This Jungian Life Podcast

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...

⁠ DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Something's going on in Scrooges soul...and it's tired of waiting for an invitation. Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol , vividly portrays the journey to healing and transcendence. It was written in a fever, released on December 19, 1843, and sold out before Christmas. Ebenezer Scrooge’s visitations by the spirits...

⁠ DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Siblings are embedded in the human psyche as they are in life. Even if one lacks siblings, there is ready access to them through friends, fairy tales, myths, and scripture. All feature multiple experiences and examples of sibling solidarity and siblings as shadow carriers. Birth order, sex, temperament, and the quality of parental...

⁠ DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Partings connote a finality of farewell that signifies completion of a relationship. We may part from a stage of life, depart from home or college, or say farewell to a person, process or project. Partings signify the end of a story that has been told and reached conclusion. The Japanese tale of Princess Moonbeam illustrates the im...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Dr. Fanny Brewster, Jungian Analyst, colleague and friend, joins This Jungian Life to discuss her forthcoming book, The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race. Complexes tend to operate autonomously and unconsciously, have strong feeling-tones, and contain archetypal fuel. The racial complex, a complicated mix of c...

⁠ DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ It happens all the time: people and problems split into opposing camps, whether the conflict is internal, between partners, in a family or—as we know all too well—between political parties. When positions become polarized conflict ensues, whether between mind and body, partners and families, or value systems and religious affiliati...

⁠ DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ The archetype of the father is associated with gods, kingship, and other images of authority and order. As the image of a “personified affect” fueled by an archetypal core, the father complex is powerful. In its negative aspect it may arise from a father who was experienced as absent, emotionally unavailable, passive, critical or a...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Anger is a core human emotion. Newborns express instinctual cries of protest, and many a mythological god has wreaked archetypal havoc. Cultural norms around anger range from keeping a stiff upper lip to highly extraverted forms of expression. There are overall differences in how men and women tend to express anger; differences in te...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ People have reported experiences with ghosts from antiquity; Jung documented his encounters with mysterious sensed presences. How do we make meaning of such experiences? Are they visitations from external beings? Could they be related to unconscious reactions to toxic substances, auditory subtleties, or erratic electromagnetic fields...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ The question of whether, when, and what psychoactive medications may be helpful is both big and ambiguous. Mental distress has always been strongly influenced by cultural filters and subjective perceptions. Whereas a person might once have sought to placate a god, sufferers today may turn to medical management rather than mining thei...

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Empathy, the ability to feel into the suffering of another, is an intrinsic part of being human. We have such a capacity to imagine others’ experience that we react physiologically and emotionally to painful situations even in film. We are surprised, sometimes shocked, when the empathy we expect in a given situation is not forthcomin...