This Jungian Life

Jung 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 ambiguity - and it is up to us to reckon with it. If we do the work of differentiating from our parents, we discover ourselves. By doing so, we may truly redeem them and free ourselves. We serve life best by claiming it.  Here’s the dream we analyze: “I am in what seems to be a decrepit apartment building, and I get the sense that the rooms of the