This Jungian Life
What do our earliest dreams reveal about the hidden forces shaping our lives? Childhood dreams offer unmediated access to the collective unconscious, revealing symbols that shape lifelong development. These dreams often dramatize psyche's early encounters with polarities, fostering individuation through the integration of opposites. Nightmares and numinous imagery invite engagement with shadow and the sacred, acting as catalysts for growth and transformation. By revisiting childhood dreams through active imagination, individuals unlock their latent meanings. These dreams serve as both...
info_outline The Psychology of Meaning: Keys to Authentic LivingThis Jungian Life
What gives life meaning and guides us through times of emptiness and uncertainty? The Psychology of Meaning: Keys to Authentic Living explores the processes of self-discovery, purpose, and transformation. Along with James Hollis, Ph.D., we examine how meaning shapes our lives through symbolic living, midlife transitions, dreams, and navigating despair. You’ll gain insights into aligning your inner and outer worlds, reclaiming your lost connections, and making choices that reflect your core values. Join us and wrestle with questions about purpose, fulfillment, and the human journey. Prepare...
info_outline THE STAR: Archetype of RevelationThis Jungian Life
We have looked to the stars to navigate our ships across night-shrouded seas. We have studied the stars to find their qualities in our character and divine our destiny. We have yearned for the stars as the gates of heaven where we hope to reside one day. Mysterious and inscrutable, humanity has ever projected the arcane depths of its collective psyche onto the sky and marveled at what they saw. Prepare to discover who the first astrologers were, why we require the night sky to encounter our depths, what the stars have meant to humanity across time, where we must seek to understand the legends...
info_outline DREAM WISE: Unlocking the Meaning of Your DreamsThis Jungian Life
Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams is a practical guide to interpreting your dreams. It is the fruit of our collective experience analyzing thousands of dreams and collaborating to create our podcast and Dream School. It is an answer to the collective call to know and be more. Jung understood the next stage of human development could only come from within, and dreams are the key to that living process. The images we receive each night express a symbolic language, carrying multiple levels of meaning, emotional energy, and archetypal patterns. The dream meets your personal history...
info_outline Stoicism and Jungian Psychology: A Recipe for ResilienceThis Jungian Life
Stoicism and Jungian psychology are a natural fit. The first invigorates and organizes the reasoning mind, and the second ensouls it. The amalgam of Stoicism and Jungian Psychology generates a natural resilience. It offers a frame to understand the interplay of reason, emotion, and imagination in service to inner growth. Integrated philosophical reflection empowers us to confront societal crises and develop autonomy through rational self-awareness. Inclusive Stoicism connects personal development to shared human values. The ancient discipline of clear thinking can heal us through narrative...
info_outline Finding Our Way Back: Healing from Self-BetrayalThis Jungian Life
When we betray ourselves, we abandon our values, needs, or truths to gain approval or avoid discomfort. This leaves us disconnected, fragmented, and unsure of who we really are. These patterns often start in childhood, where conditional love or invalidation teaches us to hide our authentic selves to stay safe or gain acceptance. We see this in our daily lives—staying in unbalanced relationships, ignoring our emotions, overworking, or making choices that don’t align with who we are. We justify it, suppress what we feel, or take on others’ beliefs without realizing how much it costs us....
info_outline ECSTATIC TRANSFORMATION: Activating the Archetype of Radical JoyThis Jungian Life
What does it mean to depose the ego and encounter the dismantling joy of the Self? Ecstatic transformation challenges our understanding of ourselves and breaks the boundaries of ordinary experience, leaving us questioning a lifetime of assumptions. It shatters our ego’s illusions of separation, shifting the foundation of our identity. It is the greater solutio where our ego and Self come face to face. This psycho-spiritual process is symbolized in the Dionysiac archetypal themes of death and rebirth through ecstatic states that transcend the rational, intensify emotion, and connect us to...
info_outline WEDDING DREAMS: Symbols of Sacred Union and Inner TransformationThis Jungian Life
How does one reconcile and integrate opposing forces within to achieve wholeness? Wedding dreams symbolize the union of opposites that spans psychological, spiritual, and alchemical dimensions. Encountering the wedding archetype in dreams constellates an inner marriage that calls for synthesis of known and novel traits and attitudes—depicted as the merging of masculine and feminine aspects or encounters with shadow. Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams will help you understand and prepare for inner union: https://a.co/d/9EyMMgE Alchemy called this process the hierosgamos, or...
info_outline DECISION ARCHETYPE: the power of sacrificing optionsThis Jungian Life
How do we navigate the forces within us to make choices that reflect our authentic nature? Every decision acts as a bridge between the conscious mind and the unconscious depths, connecting archetypal patterns to individual choices that define human experience. Each choice reveals inner conflicts and values, compelling us to confront both personal desires and universal forces within psyche. Decision-making is not merely logical; it is a convergence of intuition, cultural imprint, and raw instinct, calling for integration rather than domination by one mode of thought. In conscious choosing, we...
info_outline SATANIC PANIC: The Archetypal Slanderer and False Memory SyndromeThis Jungian Life
What drives us to seek meaning in the shadows, and how do we discern the real from the imagined when fear and faith converge? The rise of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s drew upon ancient archetypal fears of evil embedded in the collective unconscious, merging with societal stressors like the emergence of fundamentalist Christianity in American politics and women’s increased participation in the workforce with the resultant rise of daycare use. The archetype of the Devil as slanderer can capture a community. Even as they are prompted to accuse others of devilish behavior, they themselves are...
info_outlineThe essence of friendship is visible in its linguistic root: ‘to love.’ Cicero wrote, “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief." In modern times the art of friending seems lost. We have replaced shared experiences with Facebook posts and quell our loneliness by scrolling.
With high spirits, we three revisit our first meeting and reflect on the discovery of kinship between us. Our experiences of trust, reciprocity, and shared hardship marked by endless conversations and abundant laughter forged our bond during analytic training. Yet it reflects more than our shared life; friendship is archetypal.
Vigorous bonding is mysterious. It emerges unexpectedly and carries aspects of positive and negative shadow. This tension seemed evident in Jung and Freud’s famous friendship. Their instantaneous bond led to thirteen hours of conversation at their first meeting. It would end six years later, leaving Jung devastated and struggling with overwhelming inner states. The story of Rumi first meeting Shams, which led to thirty days of deep conversation, carries a similar passion. Rumi lost Shams to death, and Jung lost Freud to his struggle for autonomy. Both found solace in the inner world where the memories of their friend merged with its archetype – Shams’ image carried Rumi’s love of the divine, and Philemon’s image carried Jung’s love of wisdom.
For us three, the essence of lasting friendship lies in tending mutual creative purposes. Aligning with common goals allows most friendships to flourish and impact the world positively. It’s not enough to recognize we like someone; that’s just the beginning. We must learn to nurture the bonds that make us more than we were alone.
HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:
“There is a vast plane with a deep, wide, and steep hole. From the center of this deep pit, a high tower stands. A figure physically throws me across the expanse to the tower, where I am suspended against the building. The perspective stays with the figure who is wearing a black cloak that covers their form. Their arms, legs, face, and skin are under the black cloak. There are two white marks on the fabric denoting eyes, but they aren't actual eye holes like a mask. They slowly turn and walk off after I've been thrown. The dream repeats the throwing, but the perspective follows me across the expanse. The thread I am suspended from is a single piece of spider silk. Where I am hanging, I am face to face with a guardian of the tower. It is an anthropomorphic lizard, light green, wearing golden armor. It raises its sword, and instead of attacking me, it cuts the silk thread, and I fall quickly but safely. I notice open windows one could sneak into on my way down. Safely reaching the base of the tower, facing underneath where the cloaked figure and I were, I see a large tunnel and know I need to enter. I begin to walk towards it when I awake.”
REFERENCES: Jamie Krems, Ph.D. The evolutionary psychology of friendship research project. CLICK HERE
RESOURCES:
Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, ADVANCED CLINICAL PRACTICE PROGRAM: A case seminar for experienced clinicians to read, explore and apply Jung's concepts to clinical practice: CLICK HERE
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A SERIOUS STUDY OF JUNG? Enroll in the Philadelphia Jungian Seminar 2023 Fall Semester and start your journey: CLICK HERE
BECOME A DREAM INTERPRETER: We've created DREAM SCHOOL to teach others how to work with their dreams. A vibrant community has constellated around this mission, and we think you'll love it. Check it out.
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