LOW ENERGY: Where Can We Source the Drive to Take Action? (Re-Publish)
This Jungian Life
Many people just can’t rally to do what’s necessary and improve their lives. Is it possible they just don’t carry much vitality, or is some inner conflict blocking their access? We share personal stories of ‘energy loss’ and offer insights into purposelessness. Carl Jung tells us inner energy flows according to its own laws, but if we can’t harness it? Expect to learn why some people are naturally low-energy, which aspects of your psyche might be leaking energy, how over-aligning with cultural norms can cut off access to instinctive vitality, where we can look for solutions,...
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A Jungian Sense of Place: Bollingen and The Tower on the Marsh
This Jungian Life
Carl Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz and Christiana Morgan all dedicated time, soul and imagination to a peculiarly Jungian form of architecture: the stone tower. This week host Deborah Stewart is joined by Dr. Martin Gledhill, an architect, author and Jungian scholar, and filmmaker Hilary Morgan, the granddaughter of Christiana Morgan, an eminent American psychologist who collaborated with Jung on some of his most important work. Deb, Martin and Hilary explore Jung’s Bollingen Tower and Christiana Morgan’s Tower on the Marsh, discussing the profound expressions of psyche through place. Both...
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The Age of Aquarius: A Jungian View of a Changing World
This Jungian Life
Jung suggested in Aion that humanity is moving from the great symbolic Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee, as we ask what it means to live through the turbulence and vitality of this period of transition. Jung pioneered the idea that human consciousness unfolds in great symbolic ages. The shift from one to the next is not a smooth or pleasant experience. As Jung saw it, each new age emerges through a process of decline, breakdown, and renewal, a process that can bring with it frightening levels of...
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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,...
info_outlineThe alchemical term nigredo means black or blackening, and is associated with decomposition and putrefaction. As a psychological state, nigredo is “the great suffering and grief” which the detached forces of nature inflict on the soul.
We realize in sorrow that what we thought were truths were illusory. Individuals may have taken pride in their virtues, talents or good fortune; societies may have touted their cultural superiority, military prowess, or wealth. When we are stripped of easy beliefs, we have no defense against the desolation of nigredo.
But as surely as a seed releases its urge to life underground, blackness is also a place of incubation. Jung states, “Everything psychic is pregnant with the future.” Our task is “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there find germs of light and recovery” from which new life will come.
Dream
I was arriving to a commotion in a beautiful open-space garden beside the university building where I graduated. As I was approaching the crowd, I wondered who it was that everyone were so excited about. I was carrying a sort of notebook and was wearing a sort of girly school outfit that indicated that I was a student again.
I was surprised to see a slender gay man who was topless and with a floral headpiece dancing in a circular motion or like he was just so free and flowing and everyone was hoping he would notice them. He was dancing backed up by 3-4 women with floral crowns and white flow-y gowns. He was just so fluid and beautiful. Then he looked at me. And I knew he liked me. When his dance was finished and everybody had left, he came to me and said hi. And then, we kissed. It was a deep and profound kiss; I have never been kissed that way.
With our tongues doing the talking, we communicated to each other. He told me, 'Why are you so sad?' I said I was afraid. Then I woke seeing my sleeping baby beside me.
Reference
Edinger, Edward. Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy (Amazon).