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 of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come are vivid depictions of the path from trauma to transformation. As in psychotherapy, Scrooge revisits his past; by reclaiming the feelings he exiled as a child, Scrooge discovers compassion and connection.
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?
Listeners contributed examples of precognitive dreams for this episode. Lisa, Joseph, and Deb discuss theoretical concepts and listener dreams from various vantage points: the intuitive capacity of the unconscious, the synchronous intersection of matter and psyche, and activation of an archetype.
Divinatory systems have been used for thousands of years as a source of help and direction to people wishing to resolve situations of personal uncertainty.
In archery, sin refers to missing the mark, whereas transgression involves violation of a cultural boundary.
Synchronicity is a concept that has fascinated thinkers across disciplines for decades, and few have delved as deeply into its nature and implications as the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, synchronicity refers to meaningful coincidences that defy rational explanation, but that feel infused with a sense of significance or destiny. But how do we recognize such coincidences, and what role do they play in our lives and psyches?
How can we understand vampires psychologically, and what does their tremendous popularity tell us about our culture?