This Jungian Life Podcast

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Many listeners have expressed interest in Jungian analytic training. We welcome those inquiries and outline the prerequisites, practicalities and processes which lead up to and constitute Jungian analytic training--a life path of ongoing growth, challenge and satisfaction. We encourage all who are interested in becoming a Jungian anal...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ How can we understand the psychological wild fire of rioting? Jung, who lived through two world wars, understood that mass movements had the power to manifest archetypal energy. The urge to unleash destructive chaos is depicted in mythologies around the world. Early Norse warriors attained battle-crazed states as "berserkers,&quo...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Oppressed, repressed and regressed, the forced restrictions of the Covid Complex have us in its grip. We may see friends and family more often than ever, but only on a screen. Work, school, home, weekdays, weekends—time and tasks slide around like Jello on a hot plate. Loss of structure, variety, movement and touch are destabilizing....

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Jung was particularly interested in the second half of life, perhaps because after his own midlife crisis he found himself so surprisingly generative. We tend to spend the first half of life oriented to familial values and cultural norms for success.  Education, work, partnering and child rearing are some of the mile markers for speed...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ The Pentagon recently released a film of a UFO made by Navy pilots. Although such credible documentation is new, UFO sightings go back to ancient times and surged after World War II. . Interstellar travel then seized the collective imagination, and the ongoing abundance of books, television shows and films signals the emergence of a n...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ We have moved our lives online. But can we experience authentic human connection through virtual technology? Can we date, mourn, or have psychoanalysis on a screen? If screens offer some surprising intimacies—close-ups of wedding vows and eulogies—they also deprive us of embodied participation. Staying at home has made us newly eager...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Astrology is a 4000-year-old discipline rooted in the mystery of man’s relationship to the universe. It is an archetypal frame for human experience that influenced Jung, depicts our connection to the heavens, and anticipates future trends. We are now beginning an approximately 38-year Pluto-Saturn cycle—and Covid-19 has appeared at it...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ The dictionary defines authority as the power to “influence or command thought, opinion or behavior.”  Authority’s  Latin roots are  master, leader, author —thus it lives next to its tough cousin,  power.  Families, organizations, and governing bodies influence and command us, whether slightly or mightily. Authority has legitimacy, fr...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ The alchemical term  nigredo  means black or blackening, and is associated with decomposition and putrefaction. As a psychological state,  nigredo  is “the great suffering and grief” which the detached forces of nature inflict on the soul. We realize in sorrow that what we thought were truths were illusory. Individuals may have taken...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ In the Chinese language, the two characters representing  crisis  are  danger  and  opportunity . Can that possibly be true of these days of pandemic crisis, with physical, economic, and psychological destabilization? Voices of experience and wisdom speak to us about finding potential in desperate situations. Victor Frankl, imprisoned...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ The archetype of origins is in resurgence since the advent of ancestry-mapping programs. What are the psychological and symbolic meanings of ancestry? Identity is often strongly linked to ancestry in its ethnic and cultural aspects, and as the carrier of personal traits. Genealogy gives rise to meaning-making narratives such as: I get...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Should an analyst share personal information with clients? Freud believed that the analyst should be devoid of personal presence, so he sat unseen behind his famous couch. Jung realized that regardless of theory, psychotherapy entailed two people in a room interacting.  He likened two personalities to chemical substances: as they comb...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ The word  plague  derives from the Latin  plangere,  “to strike the breast as if in lamentation.” The novel coronavirus has visited loss, fear and hardship on many. Nature in her destructive mode can radically disrupt cultural creations and norms and show us how fragile they – and we -- are. We may also find new sources of sustenance...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Questions about fate and destiny have existed for millennia. Fate often refers to unalterable realities, from genes to future events, whereas destiny points to future potential. An acorn’s likely fate is to die on the forest floor, but its destiny is to become an oak tree. Jung understood that “…when an inner situation is not made con...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ “Could be worse. Not sure how, but it could be.” For Eeyore, only perverse possibilities lie ahead, even if they are unknowable. Do gloomy expectations create self-fulfilling prophecies? Or are pessimists more realistic than naive optimists like Winnie the Pooh? Pessimism can be associated with depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ We can all cite examples of behaviors that defy reason and meaning. How can we understand X shouting those things at a party, or the bizarre thing Y filmed himself doing on YouTube? There is a great array of psychological labels for such behaviors, as if pronouncing them “histrionic,” “manic” or even “drunk” explains radical actions a...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ The power of projections to hit psychic targets serves both defensive and integrative functions. Projections are a natural aspect of psychic functioning, as we know from watching children at play: we first see inner images “out there” in order to experience them internally. Projections give shape to affects and archetypal images, from...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Recent severe environmental events have made facing climate change urgent. We talk with Jeffrey Kiehl, PhD, climate scientist, Jungian analyst, and author, about bringing a psychological perspective to our present situation and the process of change. (Kiehl’s book is listed below.) The modern myth of infinite growth and limitless natu...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ As we grow, unconscious unity becomes differentiated into feeling, ego, personality and desire. As we grow, we will have initiatory encounters with shadow, demanding the sacrifice of innocence and identification with ego. The story of Adam and Eve conceives this archetypal experience as the fall . The stories of Job, Faust and even th...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Polyamory, a current phenomenon, endorses open relationships with multiple lovers. The term means many loves, and polyamory strives to legitimize the benefits of non-monogamous romance and sexuality among adults. Jung engaged in an open, extramarital relationship with Toni Wolff. Does polyamory represent an overthrow of outdated cultu...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ When we speak of being triggered, what exactly is it that sends us into a familiar  arc of feeling and behavior we may later regret? That mysterious force seems external and can elude our ability to locate it within. Jung called these autonomous and unconscious incursions complexes , and he discovered them through his Word Association...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Although there have been a number of recent destructive environmental events, the duration and devastation of the fires in Australia have made a powerful impact on the collective psyche. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, although disastrous to humans, seem acausal aspects of Nature. Other environmental damage, such as Amazon fires,...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ A new year often symbolizes a new beginning, with resolutions to make specific lifestyle changes related to self-improvement. Research indicates, however, that up to 88% of these resolutions fail. If changes—no matter how worthy--are imposed by ego alone, the unconscious is likely to have its say by rebelling. Meaningful change requir...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ The archetype of the trickster shows up in ambiguity, duplicity, contradiction and paradox. Usually depicted as masculine, trickster has been featured in tales worldwide through history. We see him as a boundary crosser, shape-shifting imitator, versatile adapter, and disrupter of norms whose deceptions often backfire on him. Our inn...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Although a secret is usually considered information deliberately kept from others, we also keep secrets from ourselves. Internal secrets consist of emotionally laden knowledge that consciousness represses; the price of such secrets may be a complex or neurosis. Secrets can alienate us from ourselves as well as others, and are often f...