between our natural, instinctual selves and familial and...
2021-12-161h 05This Jungian Life PodcastThe Archetype of the CrocodileThe crocodile and its alligator cousin appear regularly in the dreams of people far from warm, wet habitats. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the divine crocodile Sobek was honored, especially at riverbanks, the threshold of land and water. The Egyptian earth god Geb was depicted as a crocodile guarding the gateway to the underworld. Thresholds mark the entry to the unknown, a realm where usual rules do not apply—an apt parallel to the boundary between the ego and the unconscious. Primordial force, seemingly submerged in psyche’s ancient riverbeds, can erupt to drown, dismember and devour the ego’s claim...
2021-12-0957 minThis Jungian Life PodcastArchetypes and the Creative Process: A Discussion with Third Coast PercussionThe creator, the hero, the explorer: these are just some of the archetypes made famous by Carl Jung that inspired the latest album from Chicago’s Grammy award-winning Third Coast Percussion. Created in collaboration with classical guitarist Sérgio Assad and composer-performer Clarice Assad, Archetypes is a sonic exploration of the human experience. Taped live at the 2021 Chicago Humanities Festival, our conversation with musicians Clarice Assad and David Skidmore features an exploration of the creative process and an interactive discussion on David’s dream. Clarice Assad is a Grammy-nominated composer, celebrated pianist, inventive vocalist, and educator. David Skidmore is a perf...
2021-12-0259 minThis Jungian Life PodcastFalling in Love: Bewitched, Bothered & BewilderedJung says, “Love is a power of destiny, whose force reaches from heaven to hell.” Falling in love is an initiation into the divine—light, and dark—as personal and archetypal forces combine and combust. In thrall to the magical other through whom we experience newfound parts of ourselves, we fall into a reality that transcends and possesses us.Ardor takes us by surprise and opens us fiercely and intimately to our inner world, exposing us to ourselves. Passion must pass, whether it leads to commitment and partnership or casts us into disillusion and heartbreak. We need to know...
2021-11-2557 minThis Jungian Life PodcastA Well-Aligned Mind: How to Be AliveGuest Iain McGilchrist is a renowned psychiatrist, researcher, and author. His 2009 book, The Master and His Emissary gained worldwide fame for showing how differences between brain hemispheres affect our perceptions - and guide our lives. Each hemisphere has a radically different ‘take’ on the world: the left sees what is in the theater spotlight, whereas the right hemisphere understands the whole play.Both are part of the theater of our lives, but the narrowly focused left hemisphere has increasingly taken over in the modern world. The right hemisphere offers a more spacious perspective: connectedness, complexity, and creativity - an...
2021-11-1856 minThis Jungian Life PodcastHumanizing the HeroMythological heroes defend, protect and quest. They range from warriors, adventurers, and saviors to magicians, loners, and rebels, but one way or another, they battle bad for the sake of good. They have courage, skill, and strength, but never a troubling moment. Although we still delight in heroes with might and shine, modern times have given rise to a new ideal: the everyday hero.From Harriet Tubman to Anne Frank and Frodo Baggins to Huckleberry Finn, these are heroes of happenstance. Circumstances demanded more of them, and they accepted the challenge to surmount loss, accept uncertainty, and...
2021-11-111h 12This Jungian Life PodcastThe Fiery Furnace of AmbitionAmbition is a fire whose flames first rise in the first half of life when hopes and dreams are fueled by possibilities in the external world. It takes creative audacity to seize a dream, develop a talent, or commit to a calling. Ambition can also be fueled by narcissism, power-seeking, or striving to overcome inadequacy.Too much fire can consume and corrupt us; insufficient heat forsakes potential for flickering fantasies. Jungian scholar and author James Hillman writes that each of us has an innate blueprint for becoming in The Soul’s Code. Ambition can best be the di...
2021-11-041h 08This Jungian Life PodcastThe Archetype of the Witch: Dangerous, Denied & DishonoredIt’s witching season, the time when women of all ages embrace a mythical image of unfettered feminine power. The witch may cast spells, seek vengeance, or wreak creative havoc—as she pleases. Flying the night skies of psyche, the witch brings primordial realities into culture’s brittle convictions.Like all aspects of the collective unconscious, the witch lays low when times are fine but rises when times are tense. Her archetypal power then infects humankind, inciting mass hysteria and the horrors of persecutory epidemics. The witch symbolizes our fear and vulnerability to the Great Mother in her da...
2021-10-281h 25This Jungian Life PodcastAssessing Our Psychic InheritanceJung said of the parent-child relationship: “Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the human environment, and especially upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived.” Jung understood that parents could unconsciously compel children to fulfill parental dreams or compensate for disappointments. Parental shadow creates an urgency to purge, perfect, or prolong a psychic legacy. It may manifest by taking on a parental aspiration, making up for a parental deficit, rebelling against parental constraints, or being subsumed by parental dictates. When personal libido is tied to parental needs, energy for life is hijacked by anxiety, ambivalence, and...
2021-10-211h 04This Jungian Life PodcastDoes Analysis Work? A Conversation with Jonathan Shedler, PhD“Talk is powerful medicine.” Renowned researcher and clinician Jonathan Shedler, Ph.D., joins us to discuss the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy. While so-called evidence-based therapies—brief treatments conducted by instruction manuals—offer benefits for some, their status as the “gold standard” of treatment for mental distress is undeserved.Dr. Shedler’s 2010 paper, “The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy,” is the most widely read psychoanalytic paper of our time. It’s been downloaded more than a quarter of a million times and has been cited by thousands. He discusses this influential work with us, including the finding that those who engage in psycho...
2021-10-141h 42This Jungian Life PodcastJUSTICE: The Struggle for BalancePrinciples of fairness and justice have deep roots in the human psyche: we want to receive our fair share and a fair shake. When man injures man, we may protest, strive for redress, and measure wrong with morality—but what about godly misfortunes? Life, myth, and religion are rich with issues of injustice. Whether personal injury, social inequality, or divine mystery, over-insistence on fairness can lead to depression, resentment, and fixation.Instead, we must distinguish injustice from loss, recognize what can and cannot be changed, and orient to the future. Imprisoned in a concentration camp, Viktor Frankl la...
2021-10-071h 08This Jungian Life PodcastConfronting Shadow: The Work of Self-DiscoveryPsychotherapy is essentially the work of making shadow conscious—all that we have not discerned then disowned, or projected onto others. We seldom welcome shadow, for it is marked by emotions and motivations that deflate, disturb, and dethrone ego. From family scuffles to political hostilities and outright war, we most often meet our shadow in others. Its presence is signaled by a strong urge to take action, with feelings ranging from judgment to antagonism, from pity to self-sacrifice, and from obsession to disgust. If we have the courage to face and relate to the inner world of another, we ex...
2021-09-301h 19This Jungian Life PodcastSelf-Reflection: What Was I Thinking?Jung says, “There is another instinct, different from the drive to activity and so far as we know specifically human, which might be called the reflective instinct.” Self-reflection is correlated with consciousness and is arguably humankind’s unique and essential competency: a meta-cognitive capacity that is aware of its own awareness.If this is lacking, we may share the fate of Narcissus, who fell in love with his image, mirrored in silvery water--but every time he sought an embrace, his loved one retreated. Because he was unable to reflect on his reflection, Narcissus wasted away from psychic starva...
2021-09-2357 minThis Jungian Life PodcastINFLUENCE: Connection or Contagion?We have always been subject to the influence of others—it’s how we learn language, become socialized, cooperate and collaborate. It’s also how we exclude, denigrate, and assault others. Today, we are subject to unprecedented social influences. Multiplicities of media shape our ideas, identities, beliefs, and values--and foster connections and communities around the world. If tulip mania took hold in 17th century Holland—perhaps the original speculative bubble--today we have non-fungible tokens and cryptocurrencies. “Heretics” are now exiled via “cancel culture.” Cultural contagions and psychic epidemics are not new—they just come dressed in the flashy new garb of social med...
2021-09-161h 01
This Jungian Life PodcastSHADOWLAND: Prostitution - the story of KayThis is Shadowland, a new podcast experience from This Jungian Life that explores the lives of people who work and take refuge in the hidden places of our culture. Lisa, Deb, and Joseph collaborate with songwriter Wells Hanley, creator of I Wrote This Song For You podcast, to bring insight, compassion, and understanding to the darker side of human experience.Nietzsche wrote, “I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”In that spirit, we meet Kay...
2021-09-091h 36
This Jungian Life PodcastSHADOWLAND: a new podcast experience – September 9 on TJLOn September 9th, This Jungian Life will launch a new podcast experience - SHADOWLAND. In this series, we meet soulfully with people who live and work in the hidden places of our culture.Walk with us and discover the voice of psyche on unexpected paths.LOOK & GROWJoin THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOLDo you have a topic you want us to cover?WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running.Lisa’s leading a retreat in ITALY!We've got totally NEW MERCH!If you’ve been struggling in the dark trying to find t...
2021-09-0200 minThis Jungian Life PodcastThe Archetype of WARRecent events in Afghanistan have again put war at the forefront of collective consciousness. War’s destruction belongs to the mythic realm. Mars, the Roman god of war, was a primordial force whose altars were placed outside city gates. Although acknowledged, he was not accepted. His paramour, Venus, is warfare’s seductress, offering spectacle, pageantry, and glory.Like all the gods of Mt. Olympus, Mars and Venus live in us as opposing forces of aggression and eros. We are charged with holding the tension of these impassioned opposites and making them conscious, lest we project shadow onto desi...
2021-09-021h 19This Jungian Life PodcastThe Music of Metaphor: Healing in Therapy & LifeGuest Mark Winborn is a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst who teaches in the U.S. and internationally. Author of three books and numerous articles, Mark is an active member of the IRSJA and the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich/Kusnacht. Psychotherapy is talk therapy—but what kind of talk are we talking about? The most fundamental medium of our knowing is language, and metaphor imbues language with music.To understand and engage another’s internal world requires language which speaks in harmony with the unconscious. Metaphor speaks beyond ego and traverses the realms between past and...
2021-08-261h 26This Jungian Life PodcastSplitting: Understanding What Divides UsWe seem hard-wired to split the world into polarities: right/wrong, either/or, victory/defeat, Democrat/Republican. Infants and toddlers have not yet achieved the developmental capacity for complexity; they are believed to split their feelings toward caretakers into “good” and “bad,” depending on whether their needs are being met in the moment.Although it distorts reality, splitting reduces anxiety by locating the problem “out there,” allowing us to reject what we find aversive and affirm our own virtue, self-worth, and blamelessness. The capacity for ambivalence—the ability to hold opposite feelings—requires more differentiated cognitive skills and emotional ra...
2021-08-191h 03This Jungian Life PodcastThe Wounded HealerThere are three major models of healing: medical, shamanic, and psychoanalytic. In the first, the doctor does it to you; in the second, the intermediary does it for you; and in the third, Jung’s dialectical process, we work together to discover “the curative powers in the patient’s own nature.” Just as every wounded patient has inner health, every healer has an inner wound. If consciously known and borne, the analyst’s wound serves the healing process.In Greek myth, Chiron symbolizes the wounded healer, a term Jung originated. A wise and noble centaur, Chiron suffered a painful...
2021-08-1254 minThis Jungian Life PodcastTarot, Divination & the Symbolic LifeGuest T. Susan Chang is a writer, podcaster, and teacher of tarot, the most commonly recognized modern form of divination. The archetypal symbols in the tarot’s 78 card deck offer gateways to meaning and mystery. Jung says symbols act as transformers—life energy is converted from a lower to higher form by the amplification that consciousness provides. Tarot divination is intended to break from the mundane and court the numinous. It asks that we set logic aside, surrender doubt, and step unafraid into the space between realms. As with dreams, whatever arises will tell us something we don’t know a...
2021-08-051h 27This Jungian Life PodcastTime & Truth About Its UseGuest Oliver Burkeman states in his new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, that “outrageous brevity is life’s defining problem.” At age 80, you’ll have had a paltry 4,000 weeks. Such brevity is breathtaking, so we create defenses against the reality of finitude. We distract ourselves with the belief that fulfillment lies in the future, that plans and goals prove purpose, and that we can achieve almost any number of things by being more efficient/motivated/healthy—or just overall exceptional. Paradoxically, embracing life’s limitations can open us to what Jung called “a new attitude”—an inner pivot from t...
2021-07-291h 30This Jungian Life PodcastThe Cosmic Meaning of ConsciousnessIn Answer to Job, Jung states, “Whoever knows God has an effect on him.” If, as Jung claims, individual human consciousness affects God, what we are matters monumentally. When we serve our neuroses, the gulf between ego and Self widens. Pursuing individuation not only sets our personality in right order, it permits our personal experiences to enrich the collective unconscious – who we are is added to God. When Jung visited the Navajo, they told him they helped the sun, their father, cross the sky each day, a spiritual observance that sustained the world. Jung said, “I had envied the fullness...
2021-07-221h 11This Jungian Life PodcastArchetypesAlthough the concept of archetypes has philosophical ancestors, Jung’s theory was developed over time and rested on a foundation that was scientific and empirical. Research and experiment enabled Jung to establish the autonomous activity of the unconscious.He was then able to posit archetypes as a predisposition to form representations of universal human experiences and mythological motifs, such as marriage, the hero’s journey, and death/rebirth. For Jung, archetypes are innate psychic organs that “have a positive, favourable (sic), bright side that points upwards [and] one that points downwards…” Archetypes manifest spontaneously. In the collective, they are t...
2021-07-151h 09This Jungian Life PodcastLetting Go: When Is It Time?In the first half of life, we strive to develop ego strength and achieve our dreams. To want, will, and work is worthwhile and adaptive--until a life dream, relationship, or identity fades or fails. Should we hang in and hang on - or let go? When does perseverance become pointless, or hope turn rancid in refusal to accept disappointment, defeat, or depression?In letting go, we relinquish our hard-won, heroic “I” and yield to an encounter with the unconscious. Jung says that although “I was afraid of losing command of myself…I let myself drop.” He came to realize...
2021-07-011h 16This Jungian Life PodcastThreshold: Moving Between the RealmsIn medieval times, the threshold was a plank that kept barnyard “threshings” outside the house. In the sciences a threshold is the limit of magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a definitive change to occur. In human development life stage thresholds are marked and recognized through ritual. In psychoanalytic work the symbol is the threshold—a visible but not literal representation that calls consciousness to apprehend a larger, unseen reality. Science fiction, mythology’s modern descendant, has richly storied this process as transition into a new world. The ambiguity and disorientation of this liminal situation requires...
2021-06-241h 01This Jungian Life PodcastThe Unspoken Wounding of MenJung’s earliest dream, at age three or four, preoccupied him all his life, “in an underground chamber, a giant phallus stood erect on a golden throne.” Majestic and luminous, it struck him with terror that intensified as his mother’s voice cried out in warning. Phallos, the central archetype of a man's psyche, was once worshipped as sacred. Its urgent, dynamic, and fertilizing power was split off with the rise of ascetic monotheism and banished to the unconscious. Misplaced and maligned, it surfaces as resentful passivity, fear of passion, confusion of values, and reluctance to take action. Phallos is neith...
2021-06-171h 21This Jungian Life PodcastExtroversionAlthough Jung’s theory of typology is the foundation of various personality assessments, it is important to appreciate its profundity as Jung’s theory of consciousness. The four functions of consciousness - sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling--are governed by two attitudes, extraversion, and introversion. Jung defines extraversion as “an attitude type characterized by concentration of interest on the external object.”Since the movement of psychic energy is outward, extroverts find gratification in social and collegial interactions. Extraverts, therefore, need to distinguish individual goals from relational expectations and cultural norms lest they sacrifice inner reality to outer influences. A vital...
2021-06-101h 10This Jungian Life PodcastThe Power of NOToddlers have ready access to no as they discover the power of me—the start of a lifelong process of differentiating self from all that is other. When are personal needs, desires, and selfhood the priority? When does caring about others, the need to belong, and toeing the line take precedence?Fear of social rejection, workplace retaliation, or family conflict can erode our healthy no, leading to resentment, an uncertain sense of self, and inability to answer the call to life. We also need to be able to say no to our own bad habits, rigidities, and av...
2021-06-031h 07This Jungian Life PodcastRisk & Reality: When Fear Traps UsWe can’t help knowing that something bad could happen if we do X…or Y…or maybe Z. Like Odysseus steering his ship between sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, we must navigate between risk avoidance and recklessness. One keeps us out of life; the other jeopardizes wellbeing. In pre-modern times life in the external world was fraught with danger and risk; in the modern world, the consequences of risk are more often internal.Possible disappointment, shame or failure may feel intolerable, but not constitute actual disaster. Assessing risk requires willingness to engage inner conflict--and discern, then answer...
2021-05-271h 14This Jungian Life PodcastAssessing Your Values: Meaning & MotivationThere is value in examining your values, the powerful emotional and cognitive attitudes that underlie large and small life choices. Although values are initially acquired through family and institutions, an essential task of adulthood is consciously embracing traditional or individual values.Values are the wellspring of libido: they motivate action toward goals. Unless preferred values are in alignment with the underlying flow of energy, unconscious agendas may prevail. Our actions reveal our values, and dreams depict conflicts between conscious and unconsciously held values. The work of Shalom Schwartz, available in an online values assessment (see below), can...
2021-05-201h 02This Jungian Life PodcastINTROVERSIONThe terms introversion and extraversion, now cultural staples, originated with Jung and describe the overall direction of life energy. The widely used Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator (MBTI), now available online, is drawn directly from Jung’s theory of personality types. Although extraverts direct their energy outward, introverts direct their energy inward. External-world relationships and events tend to pale in comparison to ideas, internal images and reflective processes.The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke expressed this idea pithily: “I am in love with you and it’s none of your business.” Introverts are not shy, reclusive, fearful, detached or avoidant...
2021-05-131h 26This Jungian Life PodcastTending the Ego-Self Axis: Reconnecting with SourceErich Neumann publicly proposed the concept of the ego-Self (or Self-ego) axis and began to sketch its implications in his 1952 Eranos lecture, "The Psyche and the Transformation of the Reality Planes. Edward Edinger popularized the concept writing, "It portrays the developmental relationship between the ego and the Self, Jung’s term for “the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche [that] transcends our visions…” As infants, we embody an original wholeness, or Self-hood, out of which ego (a sense of “I”) gradually emerges. The connection to the Self may be damaged if the ego believes itself the sole source o...
2021-05-061h 04This Jungian Life PodcastWhen Words Lose Their MeaningIn 1543, Andreas Vesalius dissected a corpse, thereby inaugurating a scientific attitude toward the human body. This new attitude taught us to stand aside from our identification and connection with the body and see it as a lifeless subject of inquiry. Such an approach brought obvious vital advances in science and medicine, but it also came at a cost. In the 20th century, philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida did for language what Vesalius had done for the human body. Their careful dissection of language laid bare formerly hidden assumptions and revealed the ways that language shapes our thinking.
2021-04-291h 37This Jungian Life PodcastThe Dark Side of MotheringOur colleague Puddi Kullberg, author of The Bad Mother, joins us to acknowledge motherhood’s shadow. A link to her paper is below. Our culture idealizes motherhood, but mothers everywhere have experienced themselves as bad in varying ways and to various degrees.Jung suggests that even truly harmful mothers can expiate their actions by becoming conscious of what they have done. If we can face even grievous mistakes, we can deepen into our ordinary, sometimes dark humanity. Confrontation with our negative mothering leads to experiencing emotions that were previously unrecognized or denied. We can mitigate isolation by ge...
2021-04-221h 12This Jungian Life PodcastThe Alchemy of WritingThe wellspring of consciousness has long been located in word. Once words were etched on clay or inked on papyrus, a new way of knowing was born. Writing ordered and expanded language, captured ideas, bloomed imagination, and preserved human experience. Writing is an encounter like no other with oneself and inner others, light and dark. Whether we meet the page in a personal journal or as professional necessity, we discover that ego alone does not do this job. Some days words leap like dolphins; other days find us becalmed on a flat sea. To create through writing i...
2021-04-151h 13This Jungian Life PodcastThe Phoenix: Life’s Transformative FiresThe splendid-feathered phoenix lives for hundreds of years builds its own funeral pyre, sets it on fire, and rises from the ashes after three days. The phoenix represents long life, conscious acquiescence to death, and assured regeneration. The fiery alchemical process of calcinatio leaves behind a white ash equivalent to salt, that which cannot be burned: life, soul, and Eros.The phoenix is usually depicted ascending in its joyful solar plumage of red, orange, and gold, indicating that when one is purged of instinctual drives, affective intensity, and egotistical desires, fire is experienced as divine illumination. The...
2021-04-081h 07This Jungian Life PodcastArchetype of the FoolThe fool in various guises has appeared since ancient times. The court jester seduces through comedy, song, and story. The dummling son of fairy tales wins the treasure with well-meaning ineptitude. Shakespeare featured fools in many of his plays, the Tarot deck begins (or ends) with the fool, and comedians have built careers on playing the fool. The fool punctures the posturings of others’ personas and egos, bests his “betters,” and transgresses social boundaries and conventional morality. The fool flaunts and taunts us with shadow, making truths about cultural norms and human complexity both pointed and palatable. We might well c...
2021-04-011h 00This Jungian Life PodcastBonus Episode - MILKMAID REVELATIONS: JUNG’S EROTIC STAMP COLLECTIONSwiss Jungian scholar Jager Schmallzenburger has recently released news of the discovery of Jung’s erotic stamp collection. Found tucked into the wall behind a bookcase, the box of stamps features uniquely rendered images of milkmaids from countries around the world. The milkmaid, symbolic of the archetypal feminine in the flower of fulsome youth, has long been prominent in the mythopoetic imagination of man. No one had previously realized that Jung, in addition to his many other interests, was also a passionate philatelist, and his dedication to the image of the milkmaid puts a decidedly Jungian stamp on this un...
2021-04-0129 minThis Jungian Life PodcastExile & Alienationnot chosen but is imposed and unwanted: a relational break-up, job lay-off, or deportation. Exile can affect the human spirit so powerfully that the ancient Romans used it as an alternative to execution. Alienation describes an internal state of deadness and despair--an uncanny valley that feels featureless, gray, and unending.It can manifest as depression, anxiety, addiction, and desperation—which can lead to violence against self or others. A return to feeling heals, movingly rendered in Va, Pensiero in Verdi’s opera Nabucco: the exiled Hebrew slaves sing of their loss, love, and longing for home. Tears tran...
2021-03-251h 10This Jungian Life PodcastA Comedian Walks into a Jungian Podcast…Elliott Morgan, comedian and PhD candidate in depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, joins us to explore humor and psyche. Elliott grew up a fundamentalist Christian in central Florida, and has gone from practicing holy laughter to creating HOLY SH*T, his comedy special on Amazon (also featuring Jung’s debut on the comedic stage).Elliott’s college major, zoology, prepared him to play Goofy at Disney World and Big Bird on Hollywood Blvd. A recovering Nice Person, Elliott draws on life experiences, relentlessly engages shadow, and uses laughter to turn suffering into soul making. Hitting rock bott...
2021-03-181h 25This Jungian Life PodcastBelonging: The Search for HomeHorses herd, birds flock, whales pod, and people tribe. The need to belong is as intrinsic to human nature as the need for food, touch, clothing and shelter. We belong to families, communities, ideas and ideals, yet must also separate from them in service to our own individuation.As we grow, we belong to teams and clubs, and find new homes in school and at work. Is the price of belonging rigid conformity and sameness, or is uniqueness valued and difference supported? We later express attitude and attachment to home in the houses we inhabit: photos and...
2021-03-1155 minThis Jungian Life PodcastChronic Anger: Trapped in ResentmentLike fire in a wood-burning stove, resentment burns long and hot: bitterness, frustration, and hostility. The fires of resentment are lit when we feel needy and vulnerable and feel wronged and rejected. This old human story is told in the biblical tale of brothers Cain and Abel.When Cain’s offering is judged inferior, Cain takes it out on Abel. He acts--and acts out—defensively to insulate himself from shame and culpability by killing Abel. Cain’s subsequent mark symbolizes the psychic price of resentment. Creating a new human story means facing, feeling and healing from the fruitl...
2021-03-0456 minThis Jungian Life PodcastNavigating Young Adulthood: Risks & RewardsThe twenties are a period of emerging adulthood, a time to engage in the maturational tasks of finding one’s place in the wider world and forming intimate relationships. This stage of life calls for the ego strength necessary to make initial choices about work, intimacy, money, lifestyle and values. The protections and constraints of family, education, and culture are no longer unquestioned.It is time to engage life on one’s own authority: take appropriate risks, tolerate anxiety, weather disappointments—and reap the rewards of growing self-confidence and life competencies, lest isolation and stasis ensue. Embark bravel...
2021-02-251h 04This Jungian Life PodcastTruth Telling: Revelations & RealitiesSubjective truths yield multiple realities—political and religious truths famously differ. Objective truths rely on independent realities—two plus two must ever be four, not five. Jung’s four functions of consciousness help us reconcile inner and outer realities. Sensation causes physiological reactions to untruths in ourselves and in others; our bodies are wired for congruence.We can also notice and name feelings, beliefs and desires: are we inflamed and defensive, or calm and considered? Our thinking function insists on impartial reason, and intuition lets us know when something is “off.” Conscious functions of sensation, feeling, thinking and intuit...
2021-02-1856 minThis Jungian Life PodcastFacing Your Feelings: Avoidance or Encounter?While we welcome “good” feelings, we often try to banish “bad” ones like sadness, fear, vulnerability and shame. We may deny them by trying to “think positive.” We may attribute them to political wrongs or even the barking dog next door. If emotions have nowhere else to go, they become symptoms, complexes, and even physical illnesses. Avoiding negative emotions simply causes them to go underground and express themselves in disguise.Jung says, “Our emotions happen to us; affect occurs at the point at which our adaptation is weakest and at the same time exposes the reason for its weakness.”...
2021-02-111h 04This Jungian Life PodcastSelf-Loathing: What’s Gnawing on Your Bones?The judgmental inner voice has volume, speed, pitch and range. It may appear as a perfectionistic critic, demanding taskmaster, or abusive bully. It also seeps in through the collective, with criteria for beauty, status, and wealth that are unrealistic and artificial. At its worst, this punitive, shaming complex incites self-destructive behavior, and has long been imaged by witches, warlocks, ogres and fiends.Most of us would never treat anyone as badly as we sometimes treat ourselves. This internalized dynamic seesaws between extremes of idealized expectations and punitive backlash that pretends to be ‘for our own good.’ Like Sisy...
2021-02-041h 03This Jungian Life PodcastMYTH AS MEDICINE: An Interview with Kwame Scruggs, PhDKwame Scruggs inspires men through mythology, drumming and connection to community and culture. As a young man Kwame discovered his inner fire through African-based initiatory rites. He asked himself “What is it I really want to do? Not what could I do. What did I want to do?”His passion for myth and drumming led him to graduate studies and creating programs in which story is the catalyst for inspired manhood and realization of potential. Story, fellowship and rhythm create an alchemical mixture that facilitates connection with self and others and the deep archetypal wellsprings of mature masc...
2021-01-2858 minThis Jungian Life PodcastThe Archetype of the Good KingThe king is figured prominently in myth, religion, and fairy tale. This compelling archetypal image has roots in our earliest human beginnings, when the king embodied his tribe’s earthly vitality and supra-human connection to spirit. Today, the king symbolizes universal psychic functions; each of us has an internal ruler. Like Solomon, the king presides over standards of ordering and lawgiving that undergird processes of discernment and decision.As warrior, the king protects and defends the kingdom of selfhood he has built; he has access to aggression and takes responsibility for the consequences of his actions. The ma...
2021-01-211h 17This Jungian Life PodcastWillpower: Choice, Energy & the Power to AchieveThe ability to choose and exercise will is a defining characteristic of humans. Only humans have enough energy available to consciousness to escape the rule of instinct. Jung says, “the realm of will cannot coerce instinct nor has it power over spirit,” so ego shall not dictate to psyche but find alignment with instinct and spirit, values and volition, before springing into pursuit of a goal.We must first choose to attend to ourselves, consider the size, worth, and cost of the goal—and then practice parenting ourselves through the journey to achieving it. The nurturing inner parent...
2021-01-071h 19This Jungian Life PodcastFierce Female Initiations: Claiming Authority & Selfhood Through TrialsMythological Paths to Personal PotentialMyths and fairy tales depict women’s initiation into authority and adulthood. Hades abducted Kore (maiden) into the underworld; Snow White choked on a poisoned apple and lay in stasis; Aphrodite punished forsaken Psyche with arduous tasks. As all were blossoming into the fullness of their beauty and fertility, all were also in thrall to innocence complexes that blinded them to realities of envy, aggression, and power, imaged as rapist, step-mother, and mother-in-law.Women’s initiation into adulthood and authority involves encountering shadow, finding inner fire, taking action, and wielding powe...
2020-12-311h 07This Jungian Life PodcastScrooge on the Couch: How the Numinous TransformsSomething's going on in Scrooge's soul...and it's tired of waiting for an invitation.Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol, vividly portrays the journey to healing and transcendence. It was written in a fever, released on December 19, 1843, and sold out before Christmas. Ebenezer Scrooge’s visitations by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come are vivid depictions of the path from trauma to transformation. As in psychotherapy, Scrooge revisits his past; by reclaiming the feelings he exiled as a child, Scrooge discovers compassion and connection.The visitation to the present shows Scrooge fami...
2020-12-241h 16This Jungian Life PodcastThe Archetype of the Divine Child: Light RebornFear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all people. Luke 2:10 The divine child appears when least expected, new potential born from the womb of the unconscious. Helpless and blessed and against all reason, the divine child represents the creative union of opposites that births a new beginning. Every new beginning is a divine child, and mythological revelations since ancient times greet new psychic potential with awe and adoration. Miraculous birth signals initiation into individuation and the preordained destiny of sacred and heroic figures across cultures and through time i...
2020-12-171h 01This Jungian Life PodcastFANTASY: Do We Have Fantasies or Do They Have Us?Is fantasizing helpful or harmful?Fantasy is the process of engagement with unconscious processes, from the depths of the mythic unconscious to the make-believe worlds of online gaming. In passive fantasy we receive products of the unconscious as charged internal images: nighttime dreams, trance states and visions. Passive fantasy transgresses natural law, the limitations of waking life, and cultural restrictions, for in the subterranean realms of psychic experience all is permitted.Active fantasy allows us to interact with the unconscious and shape our experiences. It lives next door to ideas, reverie, play, intuition, and creativity...
2020-12-101h 03This Jungian Life PodcastDoubt: Facing Life’s UnknownsDoubt disturbs us. Unlike the more defined polarities of ambivalence, doubt is pervasive, muddy, and ranges from crippling to constructive. We may doubt our capacity to meet a challenge, achieve a desired outcome, or make the right decision. At a deeper level, doubt can threaten our orientation to reality and erode our sense of self.Doubt can also help us prepare, increase our capacity to take risks and build confidence in our ability to prevail whether we win or lose. Doubt is about the future—possibilities, and perils. We are called to remain steadfast and chart a co...
2020-12-031h 03This Jungian Life PodcastVisionary Imagination: Jung’s Private JournalsWe welcome Sonu Shamdasani, PhD, scholar and historian of depth psychology and Jung’s opus. His research and expertise were instrumental in bringing Jung’s Red Book to the public in 2009. Jung’s Black Books, the journals in which he recorded “my most difficult experiments,” have just been published. We discuss Jung’s encounters with figures and images from his psychic depths--experiences foundational to Jung’s subsequent work and which opened a portal to humankind’s imaginal mind and mythic substrata.The Philemon Foundation, which Dr. Shamdasani co-founded in 2003, is dedicated to bringing forward more of Jung’s unpublished manu...
2020-11-2653 minThis Jungian Life PodcastSpider Parents: Finding Freedom from DependenceThe spider is a symbol of generative and destructive capabilities. As creator, spider spins the sustaining web of life. As predator, spider’s sticky web is an inescapable trap. Parents weave webs of familial ties, cultural norms, and generational patterns that contain—or restrain--their children. Emotional strings of attachment or enmeshment affect how—or if—a young adult child is released into the world.A net of comfort and connection can become a web of entanglement and stultification. The tale of Sleeping Beauty portrays the stasis that ensues when parents try to protect their child from future dangers...
2020-11-191h 06This Jungian Life PodcastQAnon: Ancient Lies & Sexual SlandersQAnon is a recent iteration of a historical pattern: Romans persecuted Christians, Christians libeled Jews, and citizenries hunted witches. When existing social structures break down, psychological splitting ensues in an effort to counteract fear and re-establish certainty. Collective projections demonize a selected ‘other’ and tend toward lurid attributions of badness: pedophilia, blood drinking, and devil worship.At the same time collectives project their need for leadership and unity onto a leader, investing the person with larger-than-life qualities. The mythic unconscious creates a dualistic division between ‘above and below’-- religious purity and righteousness versus ‘beasts of darkness,’ especially s...
2020-11-121h 23This Jungian Life PodcastREVIVING OUR CAPACITY TO FEEL: The Core of Jung’s LegacyMarie-Louise von Franz, Jung’s close collaborator, capped her public work in a 1986 lecture that summarized Jung’s signal contributions to understanding the human experience. Jung was concerned that rationalism, quantitative methodologies, and the objectification of people and animals had become one-sided, resulting in ethical and empathic deficiencies. He felt the over-development of professional personas—even among physicians and psychotherapists—led to avoiding authentic encounters. Sentimentality, a superficial expression of feeling, could be used to mask cruelty, including to animals.For Jung, relationship to the sacred was foundational, and was the true source of an ethical stance. He felt...
2020-11-052h 30This Jungian Life PodcastHorror: Why Can’t We Look Away?The hair on the back of our necks bristles in response to the horrors of the uncanny. Transfixed by shock, awe, dread and fascination, we can neither dare the dangerous darkness nor turn away. The mysteries of the unknown take us into realms of transgression and taboo.Enthrallment and abhorrence mix in encounters with all that is alien and dispossessed. We face our own human monstrosities and the traumas that create them. We also meet the dark, nonhuman otherness of the collective unconscious; it threatens to possess us and can annihilate our sense of self. Whether we...
2020-10-291h 02This Jungian Life PodcastChronic IllnessDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Chronic illnesses affect many, creating diminishment of physical ability and energy for life activities. There can be loss of agency, loss of one’s expected future, and a sharpened awareness of loss of life. There is a new need for conscious intention and reality-based decisions in order to avoid denial while adjusting to limitations and managing self-care. Deb, Lisa and Joseph discuss emotional factors in the loss of the healthy, autonomous self –and the possibility of a profound shift in inner life. The blindness of mythological figures like Tiresias an...
2019-07-181h 06This Jungian Life PodcastCultsDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Although cults occasionally make the headlines through tragedy or scandal, the defining features of cults are inherently human and manifest on spectrums of both severity and size. The word cult is derived from culture. While culture refers to the overarching characteristics of a society, cult refers negatively to a marginalized subgroup. Cults tap into universal human feelings and desires, such as the need to belong and resonance to parental influence. Although as adults we are no longer dependent on family and tribe for physical survival, our psychological needs for safety...
2019-07-0454 minThis Jungian Life PodcastTearsDREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! We all shed tears. We cry when we are sad, but also when we are glad, surprised by beauty, love, or touched by other deeply felt and uniquely human experiences. Tears, and our access to them, are part of what makes us human, and when we cannot find our tears we have lost a vital link to feeling, whether for another or a part of ourselves. In their negative aspect, tears can signify the falseness of crocodile tears or affective hardening and bitterness; teardrop tattoos represent experiences of violence...
2019-06-131h 09This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 62 - The Psychology of a VictimWe can experience powerful feelings of empathy for those who are victims of trauma in all its heartbreaking dimensions. It is difficult even to consider a shadow side to this already dark aspect of human experience. Nevertheless, it is important also to consider the difference between lived experiences of victimization and meaning-making narratives that not only can become calcified, but self-reinforcing. If entrenched, narratives of victimization can become part of one’s identity and suppress life energy. Lisa, Deb and Joseph differentiate the emotions involved in suffering, mourning and acceptance from more reified states of powerlessness. They describe how th...
2019-06-0657 min
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 61 - IndividuationIndividuation, the central concept of Jung’s psychology, is the foundational image and aspiration of Jungian psychoanalysis – and life. It is the theme of many a fairy tale, the sought-for treasure of a quest, and the “juice” that makes symbols compelling. Individuation has an innate developmental arc and a psychological trajectory that allows us to bring conscious intention to our own individuation process. However, vital transformational events are not simply occurrences ego alone can command; they are ultimately mysterious. They arise independently from the unconscious and what Jung termed the Self, the center, circumference and true center of the personal...
2019-05-301h 09
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 57 - AmbivalenceHaving mixed feelings, or strongly opposing feelings is a normal occurrence in human life. We can find ourselves in a quandary about big decisions, upcoming life events, or experience being stuck without quite knowing why. Deb, Joseph, and Lisa consider various facets of ambivalence: anxiety around foreclosing options and missing out fear of regret over a possible wrong choice, or inability to raise complexes and shadow elements into consciousness. All aspects of the personality need to be allowed to dialogue and have it out with one another. Instead of complicating matters and adding to stasis, this process releases energy...
2019-05-021h 00
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 55 - Identifying & Integrating the Personal ShadowThe personal shadow is created as a normal part of development, as we learn what behaviors, values and feelings are not acceptable in our family, school, or religious tradition. In order to be accepted by needed significant others, parts of ourselves have to be split off from consciousness and are therefore relegated to the unconscious as shadow. A major part of becoming more whole is discovering these exiled parts of ourselves and integrating the feelings they carry. Deb, Lisa and Joseph discuss some of the ways that shadow can be confronted and given a place at the table of...
2019-04-181h 12
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 54 - Chronic LatenessPeople who are chronically late create relational problems with others and generate negative consequences for themselves, from embarrassment and guilt to loss of friendships or jobs. Chronic lateness evidences a split between consciousness and the unconscious: while the ego may feel distressed about lateness, the unconscious may be expressing an unmet need and deriving a benefit from lateness. That is why self-help strategies such as setting multiple alarm clocks and allowing extra time for travel seldom solve the problem of chronic lateness or feel satisfying. Lisa, Joseph, and Deb discuss possible unconscious motivations for lateness, including its role as...
2019-04-111h 04
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 53 - Should I Stay or Should I Go?One of the issues clients bring into the therapeutic consulting room is dissatisfaction with the state of their marriage or partnership. Although this dilemma often takes shape as bipolar, it represents a challenge to engagement with deep, defended parts of self and relationship. Joseph, Lisa and Deb make it clear they are not focusing on issues like abuse or addiction, but the more subtle yet substantial ways in which people can feel dissatisfied. Partners often hold deep aspects of the other’s shadow; for example, if one person has a fear of abandonment the other may have an equally st...
2019-04-041h 04
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 52 - Precognitive DreamsListeners contributed examples of precognitive dreams for this episode. Lisa, Joseph, and Deb discuss theoretical concepts and listener dreams from various vantage points: the intuitive capacity of the unconscious, the synchronous intersection of matter and psyche, and activation of an archetype. These and other ways of knowing are beyond the scope of ego and call us to the realization that the ego, as Jung said, is a part of and connected to something larger that is ultimately mysterious. Jung compared this process to the plants called rhizomes. Their horizontal underground stems which put out lateral shoots and flowers that...
2019-03-281h 03
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 51 - What is Your Therapist Thinking?Lisa, Joseph, and Deb explore and explain what the analytic process is like for them as they work with clients. Deb describes her interactions with clients using a rectangular diagram that, like the Scottish flag, traces lines going from the two upper corners to the two lower corners. This represents the multi-directional flow of energy in the session between the conscious and unconscious contents of both people. The analytic process is also likened to a chemical reaction in which both people are changed - referencing alchemical images that Jung used, it’s compared to two people sitting in a ba...
2019-03-211h 04
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 50 - ShoppingEveryone shops—we have access to an astonishing choice of products. Internet shopping has multiplied our range of options beyond what nearby retail stores may have to offer. Desired items range from mountain climbing trucks to gold jewelry to highly specialized cookware items. What are we seeking for our inner selves as we shop for outer objects? For some, utilitarian objects carry libido, whereas for others shopping is an aesthetic, adventurous, relational, or aspirational experience. Joseph, Deb and Lisa explore the possible personal meanings of shopping. The Dream: Winter. I'm in a remote cab...
2019-03-141h 02
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 48 - EstrangementEstrangement from members of one’s family and others takes place far more often than seems commonly acknowledged. Estrangement involves psychologically cutting-off, repressing, and defending against connection with another who has come to be experienced as “all bad.” People may move away geographically, refuse to talk to a certain person, or simply give someone the “cold shoulder.” Joseph, Lisa and Deb discuss the importance of setting appropriate boundaries with others and understanding that estrangement is also an internal phenomenon. The Dream: I see a middle-aged man fixing a fence. The dogs that are in the yard with h...
2019-02-281h 05
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 45 - The WallWith “The Wall” very much in the forefront of national discussion, Deb, Lisa and Joseph reflect on the archetype of walls. Some may be stonewalls simply marking boundaries between neighbors. Others may be massive defenses like the Great Wall of China. What do walls keep out – or keep in? What do we need to create necessary separation, and what walls off connection with our own shadow that may be projected onto immigrants. When we focus on building a wall, do we neglect our internal infrastructure, health care and education—and eventually shut down our government? This discussion explores parallels between...
2019-02-0749 min
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 44 - The Archetypal Power of FootballFootball is a uniquely American sport with millions of fans, heroic teams, and stadiums reminiscent of colosseums. As the Super Bowl approaches – television’s most watched show – Lisa, Joseph and Deb consider the archetypal underpinnings that contribute to making football America’s most watched sport. They consider the light and dark sides of fandom, the hero’s journey, the battleground, and more. The Dream: For some reason, I brought kitty litter to the bathroom -- it was not for a cat (since I don't have one anymore) but had some other purpose. Well, as soon as...
2019-01-311h 09
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 40 - What's Unique about Jungian Analysis?How is Jungian analysis different from other psychotherapies? What are its major components and distinguishing features? And what makes it effective? Lisa, Deb, and Joseph discuss Jungian analysis as a nonlinear process that is not limited to problem-solving or reducing symptoms. Instead, Jungian analysis is grounded in an inherent capacity to grow into wholeness, a process Jung called individuation. Jungian analysis places a high value on all the processes and multiplicities of the unconscious, from symptoms to work with dreams, in order to facilitate the integration of denied or devalued aspects of the personality. The four particular stages of...
2019-01-0359 min
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 35 - LonelinessLoneliness is a deeply human and universal experience. Lisa, Joseph and Deb examine it from multiple perspectives: as it may be experienced in young adulthood versus older years; as reflective of the need for attachment and relational security; as comparable to the alchemical metaphors of calcinatio and solutio; as a call to activation in outer and inner worlds; and as a psychologically toxic phenomenon. The dream: I dreamt I was haphazardly packing up my family’s things after a stay at a friend’s house. In the bathroom I find I have my period and have...
2018-11-291h 14
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 33 - Archetypal Dynamics of Gender TransformationLisa, Joseph, and Deb circumambulate the difficult issue of gender reassignment. They discuss the significance of teen girls wishing to transition and the current tendency to foreclose the meaning of this and move rapidly into medical procedures, a process of concretization instead of curiosity and exploration. Lisa discusses previous examples of symptoms and their diagnoses in history, leading to an understanding of the influence of cultural factors on mental illnesses and diagnosis. Finally, gender reassignment is considered as a Promethean venture, and although it is now possible to challenge the gods of genetics, it is also truly awe-full. We...
2018-11-151h 15
This Jungian Life PodcastEpisode 24 - Motherhood as a Journey of IndividuationThe experience of motherhood evokes powerful feelings, ranging from joy and bonding to anger and rejection. If we can develop a conscious relationship with these feelings, we meet both denied aspects of ourselves—our shadows—and experience the pleasures and enrichment of mothering that serve the individuation process. You can learn more about Lisa's work on motherhood here. The Dream: I was visiting the home of a friend who doesn’t exist in the real world. She lives with her mother in a house near woods in another state. She’s very talkative and a good...
2018-09-1354 min