Mandala Archetype: How the Self Turns Chaos into Cosmos
This Jungian Life
Mandalas are Psyche’s way of drawing a compass for you when life feels off-kilter. Jung noticed that these circular patterns—whether they appear in Navajo sand paintings, Tibetan yantras, or last night’s dream—pull everything back toward a stable center he called the Self. The rim defines where your ego ends; the cross-lines and repeating fours help you locate sensation, feeling, thinking, and intuition in relation to your core. By “walking” the circle, even in imagination, the ego learns to orbit rather than hijack the organizing center, and the usual tug-of-war between instinct...
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House Dreams: Schematics of Your Psychological Functioning
This Jungian Life
When a house turns up in a dream, it isn’t a staging background—it’s an architectural X-ray of your inner life, drafted by the dream maker overnight and delivered to your doorstep at dawn. Floors chart levels of awareness, locked doors expose repressed material, intruders crash in as disowned traits, and every leaking pipe or crooked stair announces a personal attitude in need of repair. In this episode, we’ll teach you how to read the blueprint with the same clarity you’d bring to structural engineering, and your dream will hand you a working map for shadow work,...
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Ready for the Real Snow White? The True Tale of Envy, Murder, and Retribution
This Jungian Life
Ever wonder why “Snow White” still hooks us after all the Disney glitter flakes off? This episode strips the tale down to its psychological wiring: murderous envy of the mother shadow, malignant innocence, the unforgiving “mirror” inside that only answers the questions we’re brave enough to ask, and the dangerous alchemy that transforms three lethal mistakes into mature authority. You’ll hear why the dwarflike bits of half-formed masculinity in all of us mine gold from the unconscious, how raw instinct often finishes the work refined methods can’t, and how real agency...
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Forging the Upward Thread: Why Do We Create Religions?
This Jungian Life
The religious function is part of who we are — as natural as needing food or love. It’s the inner drive that pushes us to find meaning, to touch something larger than ourselves. Jung saw that if we don’t tend it, it doesn’t go away; it twists itself into addictions, compulsions, or a kind of soul-sickness. Religion, in the deepest sense, isn’t about belief systems. It’s about real encounters with the Self — the larger reality inside us that humbles, heals, and reshapes us. Dreams, symbols, and moments of awe are how Psyche keeps that connection alive. Without them,...
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Trauma Can Be Rewritten: The Use of Art to Reimagine our Past and Grant Us New Life
This Jungian Life
Viviane Silvera animated 30,000 of her hand-painted images to explore how traumatic memories are formed, stored, and ultimately transformed. Her animated documentary, SEE MEMORY, traces the intimate story of a young woman caught between past and present; her film captures the fragmented texture of trauma and the healing that becomes possible when painful memories are witnessed. In our conversation with Viviane, we explore her process of recovering lost memories and how opposing perspectives can constellate new attitudes toward trauma. We discuss cutting-edge findings on the way the brain...
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How to Develop Your Inner Guidance: Charting a Path Through the Current Chaos with Jung’s Insights
This Jungian Life
Today you'll learn about inner guidance--the quiet, built-in compass that surfaces when we pause the outer noise long enough to feel what rings true inside. It is less a mystical oracle than a subtle convergence of bodily signals, emotional undertones, and intuitive "hunches" distilled from our lived experience. When we meet a decision with open attention—neither forcing a rational verdict nor surrendering to raw impulse—this inner faculty sorts, weighs, and hints at the direction that aligns with our deepest values. Acting on it demands two skills: discerning authentic signals from fear...
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[SUBSCRIBER-BONUS] How to work with Shadow Material
This Jungian Life
In this free edition of Jung Love, our -bonus content, a Patron asks: "What do you do with shadow material? Is it enough to just become aware of your shadows? Or does it require a fixing of oneself? What is the process of processing it? I'm still trying to wrap my head around the shadow. What if I'm aware, but still don't like the shadow? Robert Johnson talked about rituals for the shadow. Can you speak about that in more depth and perhaps provide some examples?" BECOME a TJL Patron and enjoy exclusive content like interpreting your dreams, explaining Jung's ideas, and more: LOOK &...
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Shadow and Self in Adolescence: Navigating Rage, Love, and Individuation
This Jungian Life
Think of adolescence as life’s built‑in boot camp: your body hits the gas, your mind scrambles to keep up, and suddenly you’re wrestling with raw impulses, big feelings, and the question “Who am I, really?” That surge of anger toward parents often hides an intense love that feels too risky to show, so teens push back while secretly measuring whether adults—and the wider world—can handle their storm. Without clear rites of passage, they test limits through friends, online thrills, and daring choices, all in service of hammering out a story that’s theirs, not just a...
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From Worry to Insight: making sense of uncertainty
This Jungian Life
Worry arises because we can imagine countless possibilities, yet it often traps us in unproductive loops. Recognizing when worry prompts useful action—and when it spirals into paralysis—can be transformative. By holding uncertainty with patience, rather than trying to eliminate it, we engage a deeper capacity to reflect, adapt, and discover hidden strength. Read along with our dream interpretation . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life...
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Detective Archetype Decoded: Tracking Symbolic Clues
This Jungian Life
Ever felt that irresistible urge to poke around for answers? That’s the detective archetype calling. It taps into our natural drive to uncover hidden truths and bridges the gap between what’s out in the open and what’s hidden in shadow. Whether we’re looking at Sherlock Holmes’s logical wizardry or Miss Marple’s understated brilliance, detective stories grab our attention by setting things right when wrongdoing has thrown everyday life off-balance. But these tales aren’t just about catching a culprit; they mirror an inner process. It’s the part of us that wants to piece...
info_outlineIt happens all the time: people and problems split into opposing camps, whether the conflict is internal, between partners, in a family or—as we know all too well—between political parties. When positions become polarized conflict ensues, whether between mind and body, partners and families, or value systems and religious affiliations. What makes it possible to reach across the chasm between entrenched extremes? The Jungian concept of holding the tension of the opposites allows energy, like electricity, to flow between both poles; each can have its full say. Instead of remaining mired in fixity or moral judgment, curiosity may open the way for a new attitude that transcends the polarities.
Dream
I am going for a holiday to Bali with my husband and best friend. We are running late for our flight. At the airport, I check in my huge suitcase, but then I realise I don't have my passport. A young man with dark hair, whom I know to be a playwright, says, 'Go to the counter. You look young, like a six year old. Act innocent. You should be able to talk your way on to the plane without a passport.' But I don't want to do this. Instead, I get in the car with my husband and friend. They are pissed at me. I know it is impossible to get back home to get my passport and make the flight. Part of me doesn't really care. I don't wan't to go to Bali. I feel busy and overwhelmed in my working life - so I want to stay to attend to things - and I don't like the tourist culture in Bali - it is infantilising. Still, I feel pulled in all directions. I have let down my companions. We stop by the side of the road to talk about it alongside an oil refinery. I say 'They have already boarded our luggage, so they are not going to take off without us.' Still, it is not clear what we should do from there.
References
Neumann, Eric. Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (Amazon).
Woodard, Colin. American Nations: A History of Eleven Rival Regional Cultures (Amazon).
Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (Amazon)