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:...
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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...
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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...
info_outlineJung was particularly interested in the second half of life, perhaps because after his own midlife crisis he found himself so surprisingly generative. We tend to spend the first half of life oriented to familial values and cultural norms for success.
Education, work, partnering and child rearing are some of the mile markers for speed and distance on the road of life—until midlife strikes. We may then discover that worldly successes feel flat, or blame discontent on bad breaks.
Although dramatic lifestyle changes at midlife are the stuff of story, malaise at the midpoint is psyche’s signal to attend to unlived inner life. It is time for meaningful encounter between ego and unconscious, worldly rewards and true fulfillment, obligation and freedom. Midlife crisis is a call to deepened feeling and the unique meaning of your life.
Dream
I am walking with a group of my "clients" (developmentally disabled people). I have to work to keep the group together as some straggle here and there. I'm responsible for their well being so onward we go. I look on the ground/sidewalk and see a small round brown object which looks like a tree nut. I pick it up and upon closer inspection realize that it is of animal nature rather than plant - and alive. As I hold it in the palm of my hand, it morphs into a tiny creature, tinier than my pinky finger. I can't just leave it there so I slip it into my pocket and keep walking, trying to keep my rag-tag group together.
After a while I look into my pocket to check on it and it has grown some and looks a bit like a fetal kitten. It looks unwell and I think it might not live. We continue to walk. The third time I look into my pocket, the creature has turned into a baby bird with black, red, and white feathers. The bird is in tremendous suffering with its stomach cut open and a look of horror, pain and grief on it's face. I feel these emotions too and think, "Oh no! It's going to die.” I keep it in my pocket and try to soothe it, but still we keep on walking.
Toward the end of our escapade, I look into my pocket a fourth time. This time the bird is fully grown and leaps out, startling me. Now the bird is pure white, luminous with three round feathers on slim stalks atop its head. Among its body feathers are multicolored zinnia flowers sprouting along with the feathers. It hops into a landscape planter along the sidewalk and establishes itself amid the vegetation.
I back away in shock, completely amazed. I pull out my cell phone to try to take a picture of it but can't because a survey keeps popping up on the screen of my phone, preventing me from using the camera. I curse and search my bag for another phone and finally do manage to snap a pic, but I still don't know what to make of it.