Episode 182 - Confronting Shadow: The Work of Self-Discovery
Release Date: 09/30/2021
Episode 190 - Falling in Love: Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered
This Jungian Life
Jung says, “Love is a power of destiny, whose force reaches from heaven to hell.” Falling in love in an initiation into the divine—light and dark—as personal and archetypal forces combine and combust. In thrall to the magical other through whom we experience newfound parts of ourselves, we fall into a reality that transcends and possesses us.
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Episode 189 - A Well-Aligned Mind: How to Be Alive
This Jungian Life
Guest Iain McGilchrist is a renowned psychiatrist, researcher and author. His 2009 book, The Master and His Emissary, gained worldwide fame for showing how differences between brain hemispheres affect our perceptions--and guide our lives. Each hemisphere has a radically different ‘take’ on the world: the left sees what is in the theater spotlight, whereas the right hemisphere understands the whole play.
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Episode 188 - Humanizing the Hero
This Jungian Life
Mythological heroes defend, protect and quest. They range from warriors, adventurers, and saviors to magicians, loners, and rebels, but one way or another, they battle bad for the sake of good. They have courage, skill and strength, but never a troubling moment. Although we still delight in heroes with might and shine, modern times have given rise to a new ideal: the everyday hero.
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Episode 187 - The Fiery Furnace of Ambition
This Jungian Life
Ambition is a fire whose flames first rise in the first half of life, when hopes and dreams are fueled by possibilities in the external world. It takes creative audacity to seize a dream, develop a talent, or commit to a calling. Ambition can also be fueled by narcissism, power seeking, or striving to overcome inadequacy.
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Episode 186 - The Archetype of the Witch: Dangerous, Denied & Dishonored
This Jungian Life
It’s witching season, the time when women of all ages embrace a mythical image of unfettered feminine power. The witch may cast spells, seek vengeance, or wreak creative havoc—as she pleases. Flying the night skies of psyche, the witch brings primordial realities into culture’s brittle convictions.
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Episode 185 - Assessing Our Psychic Inheritance
This Jungian Life
Jung said of the parent-child relationship: “Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the human environment, and especially upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived.” Jung understood that parents can unconsciously compel children to fulfill parental dreams or compensate for disappointments.
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Episode 184 - Does Analysis Work? A Conversation with Jonathan Shedler, PhD
This Jungian Life
“Talk is powerful medicine.” Renowned researcher and clinician Jonathan Shedler, PhD joins us to discuss the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy. While so-called evidence-based therapies—brief treatments conducted by instruction manuals—offer benefit for some, their status as the “gold standard” of treatment for mental distress is undeserved.
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Episode 183 - JUSTICE: The Struggle for Balance
This Jungian Life
Principles of fairness and justice have deep roots in the human psyche: we want to receive our fair share and a fair shake. When man injures man we may protest, strive for redress, and measure wrong with morality—but what about godly misfortunes? Life, myth and religion are rich with issues of injustice. Whether individual injury, social inequality, or divine mystery, over-insistence on fairness can lead to depression, resentment, and fixation.
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Episode 182 - Confronting Shadow: The Work of Self-Discovery
This Jungian Life
Psychotherapy is essentially the work making shadow conscious—all that we have not discerned, disown, or project onto others. We seldom welcome shadow, for it is marked by emotions and motivations that deflate, disturb, and dethrone ego. From family scuffles to political hostilities and outright war, we most often meet our shadow in others. Its presence is signaled by a strong urge to take action, with feelings ranging from judgment to antagonism, from pity to self-sacrifice, and from obsession to disgust
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Episode 181 - Self-Reflection: What Was I Thinking?
This Jungian Life
Jung says, “There is another instinct, different from the drive to activity and so far as we know specifically human, which might be called the reflective instinct.” Self-reflection is correlated with consciousness, and is arguably humankind’s unique and essential competency: a meta-cognitive capacity that is aware of its own awareness.
info_outlinePsychotherapy is essentially the work of making shadow conscious—all that we have not discerned then disowned, or projected onto others. We seldom welcome shadow, for it is marked by emotions and motivations that deflate, disturb, and dethrone ego. From family scuffles to political hostilities and outright war, we most often meet our shadow in others. Its presence is signaled by a strong urge to take action, with feelings ranging from judgment to antagonism, from pity to self-sacrifice, and from obsession to disgust. If we have the courage to face and relate to the inner world of another, we experience and expand our own inner world. Shadow is the dark doorway to renewal and development, creativity and compassion. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Here’s the dream we analyze:
“I am in the backyard of my grandparents’ house. It’s night and very dark out, and I can see the lights on in the house. I have a bird feather in my hand that is luminescent with green and purple. I stick it in the ground, and a bird appears—a dove, I think. It flies away, and I stick the feather in the ground a second time. Another bird appears and flies away. I do it a third time, but this time I take a feather from the bird that appears and replant it in the same spot. When I do this, the ground trembles. Something big is happening, and I’ve started something I can’t stop. The third bird flies back to me and tells me to find a swan to make something called svala. Then I’m at some sort of school party, like a reunion or homecoming. I see an Indian woman I knew and used to be friends with. We haven’t seen each other in a long time and are no longer close, but I think she might know the meaning of svala and how I am supposed to make it, and what it will do. I keep trying to talk to her, but things keep getting in the way. Finally, she invites me to her room. There is beautiful music playing in the background, and her room is full of soft, golden light. I tell her about the dream with the feather and needing a swan to make svala and that I don’t know what it’s about. She laughs and says, “What is a swan but transformation? The hardest part in making svala is finding the swan.”
REFERENCES:
Swamplands of Soul: New Life in Dismal Places by James Hollis. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0919123740/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_GNTQ1XCB9YT354TFFPDS
RESOURCES:
Learn to Analyze your own Dreams: https://thisjungianlife.com/enroll/
Link to Lisa’s lecture and workshop: https://ofj.org/event/another-whom-we-do-not-know-dreams-as-the-voice-of-the-inner-companion/