Core Jungian Concepts – This Jungian Life

FIERCE FEMALE INITIATIONS: claiming authority & selfhood through trials

Dec 31, 2020

Women’s initiation into adulthood and authority involves encountering shadow, finding inner fire, taking action, and wielding power. Kore became queen of the underworld; Snow White metabolized the poison and revived; Psyche reclaimed her mate and ascended to Mt. Olympus. Female initiation involves relational trauma and the sacrifice of a naively romantic and other-oriented stance. This mythological pattern points to the potential for finding clear-eyed selfhood, life direction, and the will to achieve goals.

ARCHETYPE OF THE DIVINE CHILD: light reborn

Dec 17, 2020

The divine child appears when least expected, new potential born from the womb of the unconscious. Helpless and blessed and against all reason, the divine child represents the creative union of opposites that births a new beginning.

FANTASIES: do they guide or trap us?

Dec 10, 2020

Fantasy is the process of engagement with unconscious processes, from the depths of the mythic unconscious to the make-believe worlds of online gaming.

VISIONARY IMAGINATION: Jung’s private journals

Nov 26, 2020

We welcome Sonu Shamdasani, PhD, scholar and historian of depth psychology and Jung’s opus. His research and expertise were instrumental in bringing Jung’s Red Book to the public in 2009. Jung’s Black Books, the journals in which he recorded “my most difficult experiments,” have just been published. We discuss Jung’s encounters with figures and images from his psychic depths–experiences foundational to Jung’s subsequent work and which opened a portal to humankind’s imaginal mind and mythic substrata.

REVIVING OUR CAPACITY TO FEEL: the heart of Jung’s legacy

Nov 5, 2020

Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung’s close collaborator, capped her public work in a 1986 lecture that summarized Jung’s signal contributions to understanding the human experience.

ADAPTATION: meeting life’s demands creatively

Oct 15, 2020

The world is the canvas on which we paint our lives. Through this lifelong work, we express personal vision, develop skills, and come to terms with the realities of our outer and inner worlds.

NEUROSIS: befriending our broken places

Oct 8, 2020

Jung says neurosis “must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.” The purpose of neurosis is to help us discover our purpose.

SACRED SYMPTOMS: how does the numinous heal?

Sep 24, 2020

Life crisis and trauma can also open us to the numinous: fairy tales, myths, and religious texts relate happenings of help when all seemed lost. Whether sought or suffered, something greater appears when ego yields. We can act on the guidance that is given, and may attain the healing gifted by experience of the numinous.