Episode 139 - Visionary Imagination: Jung’s Private Journals
This Jungian Life
We welcome Sonu Shamdasani, PhD, scholar and historian of depth psychology and Jung’s opus. His research and expertise were instrumental in bringing Jung’s Red Book to the public in 2009. Jung’s Black Books, the journals in which he recorded “my most difficult experiments,” have just been published. We discuss Jung’s encounters with figures and images from his psychic depths--experiences foundational to Jung’s subsequent work and which opened a portal to humankind’s imaginal mind and mythic
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Episode 138 - Spider Parents: Finding Freedom from Dependence
This Jungian Life
The spider is a symbol of generative and destructive capabilities. As creator, spider spins the sustaining web of life. As predator, spider’s sticky web is an inescapable trap. Parents weave webs of familial ties, cultural norms, and generational patterns that contain—or restrain--their children. Emotional strings of attachment or enmeshment affect how—or if—a young adult child is released into the world.
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Episode 137 - QAnon: Ancient Lies & Sexual Slanders
This Jungian Life
QAnon is a recent iteration of a historical pattern: Romans persecuted Christians, Christians libeled Jews, and citizenries hunted witches. When existing social structures break down, psychological splitting ensues in an effort to counteract fear and re-establish certainty. Collective projections demonize a selected ‘other’ and tend toward lurid attributions of badness: pedophilia, blood drinking, and devil worship.
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Episode 136 - REVIVING OUR CAPACITY TO FEEL: The Core of Jung’s Legacy
This Jungian Life
Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung’s close collaborator, capped her public work in a 1986 lecture that summarized Jung’s signal contributions to understanding the human experience. Jung was concerned that rationalism, quantitative methodologies, and the objectification of people and animals had become one-sided, resulting in ethical and empathic deficiencies. He felt the over-development of professional personas—even among physicians and psychotherapists—led to avoiding authentic encounters.
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Episode 135 - Horror: Why Can’t We Look Away?
This Jungian Life
The hair on the back of our necks bristles in response to the horrors of the uncanny. Transfixed by shock, awe, dread and fascination, we can neither dare the dangerous darkness nor turn away. The mysteries of the unknown take us into realms of transgression and taboo.
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Episode 134 - When Despair Prevails: Facing Suicidal Darkness
This Jungian Life
There are few more painful thoughts or frightening events than suicide, a phenomenon unique to the human species. Depression, rage, and powerlessness can overwhelm ego functions, leading someone to believe that escaping life is the only option. Affects of archetypal proportions can act like tsunamis in the psyche. What can help?
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Episode 133 - Adaptation: Meeting Life’s Demands
This Jungian Life
The world is the canvas on which we paint our lives. Through this lifelong work, we express personal vision, develop skills, and come to terms with the realities of our outer and inner worlds. The first major stage of adaptation, the transition from child to adult, requires readiness to separate from protective life structures in pursuit of outer world goals.
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Episode 132 - Neurosis: Befriending Our Broken Places
This Jungian Life
Although neurosis is no longer a clinical diagnosis, it is often used to describe anxious attitudes and behaviors that are maladaptive to life situations. Neurosis often entails a capacity to function well despite feeling bad; emotional suffering leeches ease and pleasure from life. A neurotic symptom—a phobia, compulsion, or addictive tendency—is no different from a dream.
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Episode 131 - Curiosity: The Inner Engine of Change
This Jungian Life
We celebrate curiosity’s role in discovery, and regret its potential for damage. Mature curiosity demands that we embrace the confusion, doubt and anxiety inherent in engaging new ideas and complex problems. Social curiosity requires discernment: are we genuinely and empathically interested in others, or simply indulging voyeurism via social media?
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Episode 130 - Sacred Symptoms: How the Numinous Heals
This Jungian Life
Jung states “the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous…the real therapy. In as much as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology.” Jung defines numinous as “a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will” that conveys a mysterious yet deeply meaningful message.
info_outlineWe celebrate curiosity’s role in discovery, and regret its potential for damage. Mature curiosity demands that we embrace the confusion, doubt and anxiety inherent in engaging new ideas and complex problems. Social curiosity requires discernment: are we genuinely and empathically interested in others, or simply indulging voyeurism via social media?
Curiosity can lead us into thrill seeking, but lack of it dulls our libido for life. Is it grandiosity, ambition, or impulsive desire that is tweaking our interest—or is curiosity leading us into purpose, service and the numinous? We need to be curious about curiosity: what are we enacting--and why? In the unrestrained theater of our dreams even the most disallowed outer-world scenarios are played out. Dreams can do much to satiate and integrate the shadowy curiosities of the inner world if we remember, record, and reflect on them.
Dream
I am in a dreary kind of industrial place full of single-story warehouse or farm type sheds/buildings - everything is grey. I don't relish being there but I am resigned to it. I look up again at the shed I'm standing next to and am surprised to see a beautiful mural has appeared on it's concrete apex (the triangular bit under the roof) - I don't remember exactly the image but it is full of blue and movement.
I walk on to the next smaller row of sheds and in one I find skeletal figure of a man who is very sick and being tended to. The man is more skeleton than person, he has no eyes, only eye sockets for example, and is blackened/scorched: parts of his flesh seem about to fall away. I remember him as a famous actor, someone once very charismatic and good-looking, it is terrible to see him reduced to this. He is being moved from bed to chair by two nurse-type figures whom I do not see clearly. I go to help and hold his head - I am disgusted a little but also terrified that his head will come away in my hands if I am not careful enough. Once he is installed I move away.
I find myself in another larger room next door where a group of people I do not know are gathered for a purpose I do not understand. I leave and go back out into the grey yard, but then feel an urge to reconnect with the man. I find another of these nurse-type figures who tells me he is with his wife and family now. I feel a little disappointed/left out but also glad for him that even in his repulsive/decrepit state he is surrounded by loved ones and is cared for.
References:
Giorgio Tricarico. Lost Goddesses: A Kaleidoscope on Porn.
Verena Kast. Father-Daughter, Mother-Son: Freeing Ourselves from the Complexes that Bind Us.
Far From Heaven (film with Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid).