The Cry of Merlin: A Jungian Approach to the Wizard
This Jungian Life
Merlin, the mythical prophet, magician, and kingmaker of medieval legend, has lived in the Western imagination for centuries. Arthurian legend gives us more than the idealized government of the Round Table and the hero’s valiant quest for the Holy Grail—it also gives us Merlin’s darkness and power: sorcery, communion with nature, and the prospect of achieving our aims through shadowy transgression. This week, our special guest is Jungian analyst and friend DOUG TYLER. Doug guides us through Merlin’s role in Western culture, sharing some of his favorite stories and explaining the...
info_outline
Working with Short Dreams and Fragments
This Jungian Life
This week, to mark the publication in paperback of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams, Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart interpret a selection of short dreams sent in by listeners. Many of us dismiss short dreams or fragments of dreams as unworthy of our time. We await the arrival of epic, cinematic dreams, while perhaps overlooking the gold that can be found in more “ordinary” dreams. Honoring short dreams by writing them down and spending time with them can yield powerful insights. It can also work as an incentive to your unconscious, helping...
info_outline
The Devouring Mother: Facing Archetypal Darkness
This Jungian Life
Every archetype has a dual aspect: light and dark, and ‘mother’ as devouring and destructive is the dark side of this ever-present, over-arching archetype. The mother’s life-giving, bright aspect is counterbalanced by her engulfing, attacking aspect. The devouring mother is present across cultures in myth, fairy tale, religion, and literature, and most of us have at least had glimpses of her in our experiences as children or later, as parents. In this episode Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart explore Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother and his and Jung’s concept of the...
info_outline
Coniunctio: The Alchemy of Union
This Jungian Life
In this final episode of our series on Jungian alchemy, we explore coniunctio, the union of opposites that gives rise to new wholeness. There are many ways in which we might encounter coniunctio in outer life. We might fall in love, form a partnership, or undertake transformative work with a psychotherapist. In some meaningful, mysterious way, two become one, giving us incremental tastes of transformation. At the psychological level, work with one’s shadow represents the first stage of coniunctio. When we recognize and reclaim aspects of ourselves that have been split off or rejected, we...
info_outline
Desirous Dreams: Our Private Erotic Encounters
This Jungian Life
Erotic dreams are extremely common. We may experience them as pleasurable, exciting and moving, or as disturbing and upsetting. It can be hard to talk about erotic dreams, even in therapy, as they insist on attending to secret satisfactions and shames. There is relatively little written on the subject from a Jungian perspective, so this week we dive in and discuss how to work with your erotic dreams. We also analyze some of the many dreams our listeners sent in. Erotic dreams may be about connection, union and intimacy, or confront us with shadow figures and situations that show us what we...
info_outline
Jung and the End of the World: Can Depth Psychology Save Us?
This Jungian Life
In his new book, The End of the World, author and psychoanalyst JON MILLS considers the question of why humanity seems bent on self-destruction. We face famine, climate change, obscene wealth disparities, and threats of global war and nuclear annihilation. Yet the majority of us seem to prefer living either in denial, or in irrational, active opposition to reading the writing on the wall. This week Jungian analyst and co-host Lisa Marchiano interviews Jon about how we face up to impending catastrophe. Is there a viable alternative to the current situation in which we seem to be...
info_outline
Dark Forces in the Psyche: Our Self-Destructive Impulses
This Jungian Life
Why is it that we sometimes fail to rise to life’s most important challenges? Why do we instead procrastinate, withdraw, self-sabotage, or feel unable to move toward the life we want? This week, at a listener’s suggestion, Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart explore the concept of anti-libidinal forces in the psyche: those self-destructive impulses that oppose growth, pleasure, and forward movement. We discuss the ways this phenomenon has been addressed within the profession, including Freud’s death drive, Melanie Klein’s concept of the bad breast,...
info_outline
Psyche in the Age of AI
This Jungian Life
Our lives have already been altered by rapidly expanding access to artificial intelligence (AI). In this week’s episode, we consider how this latest technological revolution might be reshaping the human psyche. Hosts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart are joined by a special guest, the author and Jungian analyst Christina Becker, to explore the psychological impact of AI’s incursion into our work, home and relationships. One of the major AI use cases has been for advice, self-reflection and companionship. Some users are even referring to this as “therapy”. This raises thorny questions:...
info_outline
The Labyrinth: Soul’s Winding Journey
This Jungian Life
The labyrinth is a powerful metaphor for psychological development and the path of individuation. This week Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart consider how twists and turns in the path of life (especially in early adulthood), ask us to confront uncertainty, anxiety, and the unknown. Ego may crave a straight, well-planned path, but life inevitably offers something else: a fiendishly difficult labyrinth. If we want to get the most out of the journey, we’ve no choice other than to give it all we’ve got. Through the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, we...
info_outline
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,...
info_outlineWe have moved our lives online. But can we experience authentic human connection through virtual technology? Can we date, mourn, or have psychoanalysis on a screen? If screens offer some surprising intimacies—close-ups of wedding vows and eulogies—they also deprive us of embodied participation. Staying at home has made us newly eager to socialize—separately. Dating means conversation, not cuddling.
We enter the homes of colleagues, clients, and even newscasters, but despite this implicit amity we’re not guests. Psychoanalysts refer to “the analytic third,” physicists propound unified field theory, and Jung had these words carved over his door: Called or not called, God will be there.
There is an autonomous spirit and independent intelligence that lives in and between us and even onscreen. It can hold us in the mystery of meaningful connection that is not contingent on physical presence.
Dream
I was a magician’s apprentice. The magician was old and dying, and was in a hurry to pass on his legacy to me. He showed me a wooden box with jewelry. The box was placed on the lid of a deep well to the underworld. He opened the box and gave me two black diamonds, and told me he had locked a dangerous demon inside the well by casting a spell with the diamonds.
If the diamonds were ever to fall inside the well the demon would get back its power and escape the well. It was my job now to make sure no one threw the diamonds into the well. The magician then turned into an old man (who I think was my grandfather). He was suffering from dementia and kept trying to put one of the diamonds in the well, which he succeeded with when I turned my back on him for a moment. The demons came out--one was a big blue lobster.
They were free but had lost their evil powers, since I still had one of the diamonds in my hand. The lobster-demon demanded I use my power to lift the spell from the diamond, which I did. But nothing happened. The demons were still powerless. I realized that the demons had been in the well for so long that they had forgot how to be evil, and now they were loving creatures that just wanted to be free.