Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

In medieval times, humans felt contained in the world. Inner experience and outer world belonged together; all that happened was in God’s hands. Critical thinking and Enlightenment destroyed this kinship with things, and man got lonely in a strange world. But sometimes we experience a sudden, completely unexpected coincidence of an outside event with our psychic state—a happening that is meaningful

For several decades I had a series of recurring numinous dreams about drowning and tidal waves. Curious about their symbolic significance, and inspired by Jung’s theory of archetypes, I responded imaginally to a spectacular wild site known as “The Gap” on the south coast of Western Australia. I chose this site because—as a physical equivalent of the abyss and an imaginal embodiment of the Void—it elicited

This article is an introduction to Carl Jung’s own reflections on the Beyond, especially in the 11th chapter of his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961/1995). It also features an extensive amplification of the universal symbol of the Tree of Life and its connection to Jung’s concept of the Self. At the end of his life, Jung (1961/1995) came to the conclusion that it is the metaphysical

This essay explores Carl Gustav Jung’s approach to paranormal phenomena. It sets out by looking at two of Jung’s personal experiences with ghostly phenomena and his explanations of them, followed by an overview of the most relevant aspects of Jung’s lifelong interest in the supernatural. Special attention is given to notions of sensitivity and prerational cognition in the context of Jung’s struggle

This essay recounts visitations by ancestral spirits whose presence was synchronous with the sudden onset of neuromuscular symptoms at two similar junctures in the author’s life. These spirits and their association with a complex of survivor’s guilt were revealed in dreams. Creative engagement of psyche and soma was possible thanks to an astute physical therapist, a former analyst who appeared in a

In his Zarathustra seminars, Jung described Nietzsche’s ring of eternal recurrence as an individuation symbol that denoted “the absolute completeness of the self” (Jung, 1989, p. 1044). Nietzsche conceived this idea in a moment of visionary experience “6,000 feet beyond man and time” (Nietzsche, 1888/1979 Nietzsche, F. (1979). Ecce homo (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published

Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

While researching into coincidences for my PhD I came across the Flammarion engraving, or woodcut, as it was then described. Like so many before and since, I was struck by the breathtaking complexity and depth of the image, especially when enlivened with color. Exploring it further, I found that Marie-Louise von Franz had used the illustration to great effect to explain synchronicity, and so included

Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

Published in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought (Vol. 64, No. 4, 2021)

(2021). Cultural Images. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, Cultural Images, pp. 289-294.

(2021). About the Art: Masks. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, Cultural Images, pp. 295-296.

This year heralds the centenary of the landmark publication of Psychological Types, a text that is arguably the most recognizable of all Jung’s works. The groundbreaking theory he expounded in that book has led to a wide spectrum of reactions, ranging from scorn to enthusiastic acceptance. This paper examines the influence of popular psychological assessments as well as the opinions of Jungians whose

Later in his life, Carl Gustav Jung became increasingly interested in the alchemical process as a symbolic representation of the individuation journey. By focusing on the stages of the nigredo and the albedo, this paper expands upon the importance of these steps in the psychological process of individuation. Jung (1970a Jung, C. G. (1970a). On the nature of the psyche. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler

Encounters with two distinctive birds and the dream of an old woman form the basis for this author’s musings upon the feminine, nature, and the old ways of healing.

Following the death of her mother, the author returns to her hometown to prepare her family home for sale. Excavating through the accumulated possessions of five decades, she is flooded with memories, regrets, and startling insights about her parents’ complex lives and the unexpected beauty of their last days.

Jung made frequent reference to the fact that unconscious forces find myriad ways to express themselves. Historians of psychiatry and others have explored the role of culture in shaping and spreading psychological symptoms. In this context is the recent phenomenon of the transgender child. The rise in the number of children and teens self-diagnosing as transgender can be compared with the explosion

Dr. Lisa Marchiano, in her article, “Transgender Children: The Making of a Modern Hysteria,” resurrects an archaic and misogynistic label in order to invalidate the experience of transgender young persons. Marchiano’s article represents a long history of anti-transgender activism, including the promotion of an unfounded pseudo-diagnosis that has been rejected by both medical and mental health professionals

Fairy tale interpretation is a common practice among Jungian analysts, although tales originating from early societies in which the level of culture achievement is still in its primordial wrapping are less often analyzed. The objective of this paper, therefore, was to investigate a tale from the depth psychology point of view, which was originally collected from a group of indigenous Brazilian tribes

Anime (Japanese animated movies) have penetrated the world with an ease of dissemination facilitated by the Internet. The stories, though quite broadly themed, have a predominance of images that promote a warm relationship with the Other. Many stories allow the human characters involved to cross the boundary between this world and the land of the spirits: the unconscious. The fear of the unconscious

In 1865, Walt Whitman commemorated the American Civil War with a slim poetry collection, Drum-Taps, but before he could distribute the book, it became “incomplete” when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April of that year. Whitman knew that he could not honor the war’s legacy without recognizing the sacrifice of the Commander-in-Chief, and so retained the books until he could print Sequel to Drum-Taps

Years before Fascism was to seize Germany, W.W. Crotch, a writer who generally covered cultural and literary subjects, found himself fascinated by a strange, odd fellow he had observed on the streets of Munich, a character he was to learn was named Adolf Hitler. When Hitler and his political party took control of the German government in 1933, Crotch filed a story with the New Statesman, recalling

People need look only in their closets to find joy, asserts Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo. Followers worldwide rely on her method of household tidying to transform their cluttered spaces into refuges of serenity. Here, writer Jory Kahn uses C. G. Jung’s typology to explore Kondo’s approach as a powerful tool on the path to individuation. The key, Kahn says of Kondo’s method, is to invoke

This article is born from my interest in understanding those aspects in the psyche that activate an urge to discover the scattered and broken pieces that complete the whole. The movement toward completion does not follow a lineal or progressive drive but pertains to the archetypal movements of the psyche that procure wholeness within the mystery of the psyche’s dismembered nature. In its necessary

(2021). Sister Poems. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, Cultural Images, pp. 428-430.

(2021). Under Construction. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, Cultural Images, pp. 431-431.

(2021). Men Meeting. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, Cultural Images, pp. 432-432.

(2021). The Red Book Hours: Discovering C. G. Jung’s Art Mediums and Creative Process(2018). By Jill Mellick. Scheidegger & Spiess. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, Cultural Images, pp. 433-435.

(2021). The Dark Feminine. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 159-162.

(2021). About the Art: Dark Feminine. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 163-165.

(2021). Remembering Robin Robertson. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 166-168.

(2021). In Memoriam: Gilda Frantz. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 169-171.

(2021). Invoking Gilda. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 172-175.

This article explores three Jewish rituals as they relate to various concepts of Jung’s. The three rituals explored exemplify some of Jung’s concepts including alchemy, the relationship with the unconscious, God and the Self, the concept of wholeness and integration, active imagination, the feminine, and transformation.

Why has the ancient Sumerian myth of the demon goddess Lilith become part of Jewish lore? Rabbinic sages (100 C.E. to 600 C.E.) applied midrash, a method of Jewish textual analysis, to the original biblical creation story to validate the position that Eve was Adam’s equal partner. Why did the rabbinic sages of the Talmud feel the compulsion to augment the biblical story of Adam and Eve with the Near

In everyday Hebrew, the term golem means “dummy”: a person who doesn’t react, doesn’t answer a question, or is stupid. My personal association with the term dates back to my childhood when some of the teachers in the yeshiva (Jewish parochial school) aimed it at students who didn’t know the answer to a question. They would say,“Al teshev shamah k’mo golem,” meaning, “Don’t just sit there like a golem

Why does Medea’s act of killing her children stand out as one of the most horrific crimes/taboos in our collective memory? Why are we repulsed and why do we shudder as we hear her story, as well as other accounts of infanticide? Medea’s rageful act goes deep to a dark core of the psyche that we all possess. It horrifies us when we realize that we too have a similar potential for rage, hatred, and violence

Infanticide is both a horrifying and unsolved dilemma of today’s society. Neither the field of psychology nor the legal system has adequately healed or contained this phenomenon, as the number of baby deaths at the hands of their mothers has remained consistent if not rising. Punishment lacks any deterrent power as most infanticides at the hands of mothers are done in states of psychosis. It is worthwhile

This piece was written in the spring of 2020, in the month after many parts of the nation and globe had effectively shut down in an effort to contain the proliferation of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. In my reflections I attempt to explore and make a kind of ecological, psychological, and spiritual sense of a virus so powerful as to irreversibly interrupt the rhythms of human civilization which

Growing up under the regime of a macho Italian father and with a legacy of family abuse, I was a sensitive, creative boy who felt deeply ashamed of my perceived male inadequacies and afraid of my own masculine power. My early fascination with nature found a home in phycology, the study of algae, but to uncover and own my passion for and divine connection to the natural world through algae, I first

The core dynamic of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina centers on three characters. Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), a mogul of insatiable appetites, owns and controls BlueBook, an online social media corporation comparable to Google or Facebook. Nathan possesses a narcissistic personality structure, which disturbs a healthy curiosity into the inner life and the capacity to self-reflect. Obsessed by the ambition

(2021). The House is a Holy Text in the Hands of Its Owner. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 273-274.

(2021). What the Porch Knew. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 275-275.

(2021). Clover. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 276-276.

(2021). As You Were. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 277-277.

(2021). Minotaur. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 278-280.

(2021). The Stillness of June. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 281-282.

(2021). Return of the Butterfly. (2018). By Sharon Heath. Thomas-Jacob Publishing. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 283-287.

(2021). The Star in Man. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, The Star in Man, pp. 1-5.

(2021). About the Artists: Victor Raphael and Clayton Spada. Psychological Perspectives: Vol. 64, The Star in Man, pp. 6-8.

Gerard Dorn (ca. 1535–ca. 1584) translated a great many Paracelsian texts into Latin; he also wrote a large body of work broadly inspired by Paracelsus. In an early book on “the whole of the alchemical philosophy,” he made alchemy into an allegory of good living, showing that it had moral as well as medical applications. His writing provided an important point of reference for the alchemical studies

In the decades after Jung’s death, only a handful of Jungian analysts have attempted to revise Jung’s psychology by identifying its essence and reevaluating it in light of that essence. One such analyst is Wolfgang Giegerich. Over two decades ago he published his acclaimed book, The Soul’s Logical Life, in which, building on the work of James Hillman, he argues that Jung’s foremost insight was into

This article addresses the question of whether the soul has substantial reality from the perspective of Jungian psychology and contemporary physics. It is a response to Daniel Anderson’s article, “The Soul’s Logical Life and Jungian Schisms.” Where psychology and physics have progressed the farthest into the unknown dimensions of psyche and matter, they have both conjectured that there is a symbol

This presentation draws on the alchemical notion of the crucible as vessel for the distillation, purification, and transmutation of the prima materia as a way to represent the locus of objective consciousness: the logical life of the soul wherein the action of changing and the state of being changed actualizes. The crucible of soul logic is a way of thinking about phenomena that accommodates the logically

This article is a presentation of key aspects of Jung’s psychology as well as a response to Daniel Anderson’s article on Wolfgang Giegerich’s theory of soul, “The Soul’s Logical Life and Jungian Schisms,” published separately in the present issue. I address the question of Jungian institutional schisms in light of the tension between the professionalization of analytical psychology and Jung’s concept