Episode 096 - Polyamory: Navigating the Complexities of the Heart
Release Date: 01/30/2020
Cassandra: A Jungian Interpretation
This Jungian Life
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan princess and priestess of Apollo who was given the gift of true prophecy, along with the curse that no one would ever believe her. She warned the Trojans not to bring the famous wooden horse inside their city walls, but her prophecy was ignored and the city fell. In this episode, we discuss the psychological meaning of the Cassandra story from a Jungian perspective, exploring the painful experience of recognizing a deep truth but finding that others cannot or will not hear it. We examine how the Cassandra archetype can intrude into a person’s life,...
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Chance Encounters: When Life Calls Us to a New Path
This Jungian Life
Chance encounters can change the whole direction of our lives. A casual chat with a stranger at the bank, a book that beckons to you from the shelf, or a last-minute lunch invitation might lead to transformative consequences. This week, join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano, Joseph Lee and Deborah Stewart as we circumambulate the phenomenon of the chance encounter. For Jungians, these moments are more than happy accidents. They may be understood as encounters with the deeper ordering principle Jung called the Self, which disrupts the ego’s plans and invites us toward something...
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COAGULATIO: The Alchemy of Settling Down
This Jungian Life
COAGULATIO marks the psychological moment when possibility takes shape. Uncertainty recedes as we commit to our choices, and life slows and “thickens” into stable commitments and a predictable path. Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Joseph Lee as we continue our exploration of Jung’s alchemical stages. This week, we discuss the concept of coagulatio, or the solidifying of what was once liquid. Coagulatio involves settling into a path, a vocation, a relationship, or an identity. Yet these stages of solidification also carry with them loss. Incarnating something in the real...
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Why You Dream of Intruders: The Hidden Meaning of Break-In Dreams
This Jungian Life
Intruder dreams stage a boundary crisis: something arrives without the ego’s consent, and the dreamer wakes with fear, shame, or outrage. Join Jungian analysts Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, and Lisa Marchiano as we analyze a selection of vivid listener-submitted dreams about intruders. We begin with the word itself, “intrusion,” asking how a visitor can feel deeply unwelcome, but at the same time carry something with the potential to protect, repair or even save us. We cover: How the mind negotiates trauma, dissociated affects, and developmental change. How meaning...
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Dissociation as Design: Why the Mind Sometimes Lets Go
This Jungian Life
Pierre Janet’s term abaissement du niveau mental describes an experience so common we barely notice it: fatigue, highway hypnosis, shock, wool-gathering, or monotony lowers the threshold of consciousness, and then images, memories, and impulses press forward. Jung found this idea useful for understanding threshold conditions that interfere with our normal skills, yet make symbolic material available, with the caveat that it’s only useful when it’s committed to memory and reflected on. What separates a generative reverie from a dissociative collapse? How can we make use of this dip into...
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The Outsider at the Gate: Are We Lovable When Persona Washes Away?
This Jungian Life
Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” is a parable about seeing beneath the surface. It shows us that our authentic nature can be detected, whether we’re swathed in status or rags, if we’re offered the opportunity. A prince’s search for happiness fails when it’s driven by lordly criteria. A wild storm heralds change and delivers a drenched possibility. A king and queen choose subtlety to coax what is hidden into sight, raising stakes about vulnerability, discernment, and the body as witness. What counts as evidence of realness, and why does the tale treat pain as...
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"What Do I Owe My Hurtful Parents?" Is The Wrong Question! Do This Instead!
This Jungian Life
In the aftermath of the holidays, many people find themselves facing an old question in a new stage of life: what does an adult child owe aging parents, especially when the relationship was full of criticism, absence, harm, or disappointment? The pressure to visit, to host, to reconcile, or to perform affection can feel like a moral demand, and a trap. In this episode, three Jungian analysts question the idea of filial duty that feels like debt and lift up new aspects of discernment. They explore the mythic elements of the parent-child bond, the power of the internalized parent,...
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Corruption Starts Inside You: Why Malignant Certainty Makes You Dangerous!
This Jungian Life
In this episode, Joseph, Lisa, and Deb explain why Corruption is not only a political problem, but a human one, why Power breaks trust long before it breaks laws, and why the most dangerous people are often the most certain. They reveal the core mechanism behind Corruption and Inflation: when unconscious drives flood the ego, making someone feel exceptional, entitled, and above ordinary rules. They unpack how Corruption escalates quietly, from small rationalisations and moral distortions to full-blown abuse of entrusted Power that destroys relationships, organisations, and communities....
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How Did I Become a Statistic?
This Jungian Life
Jung wrote “The Undiscovered Self” in 1957, opening with “What will the future bring?”, as the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and nuclear weapons gained enough momentum to threaten survival. He argued that mass-mindedness, amplified by state power, corporate bureaucracy, and scientific rationalism, reduces people to statistics, numbs conscience, and makes evil all the easier to project. When institutions promise safety and efficiency, what happens to individual responsibility? If religion is an instinct, what strange substitutes will it flow into when it’s suppressed? What can we...
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Alchemical Mortificatio: How to Survive the Wintering of Your Life
This Jungian Life
If you have been through betrayal or loss, you may still be living by a terrible rule you made when in pain. It can look like hiding, overworking, numbing out, or letting people cross lines because being unseen feels safer. This episode uses the fairy tale “All-Kinds-of-Fur” to help you identify your survival pattern and take the next step out of it. When you update the rule you made when in trauma, you get your choices back. What you’ll learn Identify the “impossible promise” that keeps you stuck, and where it began. Notice your “fur cloak,” the mask of busyness,...
info_outlinePolyamory, a current phenomenon, endorses open relationships with multiple lovers. The term means many loves, and polyamory strives to legitimize the benefits of non-monogamous romance and sexuality among adults.
Jung engaged in an open, extramarital relationship with Toni Wolff. Does polyamory represent an overthrow of outdated cultural mores in an age when sex can be safe? Or is committed, often sanctified bonding a deeply rooted part of human nature and development? There are parallels in the development of a relationship between two people and the relationship of ego to the unconscious.
Jung discovered that the alchemical images in The Rosarium Philosophorum, depicting stages of relationship for a couple, illustrated the individuation process. Is polyamory a way of rationalizing ego gratification and avoiding monogamous commitment? Or is polyamory a call to forgo outmoded cultural restrictions and experience connections with others that can facilitate inner growth?
Dream
"I am walking alongside the man that I am currently dating. He is on my right side. Suddenly on my left side, the man I am still in love with appears with the woman he has a child with (in waking life, he has a child with a woman he did not marry and co-parents. I am still not over him and wish we were together). In the dream, he has had another child with her. I’m surprised he’s had another child with her. It makes me think he has had even more intimacy and “work to do” with her in his life path. I am stuck in the middle... the man I am dating is on my right side, but I am not really interested in him (even though he treats me wonderfully in real life, he doesn’t feel like “the one”). The man I desire is on my left, with a woman and two kids, a life and world he’s been focusing on. He sees me, and I feel this strong and pleasant attraction and connection between us - like a youthful friendship mixed with love - I realize/know that he continues to be interested in me too, even though we are apart. I wake up, confused but happy to have a positive dream about his feelings towards me (In waking life, I continue to regret our breakup and he has ignored attempts I have made to rekindle a friendship and begin communication again)."