Psychology & The Cross

Jakob Lusensky on the Hermitix podcast discussing the archetype of the puer aeternus, or eternal youth.  Drawing on Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman, they explore possibility and the difficulty of commitment, the relationship between youth and age, and the place of grief and imagination. Originally published on Hermitix.

“I'm not a machine,” Jung insists in one of his last recorded interviews. What might his resistance tell us about our relationship to technology today? An audio essay by Jakob Lusensky, featuring Jung’s original voice, on artificial intelligence, faith and the work of becoming psychologically mature.  From the upcoming essay Living from the Centre , exploring Jung’s religious attitude in an age of...

In this short reflection, I return to the final page of Jung’s Red Book , where he left a single handwritten word: Möglichkeit . Possibility. What does it mean to continue dreaming Jung’s work onward, responding to the questions of our own present and future? I also introduce the newly launched Center of the Cross , an emerging space for dialogue and new encounters between Jungian psychology and C...

Leonard Cohen on songwriting, self-respect and getting up at 4:30. In this excerpt from his 1992 conversation with Paul Zollo, Cohen shares the patient work of finding a song, and the appetite to redeem the day so that it does not go down in debt. First part of interview as audio. Full text of interview.

Can psychology take religious experience seriously without reducing it to psychological explanations? Did Jung succeed in remaining a psychologist of religion, or did his psychology gradually become a theology of its own? In this episode, I speak with Jungian scholar Matei Iagher, author of The Making and Unmaking of the Psychology of Religion , about the largely forgotten field of psychology of r...

If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment and the capacity to acknowledge the moral good. - Pope Leo XIV, 25th of September 2026 

In this episode, Jungian scholar Paul Bishop joins Jungian analyst-in-training Emma Iovoli to explore Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and C.G. Jung’s complex relationship with Nietzsche. Drawing on Bishop’s recent book, Jung and the Epic of Transformation, Volume 3 , they explore some of Zarathustra’s most powerful images, from the eagle and serpent to the camel, lion and child, and what they r...

What is the goal of psychoanalysis? Is it greater self-knowledge, or the recovery of our capacity simply to be? In this third Freudian/Jungian conversation with psychoanalyst Donald Carveth we explore Winnicott's notion of the true self alongside Jung's understanding of the Self, individuation, and the religious attitude. We discuss conscience and the superego, the image of God ( imago Dei ), love...

Pope Leo XIV's Magnifica Humanitas   may be one of the most important reflections yet on artificial intelligence and the future of humanity. In this conversation, Jakob Lusensky and Sean McGrath explore the encyclical's central question: What does it mean to be human in an age of AI? Along the way they discuss Jung, technology, transhumanism, work, community, suffering, and why a human face that a...

This is a reading of the introduction to Magnifica - Humanitas - On Safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligenc e, by Pope Leo XIV. For the full encyclical visit the following link. Join the live stream conversation with Sean McGrath about this text Wednesday 17th of June at 3:15 pm CES T on this link. The reading of the introduction is done by Emma Lovoli , Jungian analyst...

After our excursion along the currents of our collective dreams, we now turn our attention back to Psychology on the Cross . For this conversation, I invited Jungian scholar Ann Conrad Lammers to discuss Emma Jung: Dedicated to the Soul , a book she recently edited together with Thomas Fischer and Medea Hoch. It's a wonderful book that brings Emma out of Carl Jung's shadow, revealing the full rang...

In the final episode of the first wave of Was it just a dream?, the outside world folds inward, everything condensing toward a single point, triggering a shocking realization.   Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page. Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

Our last dream received some thoughtful commentary from listeners. We decided to put together some of these as extra material. Read the full dream here .  Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In the sixth episode of Was it just a dream? , we find ourselves in a church, looking the other way.  Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page. Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In the fifth episode of Was it just a dream? , we find ourselves at sea in the Middle Ages. A raven lands on deck and transforms. What is it asking of us? Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page. Reference to Albrecht Dürer's medieval engraving Knight, Death and the Devil. Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Compan...

In this fourth episode of Was it just a dream? , we're discussing a dream we received as a response to previous dreams. It again involves cutting.  Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page. Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In this third episode of Was it just a dream? , we are faced with catastrophe, and learn something about the creative response to it. The name “Edward” comes from an Anglo-Saxon name which literally means “guardian or protector of wealth”. Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page. Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited...

In this second episode of Was it just a dream? , we’re invited to follow the symbol of the fish. We’re inviting the fish to remain a fish, to swim swiftly, hard to grasp a hold of, turn into a concept, as we ask what kind of consciousness it might ask the dreamer, and us as dreamers to develop. Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page. Music: It was just a dream by Ra...

The first episode of our new podcast series, Was it just a Dream? , is titled “I Don’t Want to Hurt You.” Listen to the dream, and you will understand why. If you’d like to read the full dream or comment on it, go to our Substack page. Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

Have you had a dream that stayed with you — one that felt larger than your own life? This is an invitation to join Jungian analysts Cécile Buckenmeyer and Jakob Lusensky in the experiment of shaping a holding space for collective dreams. The new podcast Was it just a dream? is devoted to those big dreams that C.G. Jung described as “the common property of mankind” (CW 10 §33), the deep streams of...

In this episode, I speak with Sean McGrath about his new book The Lost Road - A Search for the Soul of the West , a spiritual autobiography and a philosophical meditation on the soul of the West. Moving between personal narrative and cultural diagnosis, McGrath traces how the ancient fusion of Greek contemplation and Jewish revelation formed the heart of Western spirituality, how that inheritance...

Audio clip from the film, "Matter of Heart," (1986) directed, edited, and produced by Mark Whitney, conceived and written by Suzanne Wagner, executive producer George Wagner. C.G. Jung: The world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man. Nowadays we are not threatened by elementary catastrophes. There is no such thing [in nature] as an H-bomb; that is all man's doing. WE are the great...

Is psychoanalysis a path to salvation? I was invited to ponder this provocative question together with psychoanalyst Donald Carveth. This is our second Freudian/Jungian dialogue. For more psychoanalytic thinking visit Don's youtube page.

In the fourth and final season of Secular Christ, Sean McGrath introduces his ideas around everyday Christian Mysticism. 

In the fourth and final season of Secular Christ, Sean McGrath introduces his ideas around everyday Christian Mysticism.