This Jungian Life

The hero’s journey has been the stuff of story from earliest times. Today’s popular heroes include Harry Potter, Frodo, Spiderman, Neo, and Luke Skywalker. They are all ordinary guys who suddenly receive the Call to Adventure, mythologist Joseph Campbell’s term for the beginning of the journey. The would-be hero first declines, then answers the call; he suffers tests and trials, succeeds with help from unexpected sources, and returns with the gifts of all he has learned. The hero’s journey is the human story--we are all called to be more, often in seemingly mundane ways. As we go to work, raise children, and experience setbacks, we are called to sacrifice personal interest and ego-driven desires for the sake of something greater. The hero’s journey is a metaphor for the inner adventure Jung described as individuation, ‘the treasure hard to attain’ and life’s true goal.    Dream The dream consisted of 3 segments. In the first, I was outdoors, looking up, observing a group of men, they were engaged in some proj

Masks are the symbol of COVID life, and they have archetypal roots as old as humankind. We ward off evil microbial forces with bandanas, neck gaiters, patterned fabrics, and high filtration medical masks. Masks provide access to our shape-shifting potential, connect us to our instinctual depths, mediate our relationship to the spirits, and open a portal to the mythic realm of story and drama. Masks waft us into new identities: children become superheroes or face-painted animals; women apply make-up, men craft beards, and everyone wears sunglasses that shade us from more than sunlight. We also wear a social mask, persona, and present different aspects of ourselves to colleagues, Facebook friends, and family—but if we identify with the faces we present to the world we risk defining ourselves according to fixed and superficial attributes. Masks in all their forms affect the experience of wearer and viewers.   Dream I am staying in a large, gothic house in the countryside while some sort of calamity is occurring

When you’re down, and in trouble, and you need some loving care... You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am,  I’ll come running to see you again…you’ve got a friend.  Carole King song   The companion has a beloved place in our hearts. Famed modern-day teammates include Captain Kirk and Spock, Frodo and Samwise, Batman and Robin, and Sherlock Holmes and Watson. The companion serves and supports the hero, contributing quieter gifts of guidance, capability, and devotion. Every companion is an image of the inner Other, and is present whenever gifts of wisdom, care and guidance are received. Our bodies, instincts, and feelings recognize and respond to the companion: a night’s sleep and dreams ease anxiety, a quandary melts into resolution, a new idea shines in mind. The Companion is already and always there.    Dream I keep making this lucid dream, of bumping into a long-lost best friend of mine. We first happily greet each other, and discuss how long it's been since we last met. But quickly, I realiz

The root of create, “to bring something into being out of nothing,” echoes divine creation. Ideas arise from mysterious sources, yet creativity is such an intrinsically human function that Jung considered it one of five human instincts, together with hunger, sexuality, activity, and reflection (a function of consciousness). Positive circumstances foster creativity: the ability to engage imagination, seek novelty, hone competency, and pursue autonomous, intrinsically rewarding activities. Stress inhibits new possibilities, and rigid societies and personalities fear creators, as new ideas and images challenge the status quo. Creativity can also be quashed from within, and one’s internal cynic, doubter, and deflator often shows up disguised as reason. It takes confidence and courage to surmount uncertainty, obstacles, and potential disappointment. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” What wants to come into the world throug

The religious instinct is as basic as the need for food or shelter. Psyche seeks and selects a central, organizing life principle whether consciously or unconsciously chosen. Secular deities range from food, money, or even science, to the gods of addiction; false gods lie behind neuroses and pathology. Traditional religions and cosmologies offer connection to large, well-ordered frameworks of myth and meaning. Realizing one’s place in the context of larger realities has the potential to connect us to mystery and numinous experience; then we belong to something greater. For Jung the decisive question was whether a person was related to the infinite: “It seems as if it were only through the experience of a symbolic reality that man, vainly seeking his own ‘existence’ and making a philosophy out of it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger.”    Dream It is dusk and quickly becoming night. I am hidden from view, lying on my belly in a tunnel of some sort. I am looking out onto a cle

Jung discovered the psyche’s dissociative nature through his Word Association Test. Subjects would delay or make nonsensical responses to ordinary words associated with troublesome personal memories or traumas. Dissociation, our autonomous psychic “circuit breaker,” exists on a spectrum from ”spacing out” to disorders that interfere with life functioning. Psychotherapy could be considered the practice of healing dissociations, as treatment entails bringing banished contents into consciousness with feeling and understanding. Fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty frequently depict dissociation as enchantment, abduction, or dismemberment. Reconnection with consciousness is the happily-ever-after resolution, for dissociation takes psychic energy that should be available for life. Giving our inner exiles a seat at the table of consciousness is crucial to wholeness.    Dream  I find myself at the bottom of an archaic like pit or well about 5 meters deep. There is very nice warm light coming into the pit, sandy golden

The transcendent function comes in all sizes, from “aha” moments to epiphanies. A new orientation to a dilemma arrives unthought, recognized, and right. Perhaps there is a moment where loneliness gives way to solitude, or heartbreak yields to a larger sense of self. Apprehension of a new attitude--sunlight breaking through clouds--has overcome the impasse, bringing freshness, spaciousness and possibility. Engaging the tension of an emotional struggle without giving in to premature, one-sided action can prepare the way for the unconscious to unite with consciousness. The transcendent function can also be sought through practicing active imagination or involvement in expressive arts, a practice Jung encouraged. He said that the transcendent function “is a way of attaining liberation by one’s own efforts and of finding the courage to be oneself.”    Dream I'm on black rocks, like volcanic lava black, and walking from the sea behind me towards the land. I'm with my husband. There's a gap in the rocks--he goes to

James Hollis, noted Jungian scholar, teacher and author, joined us to discuss resilience. His new book, Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times, will be available on Amazon in mid-June.   When life rhythms and habits are suspended or upended, we may find ourselves adrift. What supports us then? For most of history institutional religion, tradition, and tribal mythology unified communities and connected members to the transcendent. Today, however, discovering the capacity for creativity, wisdom and connection to a larger reality has become increasingly an individual endeavor. Hardship and its associates, anxiety, depression and desperation, can be the catalyst for turning from external authorities to the internal world. Our instincts, feelings and nightly dreams are accessible, autonomous and informative. They tell us what we don’t know about our values, issues, and actions—and they insist on re-accessing personal myth and meaning, for that is what moves us to an authentic journey.

Racial injustice takes one’s breath away. It reaches back to the psychic asphyxiations of the Middle Passage, slavery, and Jim Crow—cut-offs from home, family, freedom and justice. Racism persists in systemic inequities and ongoing instances of police violence. The death of George Floyd, handcuffed, pleading, and unable to breathe, has inspired a collective rising in protest against current brutality and historic inhumanity. Breath as essence, consciousness and soul gives voice to lamentation and outrage. We cry out for the clean air of fairness, because racism is utterly breathtaking. Dr. Fanny Brewster joins us for today’s important discussion.    References Books by Fanny Brewster, PhD are available on Amazon.      The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race      Archetypal Grief      African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows

Many listeners have expressed interest in Jungian analytic training. We welcome those inquiries and outline the prerequisites, practicalities and processes which lead up to and constitute Jungian analytic training--a life path of ongoing growth, challenge and satisfaction. We encourage all who are interested in becoming a Jungian analyst to consult the major Jungian organizational and training resources below, and to research additional educational and Jungian institutes around the world. There are many routes to training as a Jungian analyst and we hope to help you find yours. References www.IAAP.org www.irsja.org www.cgjungphiladelphia.org

How can we understand the psychological wild fire of rioting? Jung, who lived through two world wars, understood that mass movements had the power to manifest archetypal energy. The urge to unleash destructive chaos is depicted in mythologies around the world. Early Norse warriors attained battle-crazed states as "berserkers," and Cu Chulainn, a mythological Irish warrior, killed both friends and foe. Eris, the Greek goddess of discord and strife, started the Trojan War, and Kali, a Hindu god whose name derives from suffer, hurt, startle and confuse, also incited war. Riots--contagious states of regressive possession--belong to this archetypal realm. Jung said “collective man threatens to stifle the individual man, on whose sense of responsibility everything valuable in mankind ultimately depends…the true leaders of mankind are always those who are capable of self-reflection.”   Dream I was in a forest next to a fortress wall. A little boy appeared with a cotton hood over his head that covered his face. The c

Oppressed, repressed and regressed, the forced restrictions of the Covid Complex have us in its grip. We may see friends and family more often than ever, but only on a screen. Work, school, home, weekdays, weekends—time and tasks slide around like Jello on a hot plate. Loss of structure, variety, movement and touch are destabilizing. Confined to tight physical and emotional spaces, we may collapse into ourselves or lash out at loved ones. We hear contradictory messages on the news and go outside only if masked and defended. The Covid Complex is both personal and collective—it affects each of us differently and it affects us all. Most of us have been forced inward physically and psychologically; perhaps this time is also an opportunity to rediscover inner resources and experience depth of being.   Dream I am viewing media footage filmed from a helicopter looking down onto the forward section of a fast moving 60 foot solo sailed yacht that is heading out to sea. The yacht is hard to the wind, heeled over, plung

Jung was particularly interested in the second half of life, perhaps because after his own midlife crisis he found himself so surprisingly generative. We tend to spend the first half of life oriented to familial values and cultural norms for success.    Education, work, partnering and child rearing are some of the mile markers for speed and distance on the road of life—until midlife strikes. We may then discover that worldly successes feel flat, or blame discontent on bad breaks.    Although dramatic lifestyle changes at midlife are the stuff of story, malaise at the midpoint is psyche’s signal to attend to unlived inner life. It is time for meaningful encounter between ego and unconscious, worldly rewards and true fulfillment, obligation and freedom. Midlife crisis is a call to deepened feeling and the unique meaning of your life.       Dream   I am walking with a group of my "clients" (developmentally disabled people). I have to work to keep the group together as some straggle here and there. I'm responsibl

The Pentagon recently released a film of a UFO made by Navy pilots. Although such credible documentation is new, UFO sightings go back to ancient times and surged after World War II.    Interstellar travel then seized the collective imagination, and the ongoing abundance of books, television shows and films signals the emergence of a new mythology. In his treatise “Flying Saucers,” Jung took a phenomenological stance, acknowledging experiences of sightings without concretizing them as physical or dismissing them as fictional.    Alchemists projected psyche onto matter at a time when its transformational properties inspired reverence and awe. Today, no matter what other truths are out there, UFOs reach “beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets…”     Dream I’m in a Catholic Church that is crumbling down with my mother and a priest. At the bottom of the building there are some wood

We have moved our lives online. But can we experience authentic human connection through virtual technology? Can we date, mourn, or have psychoanalysis on a screen? If screens offer some surprising intimacies—close-ups of wedding vows and eulogies—they also deprive us of embodied participation. Staying at home has made us newly eager to socialize—separately. Dating means conversation, not cuddling. We enter the homes of colleagues, clients, and even newscasters, but despite this implicit amity we’re not guests. Psychoanalysts refer to “the analytic third,” physicists propound unified field theory, and Jung had these words carved over his door: Called or not called, God will be there.  There is an autonomous spirit and independent intelligence that lives in and between us and even onscreen. It can hold us in the mystery of meaningful connection that is not contingent on physical presence.   Dream I was a magician’s apprentice. The magician was old and dying, and was in a hurry to pass on his legacy to me. He s

Astrology is a 4000-year-old discipline rooted in the mystery of man’s relationship to the universe. It is an archetypal frame for human experience that influenced Jung, depicts our connection to the heavens, and anticipates future trends. We are now beginning an approximately 38-year Pluto-Saturn cycle—and Covid-19 has appeared at its outset. Pluto is associated with the underworld; Saturn is a stern taskmaster and enforcer of boundaries. The virus is forcing us to face fear and death—and also consider what egoistic attitudes may need to die. We can relate to these dark times with despair or as opportunity to create a healthier relationship with self, community and earth. The Age of Aquarius inspires the possibility of greater consciousness, for which Jung strove in his life and work. We can attend to planetary influences that point the way ahead. Dream I am on or in the ocean. Not sure how I got there or where I am going -- also strangely not in something. From my left a huge ship appears. In the "window" o

The dictionary defines authority as the power to “influence or command thought, opinion or behavior.” Authority’s Latin roots are master, leader, author—thus it lives next to its tough cousin, power. Families, organizations, and governing bodies influence and command us, whether slightly or mightily. Authority has legitimacy, from a traffic officer’s directives to a mentor’s wisdom. An authority may reward desired behavior or provide expert advice. We can rebel against authority, be coerced into compliance, or fall into identification with a leader. Ultimately, we must claim our own authority in determining values and making decisions. Jung says, “Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy.” Dream There is a viral outbreak. I'm in a car pulling

The alchemical term nigredo means black or blackening, and is associated with decomposition and putrefaction. As a psychological state, nigredo is “the great suffering and grief” which the detached forces of nature inflict on the soul. We realize in sorrow that what we thought were truths were illusory. Individuals may have taken pride in their virtues, talents or good fortune; societies may have touted their cultural superiority, military prowess, or wealth. When we are stripped of easy beliefs, we have no defense against the desolation of nigredo. But as surely as a seed releases its urge to life underground, blackness is also a place of incubation. Jung states, “Everything psychic is pregnant with the future.” Our task is “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there find germs of light and recovery” from which new life will come.   Dream I was arriving to a commotion in a beautiful open-space garden beside the university building where I graduated. As I was approaching the crowd, I wondered who it

In the Chinese language, the two characters representing crisis are danger and opportunity. Can that possibly be true of these days of pandemic crisis, with physical, economic, and psychological destabilization? Voices of experience and wisdom speak to us about finding potential in desperate situations. Victor Frankl, imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, discovered he had the power to choose his attitude toward brutal circumstances. Erich Fromm felt that isolation and fear could lead either to experiencing or forfeiting personal freedom. Carl Jung valued the human capacity for consciousness: “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” We can be heartened in hard times by those who have gone before, turned inward, and found treasure.  Dream I’m walking into my high school dressed in school uniform for the first time in years. I walk through the cafeteria and people are all looking at me and whispering. I sit at some seats by myself. I

The archetype of origins is in resurgence since the advent of ancestry-mapping programs. What are the psychological and symbolic meanings of ancestry? Identity is often strongly linked to ancestry in its ethnic and cultural aspects, and as the carrier of personal traits. Genealogy gives rise to meaning-making narratives such as: I get my talent for storytelling from my Irish forebears. Jung knew that family complexes are handed down when he said, “Psychologically, the central point of a human personality is the place where the ancestors are reincarnated.” Genograms, another mapping technique, allow us to trace those intellectual and emotional family patterns. Every individual rests on a historical foundation of family, tribe, clan, and nation—and, at levels below consciousness, we are also affected by our common roots in the primeval past and the mysterious central fire of life. In order to differentiate from this multi-layered context, it can help to know it.   Dream I was in a quaint English village. Next t