Inner Life, Outer World: The Psychology of Adaptation
This Jungian Life
Adaptation is a bread-and-butter concept in psychotherapy - can we accept, adjust to, and thrive in the outer and inner worlds we live in? Given constraints, what does it take to find life at least meaningful, hopefully satisfying--and flourish? This week Jungian analyst and author JOHN R. WHITE, Ph.D. joins us to circumambulate the complexities of adaptation. Successful adaptation involves making conscious choices based on a realistic understanding of the internal and external parameters in which we operate. Adaptation not only requires a true-to-life perception of possibilities...
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Lindsay Clancy & Maternal Infanticide: An Archetypal Perspective
This Jungian Life
Lindsay Clancy has brought renewed attention to the horror of infanticide: babies and children dying at the hands of their mother. Infanticide has taken place for millennia, most often due to social pressures or lack of the resources needed to raise a child. Human collectives around the world remain ill-equipped to protect our youngest by providing support to mothers in material or emotional distress. Today’s guest is clinical psychologist Dr. Brooke Laufer, author of Brooke joins us to discuss infanticide, maternal psychosis, and the archetype of the death mother, long portrayed in myth....
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Goblins, Demons and Goddesses: A Conversation at the Edge of AI
This Jungian Life
OpenAI recently had to explain to frightened users why their models kept introducing goblins and gremlins into otherwise humdrum conversations. Is it possible that archetypes are emerging through the field of collective knowledge amassed by large language models (LLMs)? This week neuropsychiatrist TOM POLLAK Ph.D joins us to discuss AI, archetypes and psychotherapy. It is perhaps unsurprising that AI, which now contains the symbolic output of much of humanity (cannibalized mostly without permission), should spontaneously generate unpredictable and often dangerous archetypes. We...
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The Psychology of Magic: A Jungian Exploration
This Jungian Life
Magic can be viewed as intentional engagement with what Jung called synchronicity. It is closely related to a mythological worldview, which recognizes a grand narrative supraordinate to everyday life. Although we cannot know it in its entirety, it opens the possibility of encountering a deeper reality and quality of knowing. We experience it as magic. In this week’s episode we explore esoteric ritual with Jungian analyst and academic JOHN WHITE. Responsible practitioners of ritual magic understand that it demands deep inner work that comes at a cost. Magic involves alignment with the...
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In Search of the Wild Man: Befriending Bigfoot
This Jungian Life
The wild man is an enduring archetypal figure worldwide, from Enkidu in Gilgamesh, to the Greek god Pan (worshipped in glens and woods), the Green Man in England, and Bigfoot and the Sasquatch in the US. Today’s guest, Jungian analyst Mike Box, has long-standing interest in this archetype and in male psychology, reflected in the 8-foot wild man statue he keeps in his waiting room. The archetype of the wild man compensates for a currently impoverished view of the masculine: stoicism and endurance without emotional expression or self-disclosure. In striving to conform to this...
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Jung vs. Borg: Staying Human in the Age of AI
This Jungian Life
Are we living through a tech-driven collapse of the ecology of mind? In his new book, Jung vs. Borg, author, psychologist and Jungian scholar GLEN SLATER Ph.D suggests that industrial disruption of the outer world is now being followed by a post-industrial disruption of the inner world. Yet, there is hope. Much depends on our capacity to remain conscious of the effect each stage of innovation has on the psyche and on the social and cultural changes that will follow. Becoming conscious of the non-neutral operation of algorithms and big tech’s focus on profit over people is crucial, for...
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Ritual: Finding the Center in a Turning World
This Jungian Life
As we confront the turbulence of rapid change, technological dehumanization, and cultural polarization, how do we reconnect to being and meaning? Best-selling author BRUCE FEILER returns us to ritual: world-wide, time-honored ways for people to come home to themselves, their communities, and the sacred. Ritual returns us to unity. Rituals use symbols to move and shape psychic energy for a group and its members. Energy expands as the unifying power of symbol is evoked and shared, an experience of extra-ordinary reality. Ritual mediates our relationship with the sacred, individually and...
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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Power Without Wisdom
This Jungian Life
The tale of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a gripping story about loss of control and the timeless warning to be careful what you wish for. It sets out the archetypal theme of a magical shortcut that promises to bypass the difficult labor life asks of us. Such tempting shortcuts inevitably land us in trouble. The Sorcerer's Apprentice story goes back nearly two thousand years. In the tale of Eucrates and Pancrates, the Greek satirist Lucian recounts how the Egyptian magician Pancrates' apprentice stole his master’s spell, animated a pestle to carry water for him, and then lost...
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The Odyssey: A Jungian Journey Home
This Jungian Life
The Odyssey (the subject of a new Christopher Nolan film released on the same day as this episode), is the ancient Greek epic attributed to Homer and one of the foundational works of Western literature. This week, Jungian analyst ROBERT SHEAVLY joins Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart for a Jungian exploration of The Odyssey. For Jungians, the Odyssey models a process of returning to the Self, offering a psychological map for the second half of life and the path to individuation. It asks us to engage with the profound question, what does it mean to come home to ourselves? Odysseus, our wily...
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Prayer and the Psyche: A Jungian Exploration
This Jungian Life
Throughout human history, prayer has been a constant. Jung referred to it as “not only one of the most original but also the most frequent means to change the condition of mind”. This week Jungian analyst ROBERT SHEAVLY joins Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart for a Jungian exploration of prayer. Everyone at some point in their lives will pray (even if we do not call it that). When we reach out for help, or to express gratitude for life’s blessings, we are reaching for a connection with the eternal and the infinite. Prayer can be examined from the lens of...
info_outlineHeartbreak is more primal, more pervasive, and more related to one’s sense of self than sadness. Our hearts can break over the death of a dearly loved other, including a pet…and our hearts can break over the death of a relationship and the death of our hopes and dreams, and our innocence, idealizations, and the psychic needs we believe another can fulfill. Heartbreak is mythological and fairy tale theme, which illustrates its central place in the human psyche, and in them we find clues to how one heals from this devastating experience.
The Dream:
I am in a distant and unfamiliar town. I enter into a restaurant, but I don’t have any money. I peek into the kitchen and casually ask one of the employees to hand me a bowl. I go over to the other side of the restaurant and begin to get some soup from the pot and eat it. Then one of the employees comes over to me, he’s speaking Spanish and I can’t understand him, but he’s clearly asking me if I paid for it. I am not really acknowledging him directly and jokingly say: no hablā Ingles. I finish the soup and casually walk out, and know at this point that the employee will try and catch me. I hide in the forest, and wait for him to pass by, then begin to run in a different direction. I see the employee running around trying to search for me. Slowly, with the help of an unknown figure that’s with me, I make it back to my car, but am constantly scanning to see where the employee is. I start driving off, but I notice almost immediately that my car is not at full power, it’s revving high and not producing enough torque or speed but continue to drive anyway. The town is small but feels kind of like a maze, and struggle to find my way out of it. Eventually the road ends and turns into a dirt trail that has tall grass further down, but there is a path where the grass had been pressed down from barn animals having stepped on it. Had it been the higher grass, I don’t think my car would have had enough power to plow through it. My car is really struggling at this point, and barely moving forward. Then out of nowhere a baby deer who appears frightened begins to run closer and closer to me, almost as if to get underneath me sort of like baby elephants do with their mother when they need protection. It no longer feels like I’m driving, but rather riding a bicycle; as the deer gets closer and closer, I keep pedaling and know that it’s eventually going to get run over. The deer gets nicked and starts crying. I stop my bicycle and pick him up, and begin to coddle and pet and kiss him. I really try to comfort him, and apologize to him repeatedly. I can feel his little wet nose sniff me as I kiss him. The little deer is so vulnerable and can’t get enough of comforting him. It gives me a warm feeling to comfort and protect him.