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...
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Analytical Patisserie: When Pastry Sparked Genius
This Jungian Life
In 1906, during Carl Jung’s formative visit to Vienna to confer with Sigmund Freud, a seemingly incidental stop at the renowned Café Sacher catalyzed his enduring fascination with pastry-making. At the time, Freud was actively refining his drive-based theories—including the pleasure principle—and while Jung had not yet formulated his later concepts, his curiosity was piqued by the Sachertorte’s complex interplay of technique and sensory allure. Authentically prepared Sachertorte requires an aerated chocolate batter produced via partial egg-white separation and a precise bain-marie...
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Unlocking the Power of Your Shadow
This Jungian Life
Connie Zweig, author and Jungian therapist, joins us to explore the next level of shadow-work. This transformative practice identifies and integrates the repressed or disowned parts of ourselves, fostering deeper self-awareness, authenticity, and personal growth. These hidden dimensions often emerge in our relationships, politics, and cultural conflicts as unconscious projections and behaviors. By examining them—through dialogue, myth, and active imagination—we can move beyond shame, denial, and blame, transforming painful patterns into sources of emotional richness and empathy....
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The Boundary Paradox: How Limits Create Freedom
This Jungian Life
Boundaries define limits in relationships, work, and the psyche, balancing autonomy and connection. In relationships, they prevent enmeshment and detachment, fostering respect. Professionally, they maintain ethics and prevent burnout. Intrapsychically, they regulate self-cohesion and unconscious influences. Cultures shape boundary norms, with individualistic societies valuing personal space and collectivist ones emphasizing connection. Myths depict boundaries as transformative thresholds, like Janus symbolizing transition. The key dialectic is between rigidity and permeability—too rigid...
info_outlineSiblings are embedded in the human psyche as they are in life. Even if one lacks siblings, there is ready access to them through friends, fairy tales, myths, and scripture. All feature multiple experiences and examples of sibling solidarity and siblings as shadow carriers. Birth order, sex, temperament, and the quality of parental presence play a part in constellating the intense polarities of sibling relationships: competition and cooperation, admiration and envy, hierarchy and partnership, aggression and intimacy. We often carry the dynamics of early sibling relationships into adult life and project them onto individuals, work teams or social groups. Jung used the alchemical image of the soror mystica and the adept to represent a relational ideal, whether externally between self and other or internally between ego and unconscious. Each must have a respectful and equal say, from collaboration to confrontation.
Dream
In my dream, I visited a pet shop to buy a snake. I had my dog with me. I looked around the store and couldn't find any reptiles, so I asked the staff and one of the employees told me they kept them in a separate room. He had no face and reminded me of a jailer as he carried a bunch of keys with him. The old wooden door we approached didn't match the rest of the store, which was very modern, friendly and light. As he unlocked the door, my dog tried to get in with us but I told her to wait outside. The room on the other side seemed to have no ceiling or visible end and was more like a dungeon or cave. On the right hand side from the door there was a wooden outdoor rabbit cage with six compartments. It was too dark to see the animals but I could hear some sizzling and strangely humming noises and saw that all of their skins had different patterns in black and white. The man asked me if I wanted to hold one and before I could say anything he opened one of the boxes and gave me a smaller snake. It felt warm and lively in my hands and I enjoyed holding it. I couldn't see its head, so I tried to get a closer look and as I held it closer to my face it started biting my hand a couple of times though it didn't really hurt and even if it did strike before every bite they felt more like it was just nibbling a bit. The man asked me if I was okay and I laughed and told him that I was not afraid of snakes. I handed it back to him and decided that I didn't really need a snake as a pet. As I opened the door to get back, my dog was excited to see me and I petted her for a while at the threshold. Through the open door some bright light fell on the cage and I looked back and finally got a closer look at the snakes. They were all sleeping and still making humming sounds, rolled up as snakes do but their heads looked like those of rabbits with no ears.
References (books available on Amazon)
Newton, Lara. Brothers and Sisters: Discovering the Psychology of Companionship.
Fairy Tales: The Children of Lir, Six Swans.
Conroy, Pat. The Prince of Tides.
Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl.
Film: Winged Migration.