This Jungian Life

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 and Oedipus symbolized the development of inner vision; Jungian Harry Wilmer used active imagination to personify his tuberculosis bacteria. And Jung believed that chronic illness could serve the process of individuation.   Dream In this latest dream it was a massive, hard, dry poo that wouldn’t come out so I had to get my fingers in and stretch my skin around it to help it pass, thinking as I did about how it must be like giving birth and I understood why doct