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Jungian Child Analysis

Jungian Child Analysis brings together ten certified Child and Adolescent Analysts (IAAP) to discuss how healing with children occurs within the analytical framework. While the majority of Jung’s corpus centered on the collective aspects of the adult psyche, one can find in Jung’s earliest work clinical observations and ideas that reflect an uncanny prescience of the psychological research that would later emerge regarding the self and the mother-infant relationship. This book discusses and illustrates in very practical ways how one uses an analytical attitude and works with the symbolic: this includes illustrations of analytical play therapy, dream analysis, sandplay, work with special populations and work with the parents and families of the child. Not only will the book capture your interest and further your development in working with children and adolescents, but also will enhance your work with adults.

Jungian Child Analysis, edited by Audrey Punnett; foreword by Wanda Grosso; contributors include Margo M. Leahy, Liza J. Ravitz, Brian Feldman, Lauren Cunningham, Patricia L. Speier, Maria Ellen Chiaia, Audrey Punnett, Susan Williams, Robert Tyminski, and Steve Zemmelman.

Contents:
Preface – Wanda Grosso
Introduction – Audrey Punnett

Chapter 1 – Margo M. Leahy
Jung and the Post-Jungians on the Theory of Jungian Child Analysis

Chapter 2 – Liza J. Ravitz
Child Analysis and the Multilayered Psyche

Chapter 3 – Brian Feldman
The Aesthetic and Spiritual Life of the Infant: Towards a Jungian View of Infant Development

Chapter 4 – Lauren Cunningham
Play, Creation and the Numinous

Chapter 5 – Patricia L. Speier
The Portal of Play Through a Jungian Frame

Chapter 6 – Maria Ellen Chiaia
The Importance of Being: Silence in Child Analysis

Chapter 7 – Audrey Punnett
Children’s Dreams

Chapter 8 – Susan Williams
Awakening to Inter-subjectivity: Working with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Chapter 9 – Robert Tyminski
Males Coming to Terms with Sexuality in Later Adolescence

Chapter 10 – Steve Zemmelman
Working with Parents in Child Analysis and Psychotherapy: An Integrated Approach


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Editor: Audrey Punnett
Paperback: 250 pages
Condition: New
Edition: First
Index, Bibliography
Publisher: Fisher King Press (May 21, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690380
ISBN-13: 978-1771690386
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Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives and a growing list of Cutting-Edge alternative titles. www.fisherkingpress.com
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"A testament to the healing capacities of the imagination, the humble “star in man” that connects us to the unconscious: to unknown and unexpected developments in ourselves." says Literary Aficionado

New Title Press Release - Just Published by Fisher King Press:

War of the Ancient Dragon: Transformation of Violence in Sandplay
by Laurel A. Howe

From the Publisher - Laurel Howe’s War of the Ancient Dragon is a significant contribution to depth psychology. I suspect that far more would be resolved, and much less of the world’s suffering would be in vain, if only we could transform the wars in the Middle East and elsewhere in this world into the likes of Randy's sand trays. War of the Ancient Dragon: Transformation of Violence in Sandplay is a major contribution to Jungian Psychology, Sandplay Therapy, and to the world at large. I urge you to read and to tell others about this powerfully moving book. - Mel Mathews, Publisher, Fisher King Press

ABOUT THIS BOOK
Six-year-old Randy conducts bloody wars in the sandtray, calling them “World War One,” World War Two, and “The War of the Ancient Dragon.” He burns fires and bombs helpless victims, killing some and saving others. What could possibly be going on in his imagination?

The contents of his imagination—what the alchemists call the “realm of subtle bodies”—are revealed in his sandplay from one session to the next, and there we see the raw, autonomous dynamism that motivates Randy, already branded a bully and nearly expelled from first grade. We see fiery, destructive conflict, part his, part his culture’s, part lived, part projected, a conflict of archetypal opposites that engulf Randy’s personality and fuel his violent behavior.

But also from Randy’s imaginal world, out of the very war between opposites that drives him, the unknown third possibility unfolds. Allowed to exist and be seen with a paradoxical healing aim, the war fights itself out over time in the safe container of the sandtray, finds its unpredictable resolution, and gradually releases Randy from its grip. He finally emerges, calling himself “king of the bloodfire,” returned to the rule of his own emotional life. He has adapted to school, proud of his achievements, a star student in math.

Randy’s lively narratives animate his dramas and reveal the distinct hallmarks of an alchemical opus over the course of 24 therapy sessions. He remarkably echoes the words of the ancient sages such as Zosimos, who centuries ago in his own imagination witnessed the “torture” of transformation in fire.

Randy’s process is thoroughly documented and amplified, unveiling the alchemical stages of transformation—nigredo, albedo, and rubedo—in a way that helps us relate to those chapters in our own individuation struggles. Psychological Perspectives editor Margaret Johnson writes that the work is “valuable above and beyond being a case study because it remarkably grounds what can be very illusive alchemical imagery into psychological experience.”

War of the Ancient Dragon guides us through the gritty realities of the alchemical process, helping us realize how they can manifest in everyday life, dream images, and fantasy. Above all the book is a testament to the healing capacities of the imagination, the humble “star in man” that connects us to the unconscious: to unknown and unexpected developments in ourselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurel Howe is a Jungian analyst who earned her diploma from the Center for Research and Training in Depth Psychology According to C.G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz in Zürich. She is a faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute of Colorado, a teaching member of the International Society of Sandplay Therapy and the Sandplay Therapists of America, and an advisory board member of the Colorado Sandplay Therapy Association. She has a private practice in Lakewood, Colorado where she works with children and adults and mentors students of analytic psychotherapy and sandplay therapy. In addition to sandplay and alchemy, Laurel writes and presents lectures on the history and psychological meaning of Mary Magdalene and feminine archeological images from the Levant prior to and during the development of the Old Testament.

Title: War of the Ancient Dragon: Transformation of Violence in Sandplay
Author: Laurel A. Howe
Paperback: 166 pages
Condition: New
Edition: First
Index, Bibliography
Publisher: Fisher King Press (April 28, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10:1771690348
ISBN-13: 9781771690348

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9781771690317.jpg Just Published by Fisher King Press

Love Matters for Psychic Transformation: A Study of Embodied Psychic Transformation in the Context of BodySoul Rhythms®

by Maja Reinau

From the Foreword by John Hill

Maja Reinau’s book Love Matters for Psychic Transformation serves as an excellent introduction to BodySoul Rhythms (BSR), a method created by Marion Woodman, Ann Skinner, and Mary Hamilton. BSR has been immensely successful, transforming the lives of many women who have participated in its programs. Maja Reinau’s book elucidates the gems that structure this creative method.

The author received her training as a Jungian analyst at The International School of Analytical Psychology, Zürich, and at the same time completed her training in psychodrama. Having undergone intensive personal analysis, clinical supervision, course work on theory, and the experiential method of psychodrama, one might ask why did the author undertake a further training in BSR? Maja Reinau’s book provides ample answers to this question. BSR has been a second home for the author. It is her passion that draws together several loose ends of a rich, multi-faceted personal and professional life. With focus on the psyche-body connection, which includes Jungian theory, dreams, myths, body movement, voice work, mask-work, and artwork, BSR adds a feminine dimension that protects, structures, and provides communal solidarity in the face of challenges arising from a patriarchal culture that engenders disconnect. Maja Reinau notes that at first BSR work had to be open to women only, simply because it was too difficult to hold the container for mixed groups in view of the deep wounds of intimacy generated in cross gender relationships. Eventually it intends to include men in all its programs, in fact this is already taking place in many of the workshops today.

Love Matters for Psychic Transformation skillfully outlines the space-time rhythms of an intensive BSR week. Usually it takes place in a beautiful landscape, which in itself nourishes soul work and activates inner landscapes. It would be beyond the scope of this foreword to describe all the activities of an intensive week, but let me mention a few that strike me as outstanding. Breakfast begins in silence, followed by a ritual dance, the reading of a poem, and a short meditation. The morning ends with a presentation on some specific theme, often connected with Jungian psychology. The afternoon is centered on body and voice work, adding an experiential dimension to what has been already activated through nature, dreams, meditation, or the morning presentation. The focus of the first evening is on providing a positive mothering exercise, the following evenings on the making of masks, and the final evening on an ending ritual.

After having described the basic dynamics of BSR, Maja Reinau interviews six women who have completed the BSR training program. With great skill and confidence the author has documented the transformative moments that take place in BSR intensives. As each story unfolds, one feels one is moving with these women in the river of life. One story speaks about a shamed body gaining presence in the loving gaze of like-minded women. Next we learn about a participant who discovers she can explore a different feminine body that is free from the judgments of the brain and a culture that tells women how they should look. Another narrative tells us how the darkest, shut-off parts of a woman’s soul finally could be met through the eyes of another. Through mask-work one woman faces a rigid defense system, learns to trust what happens in the moment, and discovers that her psyche finds nourishment and new life through listening to myth and poetry. In another case we read about a dramatic occurrence of rebirth that brought healing to an original birth trauma. In the final interview we witness an immersion in a common field connecting body, soul, and group members in a holistic experience that stimulates the imagination in a playful, loving way.

The interviews portray in the most vivid, detailed way what actually happens in an intensive week. Elaborating on this material, Maja Reinau launches into an in-depth theoretical discussion on the key issues that have been activated in each individual participant during a BSR intensive week. She draws upon the findings of Jungian theory, neuroscience, and developmental psychology, but is mindful that theory can never be reductive and certainly not replace the subjective lived experience of the participant, which always has the last word. Nevertheless theory helps weave fragmentary events into a pattern that can serve as a guide for future development as well as a means to communicate the meaning of the BSR method within a larger collegial context.

As Maja Reinau concludes her description of BSR, one has the impression that one has witnessed the essence of women’s mysteries within a modern context. Process, presence, and paradox become the essential ingredients of those mysteries. Each participant has the opportunity of gaining awareness of the creative potential of the psyche, a sense of being truly present to oneself and to the other, and an acceptance of life’s contradictions, especially the realm of the shadow. This salutary brew nourishes the soul when stirred under the auspices of an archetypal feminine triad: the mother, the virgin, and the crone, symbolizing loving containment, pregnant creativity, and the wisdom of age. For Maja Reinau, love is the final transformative factor that brings healing and renewal. This kind of loving is a highly differentiated blend of mirroring, containing, empathic attunement, and resonating with the life energy of all who undertake this daring journey. As one peruses the pages of this book, one cannot but feel the inspiring presence of Marion Woodman, Ann Skinner, and Mary Hamilton. Maja Reinau’s book pays ample tribute to their pioneering endeavor in bringing hope and renewal to the lives of all who have undergone a BSR experience.

Maja Reinau, M.D. is a Zurich trained Jungian analyst, specializing in psychotherapy for children, adolescents, and adults. She has also been trained as psychodrama therapist, EMDR-therapist, and has completed the BodySoul Rhythms leadership-training program. Dr Reinau is as supervisor for the Danish Psychiatric Society, teaches at the Jung Institute in Denmark, and trains doctors in psychotherapy. In addition to her private analytical practice, Dr Reinau also works for the department of personality disorders at the University Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark. She is a member of IAAP, AGAP, and DSAP. For more information, please visit www.majareinau.dk

Love Matters for Psychic Transformation
Author: Maja Reinau
Publisher: Fisher King Press
230 pages – Large Page Format (9.25 x 7.5)
Index, Bibliography
Publication Date Feb 16, 2016
ISBN 10: 1771690313
ISBN 13: 9781771690317


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Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 
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by Gilda Frantz 
 
To register for a chance to win a copy of Gilda Frantz's Sea Glass,
click on the following link: 


https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/1d22d043cdc4dff7 

where you will sign into your amazon.com account and then complete the entry process.
 
Requirements for participation: 

Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia 
18+ years of age (or legal age) 
follow @fisherkingpress on twitter

Fisher King Press has paid for all prizes, sales tax, and shipping. Entry requires an Amazon.com account and Twitter account. Amazon will ship prizes to winners. Your Amazon.com account information is not shared with Fisher King Press, except winners' names may be made public. Amazon is not a sponsor of this promotion.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Every eligible entry has 1 in 500 chance to win, up to 3 winners. This giveaway started September 15, 2015 12:49 AM PDT and ends the earlier of September 21, 2015 11:59 PM PDT or when all prizes have been awarded.
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The Dream: The Vision of the Night

front book cover image of The Dream by Max Zeller

The Dream: The Vision of the Night

by Max Zeller

A classic in the field of dream analysis, The Dream: The Vision of the Night is a collection of essays, lectures, and vignettes by Max Zeller whose career included a law degree, a brief imprisonment in a Nazi Concentration Camp, study at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and thirty years of in-depth work as a Jungian analyst.

In the eighteen pieces of this collection, Zeller intersperses theoretical writings, compassionate and incisive case studies, and powerful, almost haiku-like reminiscences of certain incidences in his life, from his meetings with C.G. Jung to his impressions of life in pre-war Nazi Germany.

The Dream: The Vision of the Night is the best example of amplification of Jungian principles that can be found. Neither pure research nor pure memoir, the collection is an affective combination of both, and as such best portrays the spirit of its author: always restless and searching, always compassionate and open-minded, and above all, always fascinated by the mystery and power of our dreams.

About the Author
A long-time pillar of the Jungian community in California, Max Zeller received his legal doctorate in Berlin. After completing his Jungian training in 1938, he and his family were soon forced to flee Nazi Germany. Zeller eventually settled in Los Angeles, where he was co-founder of the C.G. Jung Institute. A warm, witty, and insightful analyst, he continued learning, teaching, and practicing until his death in 1978.

The Dream: The Vision of the Night
Author: Max Zeller
Paperback: 202 pages
Publisher: Fisher King Press (June 1, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690283
ISBN-13: 978-1771690287

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Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond, edited by Mark Winborn, brings together Jungian analysts and psychoanalysts from across the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Jung’s concept of participation mystique is used as a starting point for an in depth exploration of ‘shared realities’ in the analytic setting and beyond. The clinical, narrative, and theoretical discussions move through such related areas as: projective identification, negative coniunctio, reverie, intersubjectivity, the interactive field, phenomenology, neuroscience, the transferential chimera, shamanism, shared reality of place, borderland consciousness, and mystical participation. This unique collection of essays bridges theoretical orientations and includes some of the most original analytic writers of our time.

"Jung's use of the concept participation mystique has always struck me as among his most original ideas and I could vaguely intuit its relevance to many contemporary developments in psychoanalysis, from projective identification to intersubjectivity to the mysteries of transitional space. Now, thanks to the extraordinary essays in this book, one no longer has to "intuit" this relevance. It is spelled out in beautiful detail by writers with expertise in many facets of our field. The breadth of these essays is truly extraordinary. Reading them has enriched both my personal and professional life. I highly recommend this book."  -- Donald Kalsched, Ph.D. author of The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit (Routledge, 1996) and Trauma and the Soul: A Psycho-spiritual Approach to Human Development and its Interruption (Routledge, 2013).
* * * * *
"The concept of 'participation mystique' is one that is often considered a somewhat arcane notion disparagingly equated with an unconscious, undifferentiated or 'primitive' dynamic. This collection of outstanding articles from Jungian analysts of different theoretical perspectives and analysts from different schools of depth psychology redeems this concept and locates it as central to depth work, regardless of one’s theoretical orientation. What may seem like an ethereal notion becomes grounded when explored from the perspective of the clinical, the experiential and the theoretical. Linking participation mystique to the more clinical concepts of projective identification, unitary reality, empathy, the intersubjective field and the neurosciences and locating this dynamic in the field of the transference and counter-transference, brings this concept to life in a refreshingly clear and related manner. In addition, each author does so in a very personal manner.  "This book provides the reader with a wonderful example of amplification of participation mystique, linking many diverse threads and fibers to form an image, which, while it reveals its depth and usefulness, nevertheless maintains its sense of mystery. This book is a true delight for anyone intrigued by those “moments of meeting”, moments of awe, when the ineffable becomes manifest, when we feel the shiver down our spine, be it in our work or in a moment of grace as we sit quietly in nature. Shared Realities offers nourishment for the clinician, for the intellect and, most importantly, for the soul. I highly recommend it!  -- Tom Kelly - President, International Association for Analytical Psychology and Past-President, Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts.

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Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
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by Dennis Patrick Slattery

As I finish reading Walter Odajnyk's Gathering the Light, I see a very synthetic imagination at work to bring the reader closer to what unites rather than separates Eastern and Western thought on meditation, the mystical and the means to unite the two ways the soul may engage spirit. At the same time, his book offers a short course on C.G. Jung's ground-breaking thought on the soul inhabiting all things of the world. Lost in our ADD-oriented culture is the art and practice of meditation, not just on matters of the spirit but on the everyday matters we contend with, often on the fly, fast and loose, with little due regard for consequences. Perhaps the president of the United States should include on his board of advisors a resident meditator; that person's task would be to slow down the processes that can have as their consequences war, ignoring the most in need, loss of a sense of fair play, justice denied and oversights that can diminish the earth's richness. Is this a spiritual book? Yes and no. Its wide range and depth of perception on the spiritual body can be appropriated on a number of levels to coax the reader into living a fuller and more deeply attended life.

Remembering V. Walter Odajnyk
April 10, 1938 - May 22, 2013
Walter Odajnyk was a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and a member of the C.G. Jung Study Center of Southern California as well as a core faculty member of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is the author of Jung and Politics: The Political and Social Ideas of C.G. Jung; Gathering the Light: A Jungian View of Meditation, and Archetype and Character: Power, Eros, Spirit and Matter Personality Types. Grateful to be the publisher of Gathering the Light: A Jungian View of Meditation, Fisher King Press plans to keep Walter Odajnyk's light shining for years to come.

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Letting go of the way we wish things ideally would be can lead
to more human development than the ideals themselves
.
article by Lawrence H. Staples


There are many worthy arguments for the existence of ideals. These include the role of ideals as an organizing principle around which people with similar values can gather. Like goals, ideals motivate us.

We would have to be blind, however, not to acknowledge their danger. By definition, when ideals are our guide, we strive for perfection that does not exist in the real world. We strive for something that in the long run will frustrate us and depress us because we will fall short. We will experience failure. Goals are different. Having realistically attainable goals can serve us well.

Real development often requires the sacrifice of high ideals; it often demands that we get real. Letting go of the way we wish things ideally would be can lead to more human development than the ideals themselves. We can’t give up or fail to meet ideals, however, without incurring guilt. I asked a patient what he thought it would take to really satisfy his self-righteous mother, who admired preachers. He said: “In my case I probably would have to become Jesus.” It made me think that Jesus probably is the unconscious model for the goals of achievement for many children. If the child is not to become the savior of the world, he simply is not special enough. It is a terrible burden to feel that one can please or save a parent only by achieving such heights. Failing one’s parents is like failing God, and failing either one brings guilt. Letting go of the need to be a savior can be a daunting task. Once children become aware of the burden they are saddled with, they feel anger—that the goals they are encouraged to attain are for their parents, not for themselves.

At a point in his life, Jung himself became aware that he harbored a similar ideal about the need to be Jesus. He wrote, “Only after I had written 25 pages … it began to dawn on me that Christ—not the man but the divine being—was my secret goal. It came to me as a shock, as I felt utterly unequal to such a task.”(1) The task could become even more problematic if one raises the question as to whether the model is to be the gentler, kinder Christ of the first four Gospels of the New Testament or the harsher model of Revelation.

Rarely is someone able to give voice to, as the person in the previous paragraph and Jung did, the need to be a Jesus or the Virgin Mary if they are to have a worthy life; usually such an impossible ideal is unconscious. The demand to be something more than life-size was laid upon them, by a parent’s soaring expectations, stated or implied. A person’s need to help or save on a grand scale may also come from a compulsion to be recognized or loved by a parent who never responded to them as a child, or as an adult. People seldom become conscious of such an outrageous burden on their lives unless or until the unconscious is stimulated by a dream, by therapy, or by creative output.

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The need to be Jesus can lead to guilt, disillusionment, and dissatisfaction. The need to avoid the painful guilt of failing to achieve ideals often interferes in very practical ways with career development because they can never be satisfied with ordinary jobs. The shortfall from this ideal is predictable. This unconscious need to be great is often expressed by patients as dissatisfaction with their jobs, or as feelings that their work is meaningless or soulless. Sometimes the complaint is stronger; they feel that they are prostituting themselves. They may feel the same about their colleagues and bosses, who think only of profit. They say they want to do something that helps people or helps the environment or helps bring social justice. They often believe there is a job out there that will permit them to use their talents for some greater good or noble purpose.


The longer I live the more I am convinced that if we want to help, we should do what we are good at. What we are good at is usually what interests us most, whether it is selling, typing, mathematics, or myriad other talents and activities. Everyone doing what he is best at is the best way to contribute the most to society. During my days in business, I remember offering a good promotion to a competent secretary, and her turning it down. She said she liked what she was doing and that her current job was what she was good at. She did not like the idea of supervising others. At my then tender age, I was astonished that anyone would turn down such an offer. But she had a commonsense wisdom that protected her.

I need to emphasize here that the guilt that makes us feel we are prostituting ourselves is complex. Its interpretation requires great care. It’s a guilt that can cut two ways. It can protect our soul if we are, in fact, “selling out.” It can tell us we are trying to do something that is not right for us. We need to listen carefully to this feeling and take it seriously. On the other hand, the guilt we are feeling may be based upon parental needs that have little to do with us, and much to do with them. These assault the core of our being. If the feeling of guilt is serving our parents’ ambitions, and we misinterpret it, we may ruin the world of work for ourselves. We may feel constantly dissatisfied with our jobs.

People who need to achieve great things, even save the world, hate to hear suggestions that there may not be the one unique job they were destined to have. Such a thought makes them feel they may be consigned to the hell of a meaningless job. This whole business is made all the more tricky by the evidence that some do feel called to a task. The call may begin as a faint and distant voice that grows increasingly clear. In my experience, the call usually becomes sufficiently insistent to be heard and acknowledged. Asked for or not, such calls need to be taken very seriously.

To discover the truth about ourselves, we have to pay careful attention to our feelings and do the analytical work necessary to differentiate them. We have to find out what belongs to us and what belongs to our parents and other authority figures. Sometimes a dream will help, like the one cited earlier where the King/Son was repeating words said by the Queen/Mother. Finding what is really right for us can be long and exhausting work.

Jesus, in fact, is a source of guilt for many people. One of the great, subtle causes of guilt is Christ’s admonition to love. The admonition itself can cause guilt, when people have negative or unloving thoughts about friends, family, colleagues, even strangers. To avoid guilt we must pretend to love one another and to appear to be happy with each other, even when we actually are not. Who can possibly live a life without negative or unloving thoughts? A similar admonition is seen in the fairy tale, Cinderella. Cinderella’s dying mother tells Cinderella to be good and pious. Kathrin Asper, a Jungian Analyst in Zurich, has suggested that this admonition is the source of Cinderella’s depression and would be a source of depression for any child.(2) Such an admonition, whether uttered by God or by a parent, loads a child with an unbearable burden. It sets an impossible standard that ensures failure, and failure spawns guilt.

Many of my patients give voice to an insidious, guilt-inducing ideal. Even while voicing it they are unaware of the impact such an ideal has on their happiness. This is the American Dream, the ideal that if I am honest, competent, and work hard I will get what I want and need. Much anger and depression results from the failure of this ideal to materialize. They are so convinced of this moralistic formula that they do not seriously consider the numerous other variables including pure luck. A more devastating side of the belief that I will get what I need if I am honest, competent, and work hard is coming to believe that not getting what I need and want in life is evidence itself that something is wrong with me, that I am damaged goods.

We can feel guilty, when a dream or ideal does not come true and we think we have done all we were told we had to do to make it happen. In the real world, it seems to be more complicated. And, ultimately, as angry as we are for not getting what we want after doing so much, we still feel guilty that there must be something that we did not do or that there is something wrong with us.

Still another guilt provoking ideal is the belief that I am not worthwhile unless I totally engage in worthwhile activities. This ideal suggests that we should be super strong and to a large degree subordinate our animal, instinctual needs to our intellectual and spiritual needs. It is actually a Christian ideal that a patient, who had been in Opus Dei, said was clearly embraced by this Catholic lay organization. For example, I had a woman patient (as well as many men patients) who worked 12-hour days, 6 to 7 days per week. When she came home after these exhausting hours, she would drink, eat chocolate or potato chips, watch television, or read “trash.” She often felt guilty about these “inferior” after work activities because they did not meet her definition of what was worthwhile. Play was not even in her lexicon of worthwhile activities. For brief periods, her guilt would lead her to try to write poetry, read spiritual and classical books, or study subjects related to her profession. It is as if there was a wish to be an automaton without animal and instinctual needs. Her definition of worthwhile things also manifested as a kind of asceticism, in which she paid minimal attention to her needs for nice furnishings, clothes, and vacations. She had a harsh critic inside her, who “cut her no slack” even after incredibly long hours at work. Her “harsh critic” is masculine. In a woman it is the negative animus, the unconscious masculine side of herself. In a man it is the negative father complex. It is ruthless. It has no pity or maternal caring. It could care less if we work ourselves to death. It cares only for “right” performance.

The problem is we remain human and find we cannot work at that pace without something to relax us. And because we work such long hours we do not have enough time to relax in healthy ways. Eventually, we slip into easier and quicker ways to relax, such as eating junk food, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, having sex in a variety of ways, gambling, or similar activities that make us feel good quickly without much work. Until we suffer from these unhealthy ways to relax, we do not even consider working less. It often takes much suffering to overcome the resistance to the change that is essential to a cure. Remember the fast relief that the first sip of a martini can bring? Martinis are just one of a host of potentially destructive possibilities that may tempt us if we cannot balance work with play. It is as if we have been “lashed to the mast” by our guilt. We feel guilty for being human and wanting things that do not fit our definition of what is worthwhile. Sometimes we must get physically sick before we can change this work habit. Such a change can be a positive development.

The irony of guilt spawning ideals would not be complete without two examples of undeserved guilt. Guilt can afflict women who are consciously liberated enough to successfully pursue careers. They may suffer guilt from feeling that they do not spend enough time with their children. This feeling of guilt is especially common in women whose own mothers were stay-at-home moms. They feel the guilt even when they consciously reject their mother’s way of life. Consciously they know that they can have careers and be as good or better mothers than some of those women who stay at home. Their feeling of guilt does not seem valid intellectually, but that does not keep the feelings entirely at bay.

For example, a 44-year-old patient was an accomplished professor and devoted to her work. She had never married or had children, and after returning from holidays with her parents, she found that she was especially depressed. She told of holidays spent at home after finishing her education. With much regret and feelings of failure she recounted that the holiday would have been more fun for everyone if there had been children to share it with them. Her parents filled the air with this message, nuanced with subtle hints that she had let her parents down by not marrying and having children. But they never approached the subject directly. For one thing, an open demand for children would expose them to the inconsistency of their push for children with the pressure they had imposed on their daughter to achieve in school and get her Ph.D. When she was in school, they had even discouraged her from getting involved with men.

During holidays her parents did not openly express their disappointment at her not having children. Rather, they made quiet and innocent-seeming (but poisonous) comments about their friends and how much joy they had experienced with their grandchildren. They made these comments in such a way that she did not have a target to strike back at or an opportunity to point out her parents’ huge inconsistencies. The comments made her feel anxious because of the sense of failure they implied. Subsequently, she felt rage that eventually led to depression.

Stashed behind her depression, however, she found guilt at her failure to meet a collective ideal. The guilt implied that she was bad, that her worth was diminished, and that is depressing if we cannot get it into proper focus. Many women, who cannot or do not have children, are assaulted by this ideal. The failure to achieve it undermines their sense of self-worth, despite the fact that they may have achieved far more than women with many children. This ideal can be of such importance in a woman’s unconscious (until psychological work brings it to awareness) that the measure of her worth, no matter how much she attains in other venues of life, is trumped by her failure to marry and have children. For many women this ideal becomes the sine qua non of happiness and fulfillment.

In some ways this ideal results in an odd sense of values. This happens to be an ideal that the vast majority of women actually attain, no matter what their physical appearance, social standing, or intelligence. Human worth is measured by a standard that almost all humans and animals meet without any special training. Earning a Ph.D. would seem to distinguish a human more from animals than having children, but nevertheless, this failure to meet the ideal causes most women to feel unsuccessful, at least to some degree. Some women do accomplish it all—a truly amazing feat of drive and strength.

Interestingly, however, married women with children seem to need antidepressants about as much as single women without children. This suggests that the hope for happiness and fulfillment that the ideal holds remains more of a hope than a reality. The truth is that the duality of life doubles everything and makes all achievements a mixed blessing, whether it is children or career or both.

Returning specifically to the ideal of having children, ultimately, women, married or single, must let themselves off the hook. A completely impersonal, powerful instinctive force of nature that supports survival of the species wires them all. Nature puts the urge there and is indifferent about a woman’s happiness or unhappiness while serving the instinct. The instinct serves continuation of the species. The problem arises when its expression becomes an ideal and the main measure of our worth. This is a much too limited view of what comprises our worth. Men, too, can feel unfulfilled at the failure to serve this instinct.

Sometimes I think that the power of this instinct makes it impossible for a woman to win. I often wonder if there is a way for a woman to do it “right,” if there is a way to do it and avoid guilt entirely. It is as if there is a kind of conflict within the creative instinct itself, a collision between different ways of expressing it. The creative instinct can be acknowledged via the production of children and it can be honored with the making of art, music, or science. It seems, however, that the energy and devotion required to honor one side of the archetype of creation must be stolen from the other side. A woman gifted with maternal or artistic gifts could well ask herself, “Is it better to be a Marie Curie (3) or to give birth to one?” Or she can ask if she can do both. Even both does not necessarily resolve the problem. She may feel that relative to her standards her child-rearing activities dilute her scientific or artistic production and her scientific or artistic activities water down her child rearing. The Promethean dilemma is apparent in this conflict: I must steal something from one side or the other to deliver something of value. There seems to be no way to resolve this conflict unless the ideals are somehow modified. Ultimately, I think a woman simply has to bear guilt to grow and get what she wants and needs in life. She has to bear guilt whether her wish is to be just a mother, just a career woman or both.

1 Jung, C.G., 1973, Letters, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, vol. 1, pp. 479ff.
2 Asper, Kathrin, lecture presented at C.G. Jung Institute-Zurich, 11 June 1990. Also see her book, The Abandoned Child, New York, Fromm International Publishing, 1993.
3 Nobel prize for physics 1903, for chemistry 1911

This article by Lawrence H. Staples is from his book Guilt with a Twist: The Promethean Way © 2008. For permission to reproduce/repost this article, contact Fisher King Press.


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Guilt and Individuation - Always Pay!


“A wise man will know it is the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay
every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson[1]


by Lawrence H. Staples

The Jungian model for psychological growth and development is called individuation. It is the process by which we achieve our unique potential as an individual. All psychological growth is difficult and often painful. The Jungian way, however, is especially so because it requires us to sin and bear guilt. The path is strewn with guilt mines. We must step on many of them to complete our journey. The guilt that lies along this path creates a formidable deterrent.

Individuation describes a person’s “process of personal growth, of becoming himself, whole, indivisible, and distinct. Key attributes that describe the process of individuation emphasize: (1) the goal of the process is the development of the personality; (2) it presupposes and includes collective relationships (i.e., it does not occur in a state of isolation); and (3) it involves a degree of opposition to social norms that have no validity. The more an individuating person’s life has previously been shaped by the collective norm, the greater is his individual immorality.”[2]

Jung, of course, clearly saw the conflict between his developmental concept of individuation and collective mores. He knew that we couldn’t individuate without sinning and incurring guilt. He explains the consequences in a brief passage:

Individuation and collectivity is a pair of opposites, two divergent destinies. They are related to one another by guilt... Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity and hence from collectivity... It means stepping over into solitude, into the cloister of the inner self… Since the breaking of personal conformity means the destruction of an aesthetic and moral ideal, the first step in individuation is a tragic guilt... The accumulation of guilt demands expiation.... Every [further]step in individuation creates new guilt and necessitates new expiation.[3]

Jung was clear and emphatic that there is a high and demanding price of guilt to be paid when one gives up conventional life and travels the path of individuation. We cannot grow without suffering guilt. It’s a path that requires courage.

But Jung also offered ideas as to how this guilt might be redeemed:

[The individuating person].... must offer a ransom in place of himself, that is, he must bring forth values, which are an equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective, personal sphere. Without this production of values, final individuation is immoral and- more than that-suicidal....
Not only has society a right, it also has a duty to condemn the individuant if he fails to create equivalent values, for he is a deserter.... Individuation remains a pose so long as no values are created.
The individual is obliged by the collective demands to purchase his individuation at the cost of an equivalent work for the benefit of society.[4] Only by accomplishing an equivalent is one exempt from the conventional, collective path. A person [who individuates] must accept the contempt of society until such time as he has accomplished his equivalent.[5]

Jung’s way is essentially the Promethean Way where “sin” eventually leads to something good for humanity. In order to accomplish our equivalent, we have to turn inward to the unconscious. We have to search there for what needs to be developed within ourselves in order to become the complete persons we are called to be. Only then do we have the capacity to give back the most we are capable of giving.

A similar idea is presented in Plato’s The Republic, in the allegory of the cave, where the philosopher king goes away to the cave, the symbolic equivalent of the unconscious, and returns to give his society the wisdom and the fundamental forms underlying life that he found there. An analogy are the vision quests of the shaman and medicine men of the Native Americans and other primitive tribal societies, who enter the world of the unconscious and bring back knowledge and skills that benefit their people. In Greek mythology, Prometheus went far away to where the gods lived, stole fire, and brought it back. He offended the gods and incurred guilt and punishment for his deed. But his guilty deed brought great benefit to mankind.


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Learn more about Guilt and Individuation in Guilt with a Twist: The Promethean Way by Lawrence H. Staples and The Guilt Cure by Nancy Carter Pennington and Lawrence H. Staples.

Download a free PDF sample of Guilt with a Twist
Download a free PDF sample of The Guilt Cure

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed similar ideas in his essay, “Compensation.” He writes, “A wise man will know it is the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay.”(Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Essays, New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1883)
[2] A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis, Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter, and Fred Plaut, Routledge& Kegan Paul, London and New York, p. 76.
[3] Jung, C.G., Collected Works, vol. 18, pars. 1094–1099. 
[4] Emerson, “Compensation.” 
[5] Jung, C.G., Collected Works, vol. 18, pars. 1094–1099.

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Do We Need More Psychology?

Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D.

In the famous 1957 BBC interview, C.G. Jung proclaimed, “We need more psychology, the human psyche must be studied! Humans are the source of all coming evil.”

Psychology is positioned to usher in a holistic approach to the study of the human psyche, our relationship to the environment, and a truly interdisciplinary educational system. As Jung pointed out, all we know and experience comes out of the psyche and all our systems, including science, have an archetypal base. The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe: Jung and Ecopsychology series explores paradigms that can be appreciated and utilized within the academic community, paradigms that offer several perspectives on the mind/body connection, humans and nature, science and the arts.

Jung, the first psychiatrist to speak of biophilia, believed that a person not connected to the land was neurotic. Carl Sagan and other prominent scientists united with church leaders to proclaim that unless we develop a sense of the sacred in the land, all will be lost. James Hillman in his books The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World and We’ve had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and The World is Getting Worse challenges psychologists to ask themselves if they are part of the problem or part of the solution vis-à-vis our relationship with the environment.

Does our philosophical base and our psychological theories and practices encompass a regard for the most basic reality - the accelerating rate of destruction of the very fabric of life’s existence? Dennis Merritt's Jung and Ecopsychology series explores how Jungian theory and practice can provide a 21st century model for understanding the human psyche in relation to nature and how it can help establish a truly interdisciplinary educational system that cultivates and develops our connection to the land and creates a sustainable lifestyle.


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A significant contribution to evolving paradigms being explored by the new as well 
as by the traditional areas of psychology.

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Oct 15, 2012 - News Release
Just Published - John Ryan Haule's 
Tantra and Erotic Trance in two volumes.

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Tantra and Erotic Trance
Volume One - Outer Work
Human sexuality is a problematic thing. It gets us into trouble, breaks our hearts, involves us in painful compulsive relationships, even transmits deadly diseases. It would surely scare us off, if it were not for its siren call to higher forms of union and moments of bodily bliss. When examined more closely, however, and especially when we turn our gaze inward to see what sexual arousal is doing to our consciousness, we find we are in an altered state—a form of “erotic trance” that reveals dimensions of ourselves, our partner, and possibilities for human life that otherwise would not have been discovered.

Procreative sex forms the foundation of the nuclear family and the glue that holds society together—what we might call the “horizontal” potential of sex.  Tantra, however, is about its “vertical” dimension—about “tuning” our awareness to bring higher, spiritual realities into focus. It all begins by mastering our bodily reflexes. This first volume of Tantra and Erotic Trance deals with the preliminary stages of mastery and the transformations of consciousness that they make possible. The whole project is imagined as a ladder with its feet on the earth and its top leaning into Indra’s heaven.  Each rung represents a new level of awareness, a mastery of what just the rung below had appeared to us as a poorly understood gift.


Tantra & Erotic Trance

ISBN 978-0-9776076-8-6
9.25 x 7.5 x .75
226 pages
Index, Bibliography
Publication Date November 1, 2012

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Tantra and Erotic Trance
Volume Two - Inner Work
In the first volume of Tantra and Erotic Trance we learned to overcome the ejaculatory reflex and go “beyond orgasm,” and in turn were introduced to aspects of our awareness that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Holding ourselves in a state of longing where nothing needs be done, we learn the transpersonal potential of “erotic trance,” inhabiting the body and mind of our partner as well as our own. We become acquainted with an inner force that has a will of its own, the serpent of light that India calls “kundalini.” By now, every step we have taken has separated us from the cultural assumptions of our society and aroused disturbing emotions and images. Facing them down in calm openness calls kundalini forth as our ally, clarifies our emotional responses and gives us a new stance toward life.

Now in this second volume of Tantra and Erotic Trance, we find that the “diamond ladder of mystical ascent” is no longer “out there” in bodily congress or social expectations. Its “rungs,” instead, are the series of chakras through which the kundalini serpent rises. Each chakra that opens brings us into a different visionary world and a different emotional state. We begin in the heaviness of earth and rise through tumultuous waters and the fires of rage before entering the lightness of air and the endless expanse of ether. Indra’s heaven is finally visited in the brow chakra, and we become one with the cosmos at the crown chakra. The ultimate goal, however, is to climb back down and live on the earth with our experience intact so that every empirical event is charged with transcendent meaning.

Tantra & Erotic Trance

ISBN 978-0-9776076-9-3
9.25 x 7.5 x .75
226 pages
Index, Bibliography
Publication Date November 1, 2012

John Ryan Haule
holds a doctorate in religious studies from Temple University. He is a Jungian analyst trained in Zurich and a faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute-Boston. In addition to Tantra and Erotic Trance I and II, his publications include: Divine Madness: Archetypes of Romantic Love; The Love Cure: Therapy Erotic and Sexual; Perils of the Soul: Ancient Wisdom and the New Age; The Ecstasies of St. Francis: The Way of Lady Poverty; and Jung in the 21st Century, in two volumes: Evolution and Archetype and Synchronicity and Science.


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The Cry of Merlin

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June 27, 2012

News Release - Just Published by Fisher King Press

The Cry of Merlin: 
Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologist
The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volume II
by Dennis L. Merritt

Carl Jung can be seen as the prototypical ecopsychologist. Volume II of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe explores how Jung’s life and times created the context for the ecological nature of Jungian ideas.  It is an ecopsychological exercise to delineate the many dimensions of Jung’s life that contributed to creation of his system—his basic character, nationality, family of origin, difficulties in childhood, youthful environment, period in Western culture, and his pioneering position in the development of modern psychology. Jung said every psychology is a subjective confession, making it important to discover the lacuna in Jung’s character and in his psychological system, particularly in relation to Christianity. Archetypically redressing the lacuna leads to the creation of a truly holistic, integrated ecological psychology that can help us live sustainably on this beautiful planet.

Front Cover: Jung’s relief carving on the side of his Bollingen Tower, a place he associated with Merlin. The inscription reads, “May the light arise, which I have borne in my body.” The woman reaching out to milk the mare is Jung’s anima as “a millennia-old ancestress.” The image is an anticipation of the Age of Aquarius, which is under the constellation of Pegasus. The feminine element is said to receive a special role in this new eon. Jung imagined the inspiring springs that gush forth from the hoof prints of Pegasus, the “fount horse,” to be associated with the Water Bearer, the symbol of Aquarius.

Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over twenty-five years of participation in Lakota Sioux ceremonies has strongly influenced his worldview.

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Riting Myth

Just Published by Fisher King Press

Plotting Your Personal Story
By Dennis Patrick Slattery
Here's the foreword by Michael Conforti
 

Imagine sitting in an Irish pub, drinking ale and listening to the bard weave stories about so many different things, or perhaps captivated by the glow of an outdoor fire while listening to an elder telling stories about history, traditions, and ways to navigate the different life portals that each and every one of us will have to enter at some time. And then—there are stories about destiny, that illusive, mercurial something that catches hold of us at the beginning of life and never seems to want to let go. La forza di destino!! These are the experiences one has in knowing and working with Dr. Dennis Slattery. Whether sharing a pizza and beer or having the luxury of attending one of his lectures or classes, one is privileged to experience an authentic “elder” who, in the tradition of all those wise ones who came before him, has the gift of bringing the world of myth and imagination to life and showing us that indeed these are as real as anything we can touch and hold in our hands.

Dr. Slattery reminds us that myths teach us about all aspects of life, from birth to death, and through the weavings of these eternal stories not only help us recognize the presence of these universal and archetypal patterns but also shows us ways to approach the transcendent.

With more than thirty years of teaching and working with myth, Slattery’s newest work, entitled Riting Myth, Mythic Writing, is a bold adventure in that it asks the reader to actively engage in the mythic tradition, who is asked to take on the role of bard and allow the soul to tell its story. While he opens the book in reminding us of the perennial wisdom contained in myth, he extends this work by inviting the reader to speak with Self and soul and, in a mythopoetic way, engage psyche as experienced in one’s own symptoms, fears, hopes, and joys.

Unless one understands inherent profundity contained and revealed in  myths and legends, it may be difficult to grasp the challenge inherent in Dr. Slattery’s latest work. He wants his readers not only to know these perennial stories but to assume a certain authorship in the mythic process. His hope is that through this process of “Mythic Writing,” the individual will cultivate a meaningful relationship with those transpersonal forces which guide the life process.

There are far too many workshops dealing with myth, legend, and personal writing experiences where individual narratives are somehow elevated to the domain of archetypal, mythic stories. Personal narratives are temporal, whereas myths are eternal and exist as the universal bedrock upon which each new experience is built. The “prima materia” of the soul’s experience may not easily accommodate personal narratives, which tend to override, dominate, and ignore those eternal processes that represent the gold of myths. In this journey between the personal and eternal, we sail between Scylla and Charybdis, a journey of two worlds. One is the world of the ego and the whims, needs, and illusions of an egoic world whose actions are often purely secular, despite its protest of caring for soul. Then there is the world of the transcendent. This is the domain Jung spoke of as Soul and Psyche and Rabbi Herschel calls the “Ineffable.” Once the realm of transcendence is touched, ego dominance and the supremacy of conscious intentions must, by necessity, take a back seat. Constructionism, narrative therapy, and the illusion that every piece of personal writing is a magnum opus of the soul must be humbled by all that is truly profound. We all know how important it is for parents to believe that whatever their child produces is sacred, and to some extent it is, even when it involves peanut butter, tomato sauce, sesame oil, and chocolate over noodles. But there comes a point when pasta and steak dinner and a really great bottle of wine really does sound and taste so much better than our child’s culinary creative expressions. For anyone who partakes of the joys of gastronomical wonders, a moment of reckoning and humbling will someday come when we have to say that my cooking just does not match up with what I know is truly delicious. After more than fifty years of working side by side with many of my own families’ cooks, learning the tradition of “La Cucina Povera,” there are still some foods I still can’t make as well as my aunts and grandfather have done for decades.

Slattery knows and fully appreciates great food and wines and knows where to find the pubs serving the finest brews in Ireland. He knows and loves tradition and has an eye for beauty, originality, and the dialect of Self. Now the question remains if he can inspire these same sensibilities in his students and readers.

His work is that of a bridge builder, a “mediatore,” one who connects, and in this book  he points to a realm where the universal and eternal can be approached through the personal. In doing so, he shows us the relationship between those myths that have guided humanity since the beginning of time and those very tender and personal moments when we begin to write our own story, tell a tale, and hope to God that our story is a telling of something that still connects our life to the life of all those who came before us and that bridges the ego to the transcendent and archetypal. Writing from the ego can be—well, the story of the ego, while the work of myths is a telling of the eternal, the story of soul and a wisdom that far transcends conscious understanding. These are two very different approaches to myth and story.

It is in this work of making connections between ego and soul that Dennis Slattery is a master. From his many years of working with these eternal motifs, he can easily distinguish when the story is created for the benefit of aggrandizing the ego, from those moments where Self and pure inspiration eclipses the wishes of ego. Two different worlds, two different sensibilities, and each requires the deft hand of a master to sail through these waters, in which one wrong turn will land you against the rocky shore. On the other hand, we also experience those moments when sailor and sea are one, and at those times one has access to those vistas reserved for seekers of—of what?—of wisdom, of knowledge, of a way of life that far transcends the limitation of their personal ego?

So dear Dr. Slattery, navigate well with these sojourners. Teach them the ways of ancient mariners, of the shoals that have stranded sailors since the beginning of time and those stretches of open water that allow for endless journeys across the deep blue sea.


--Michael Conforti, Founder and Director of The Assisi Institute, Brattleboro, Vermont

Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D. has been teaching and studying mythology as well as depth and archetypal psychology for the last 35 years. During that time, and in large measure through the writings of Joseph Campbell and C.G. Jung, he has been creating and offering writing retreats throughout the U.S., at the Eranos Foundation in Ascona, Switzerland and the Assisi Institute summer program in Assisi, Italy. Riting Myth, Mythic Writing is a compilation and distillation of those experiences. These riting meditations can help guide and connect a person to a greater sense of the mythic as a way of knowing, and of story as a way of seeing and discerning the broad contours of one’s personal myth.


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by Dennis Patrick Slattery

Paperback
220 pages - Large 7.5 x 9.25 page format
First Edition
Publisher: Fisher King Press (June 1, 2012)
ISBN: 9781926715773




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Lifting the Veil


Just Published by Fisher King Press

Lifting the Veil
by Jane Kamerling and Fred Gustafson

The veil is not just a female garment to hide, protect, or humble Muslim women, but the curtain behind which resides the feminine principle, repressed in both East and West. Beneath the veil resides the unconsciousness of both cultures that become manifested in the politics of today.

The veil has emerged in the twenty-first century as an international symbol that holds a variety of meanings. The veil can be understood as merely the customary dress of Middle Eastern women, a religious expression, or a political statement. For some women donning the veil represents male dominance. For others the veil signifies self-determination and independence in reaction to the threat of Western ideology. The veil powerfully holds the polarity of attitudes and beliefs and invites the projections of psychological complexes in both Western and Islamic societies, fueling conflict between and within each culture.

To lift the veil of ignorance, it is necessary to understand both the Islamic and Western world views. Many Westerners know little about the history of the cultures, religions, and nations of the Islamic world. History classes in the U.S. are focused on American and European history and how Europe discovered, influenced, conflicted, and shaped American culture. Within that specific framework, everything the West knows about the world and its history tends to be viewed through a Western lens, influenced and molded within Christian ideology. All else is viewed as foreign and risks the possibility of being misunderstood since it seems different and is evaluated within our limited worldview.

From a historical and psychological perspective, Lifting the Veil explores and expands our knowledge of Islam, and the repressed feminine principle within both Eastern and Western cultures.


Jane Kamerling, L.C.S.W. is a Diplomate Jungian Analyst and member of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts and Interregional Society of Jungian Analysts. She is a faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and has designed and co-directed the Clinical Training is a senior analyst who has lectured both nationally and internationality on the relationship of Jungian psychology to culture, mythology and religion. She has a full time analytical practice in Chicago.

Fred R. Gustafson, D. Min. is a Diplomate Jungian Analyst (Zurich) and member of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He is a senior training analyst with the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and a clergy member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He has lectured both nationally and internationally on subjects related to Analytical Psychology and religion. He is the author of The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln: An Ancient Image for Our Present Time, Dancing Between Two Worlds; Jung and the Native American Soul and The Moonlit Path: Reflections on the Dark Feminine.

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Lifting the Veil

First Edition

Paperback: 160 pages

Publisher: Fisher King Press (May 2012)

Language: English

ISBN-13: 978-1926715759






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The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way

a Jungian Perspective by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

The Sister speaks to all those who want to cultivate an unlived promise—those on a spiritual path, those who are filled with the urgency of poems that have to be written, paintings that must be painted, journeys that yearn to be taken…

Who is She, this Sister from Below? She’s certainly not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you’ll allow, She’ll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She’s a siren, a seductress, a shape-shifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life—the evolution of Soul.

The Sister emerges out of reverie, dream, a fleeting memory, a difficult emotion—she is the moment of inspiration—the muse. Naomi Ruth Lowinsky writes of nine manifestations in which the muse visits her, stirring up creative ferment, filling her with ghosts, mysteries, erotic teachings, the old religion—bringing forth her voice as a poet. Among these forms of the muse are the “Sister from Below,” the inner poet who has spoken for the soul since language began. The muse also appears as the ghost of a grandmother Naomi never met, who died in the Shoah—a grandmother with ‘unfinished business.’ She visits in the form of Old Mother India, whose culture Naomi visited as a young woman. She cracks open her Western mind, flooding her with many gods and goddesses. She appears as Sappho, the great lyric poet of the ancient world, who engages her in a lovely midlife fantasy. She comes as “Die Ür Naomi,” an old woman from the biblical story for which Naomi was named, who insists on telling Her version of the Book of Ruth. And in the end, surprisingly, the muse appears in the form of a man, a long dead poet whom Naomi loved in her youth.

The Sister from Below is a personal story, yet universal, of giving up a creative calling because of life’s obligations, and being called back to it in later life. This forthcoming Fisher King Press publication describes the intricate patterns of a rich inner life; it is a traveler’s memoir, with outer journeys to Italy, India and a Neolithic cave in Bulgaria, and inward journeys to biblical Canaan and Sappho’s Greece; it is filled with mythic experience, a poet’s story told. The Sister conveys the lived experience of the creative life, a life in which active imagination—the Jungian technique of engaging with inner figures—is an essential practice.

The Sister speaks to all those who want to cultivate an unlived promise—those on a spiritual path, those who are filled with the urgency of poems that have to be written, paintings that must be painted, journeys that yearn to be taken…

eBook, Paperback, Download a Free PDF Sample at the Fisher King Press Online Bookstore.

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky is the author of The Motherline: Every Woman’s Journey to Find Her Female Roots (2008) and numerous prose essays, many of which have been published in Psychological Perspectives and The Jung Journal. She has had poetry published in many literary magazines and anthologies, among them After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Weber Studies, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Tiferet and Asheville Poetry Review. Naomi has three published poetry collections, Adagio and Lamentation, red clay is talking (2000) and crimes of the dreamer. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times. Naomi is a Jungian analyst in private practice, poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, and a grandmother many times over.

The cover image "Phases of the Moon" is an oil painting by Bianca Daalder-van Iersel, an artist and Jungian analyst practicing in Los Angeles, California. You can learn more about the artist and her work at www.bdaalder.com.


The Sister from Below : When the Muse Gets Her Way
—by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
ISBN 978-0-9810344-2-3
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"Scientific study, cognitive behavioral techniques, self-help books, and political action will not do the trick. We will not achieve the fundamental level of change and understanding that is called for unless the archetypal, transcendent, sacred and mythical dimension of the psyche is engaged. The sense of the sacred Carl Sagan saw as necessary to save the environment will not be developed. Our educational systems will not be able to teach from a deep, holistic, integrated perspective unless they embrace an ecopsychological framework. Without a mythic perspective, hubris and inflation with “our” powers and the religion of science will make John’s revelatory visions a reality."
--Dairy Farmers Guide to the Universe Vol. 1

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The Definitive Journey

ECB-Cvr20080528.jpgFrom Enemy, Cripple, Beggar

The hero who searches for new paths in his heart and soul often lets hints and hunches guide him forward. Yet, he also needs to be equipped with courage to search beyond the boundaries of common ground and with humbleness towards the unknown that lies ahead of him. He must also carry a bagful of questions and concerns, curiosity and conflict, doubt and fear; “Every man hath the right to doubt his task, and to forsake it from time to time; but what he must not do is forget it.” Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain, p. 53.

Erel Shalit titles are on Sale now at the Fisher King Press online bookstore.

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Marked By Fire: Stories of the Jungian Way

9781926715681.jpgMarked By Fire: Stories of the Jungian Way
The Fisher King Review, Volume 1 - Inaugural Edition
Edited by Patricia Damery and Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

 

"This life is the way, the long sought after way to the unfathomable which we call divine" —C.G. Jung, The Red Book

 

Marked by Fire: Stories of the Jungian Way is a soulful collection of essays that illuminate the inner life.

 

When Soul appeared to C.G. Jung and demanded he change his life, he opened himself to the powerful forces of the unconscious. He recorded his inner journey, his conversations with figures that appeared to him in vision and in dream in The Red Book. Although it would be years before The Red Book was published, much of what we now know as Jungian psychology began in those pages, when Jung allowed the irrational to assault him. That was a century ago.

 

How do those of us who dedicate ourselves to Jung’s psychology as analysts, teachers, writers respond to Soul’s demands in our own lives?  If we believe, with Jung, in “the reality of the psyche,” how does that shape us? The articles in Marked By Fire portray direct experiences of the unconscious; they tell life stories about the fiery process of becoming ourselves.

 

Contributors to this edition of the Fisher King Review include: Jerome Bernstein, Claire Douglas, Gilda Frantz, Jacqueline Gerson, Jean Kirsch, Chie Lee, Karlyn Ward, Henry Abramovitch, Sharon Heath, Dennis Patrick Slattery, Robert Romanyshyn, Patricia Damery, and Naomi Ruth Lowinsky.

 

Product Details
Paperback & eBook editions: 150 pages (estimate)
Large Format - Trim Size 9.25" x 7.5"
Publisher: Fisher King Press; 1st edition (April 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1-926715-68-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-926715-68-1

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, and a growing list of alternative titles.

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article by Dennis Merritt

One of Jung’s biggest challenges to modern men and women from an ecopsychological perspective is to unite our cultured side with what he called “the two million-year-old man within.” The “indigenous one within” is a person living in a sacred and symbolic relationship with nature, in a world where “we are all related”—the two-leggeds, four-leggeds, six-leggeds, etc. To understand Jung’s challenge, we begin by looking at our Western indigenous roots and the evolution of the Western worldview. Indigenous cultures, including our Celtic, Slavic and Teutonic ancestors, considered all elements of the cosmos to be spiritually alive and interrelated. Humans were seen as but one element humbly present in the grand scheme of things. (n 4) Our ancestors spoke of gods and goddesses and other beings in nature equal or superior to humans “such as giants and dwarves, elves and trolls, fairies, leprechauns, gnomes, satyrs, nymphs and mermaids,” Ralph Metzner notes. “These deities and beings could be communed with by anyone who was willing to practice the methods taught by the shamans and their successors the witches, the wise women of the woods—using magical plants and stones, chants and incantations, dances and rituals.” (Metzner 1993, p. 7)

Traditional cultures also tend to revere close relationships between people, making kinship and clan identities far more important than the individual person. Small groups allow easier connections and face-to-face interactions, facilitating democratic decision-making processes. In traditional cultures,
Reciprocity and belonging rule human interaction…Shared communal spaces and cooperatively tended land are…typical. The purpose of life is…to live in harmony with one’s group, honoring tradition and continuity with the ancestors, as well as the spiritual world, which provides for human needs. (Winter 1996, p. 53)
A radically different Western worldview has evolved over the last several hundred years, a worldview that to this point has been very successful in material terms. The scientific priesthood starting with Bacon (end of 16th century) arose to understand and control the natural world as a means of defending against nature’s threats. (Ryley 1988, p. 227) Newton and Descartes established the foundation of a mechanical view of a universe composed of inert, physical elements that gradually replaced the spiritual view which had until then been dominant in Western culture. A mechanistic, soulless natural world made it vulnerable to the extraction mentality wielded by Western engineering. (n 5)

John Locke (1632-1704) interpreted God’s command to subdue the earth to mean that man had to work the land to “improve it for the benefit of life,” justifying private land ownership to possess the “[necessary] materials to work on.” (Locke 1988, p. 290-292 quoted in Winter 1996, p. 40) (n 6) “[Calvinists] who helped settle America and promulgate the Industrial Revolution in England” thought of work as being a divine “calling” and “material rewards were signs of God’s blessings on labor well done.” (p. 44) (n 7) In our worldview,
No longer do we have primary moral or psychological responsibilities to the society (instead they are to our own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness); no longer is the most important purpose of our life to ensure our passage to heaven or to honor our ancestors; no longer is our essential identity based on our family or kin relationship. Instead, our lives are lived as individuals, competitive and separate, pursuing our own material wealth through the God-given rights of freedom and noninterference from the state. (Clark 1989, p. 268 referenced in Winter 1996, p. 43, 44) (n 8)
The Judeo-Christian tradition established a very different relationship with nature than that of our indigenous ancestors. The Hebrews condemned the followers of the Canaanite great goddess Astarte whose shrines were in wild places. (Metzner 1993, p. 7) Judaism lost the sense of other Near Eastern religions of “the harmonious integration of man’s life with the life of nature.” (Frankfort 1948, p. 342 quoted in Sessions 1991, p. 109) Christians worshipped a transcendent creator far above human affairs who couldn’t be communicated with directly and they “denied and denigrated the creative spiritual energies inherent in nature.” (Metzner 1993, p. 7) Christian belief in a special covenant with a transcendent Father deity “gives them a sense of a divine mission in the world and a spiritual destiny beyond that of other members of the created world,” prompting ecotheologian Thomas Berry to claim, “the ultimate basis of our ecological difficulties lies in the roots of our Christian spirituality” (n 9):
In the original Christian teaching there were rightly considered to be two scriptures: the scripture of the natural world, and the scripture of the Bible. Nature was seen originally as both created by the divine and as a primary self-presentation of the divine. (Ryley 1998, p. 224, 225) (n 10)
Church fathers demonized the many spirits and deities consulted by the Greeks and Romans known to them as daimones. (von Franz 1980 referenced in Metzner 1993, p. 7, 8) (n 11) So began the long and sordid Church history of demonizing and crushing what it perceived to be its opposition. It violently destroyed the early Gnostic Christian sects who taught rituals enabling ordinary men and women to commune directly with the divine. Many reform movements were popular within Christianity in the 12th century, such as the Cathars in Provence, France and the Knights Templar. The Church branded the adherents as heretics and launched inquisitions and internal crusades against them. Pagan witches became the focus of inquisitions in the 14th century, when the Church expanded the use of torture to extract confessions of being in league with the devil. Estimates are that between 2 to 9 million witches were tortured and burned over the next 300 years and their property confiscated. (p. 7, 8) The vast majority were women, originally known as the “wise women of the woods”:
[Many were] simple country women, some of whom were maintaining the herbal knowledge, especially as related to midwifery, contraception and abortion. Some were shamans who used hallucinogenic plants (particularly of the solanaceous or nightshade variety) to induce visionary experiences of shaman’s flight, referred to as flying through the air to witch’s Sabbath. (p. 8)
In the analysis of Ralph Metzner, the heart of the problem is a split between nature and spirit in Western consciousness. (Metzner 1993, p. 6) This philosophical split goes to the very root of Western philosophy beginning in ancient Greece. In Bertrand Russell’s opinion, “What is amiss even in the best philosophy after Democritus [i.e., after the pre-Socratics], is an undue emphasis on man as compared to the universe.” (Russell 1979, p. 90 quoted in Fox 1991b, p. 107) In The Illusion of Technique, William Barnett states:
The idea of nature has played a small part in contemporary philosophy. Bergson once remarked that most philosophers seem to philosophize as if they were sealed in the privacy of their study and did not live on a planet surrounded by the vast organic world of animals, plants, insects, and protozoa, with whom their own life is linked in a single history. (Barnett 1979, p. 363 quoted in Fox 1991b, p. 107)
Christian anthropocentric (human centered) theology had a strong influence on the leading philosophical spokesmen for the Scientific Revolution. Science and religion gradually evolved into a division of domains following a medieval transition:
The world of the creator, of spirit, of divinity, of transcendent realities and of moral concern, was the realm of religion, and science agreed to stay out of it. On the other hand the world of matter and forces which could be perceived through the senses and measured and manipulated was the realm of science, and the church gave the scientists free rein to develop their value-free, purpose-less, blind, yet totally deterministic, mechanistic conception of the universe. Thus the stage was set for a further and complete desacralization of the natural world, with the transcendent creator progressively marginalized, until we have the totally life-less, non-sentient, purpose-less world of the modern age. (Metzner 1993, p. 4, 5) (n 12)
The Protestant reformation eliminated “the last vestiges of pre-Christian European paganism” in the overlay of Christianity onto pagan sites and the practices that survived, especially in the cult of Mary. The Black Madonna was and is its most potent form; to this day it can be found in over 500 European churches. The Black Virgin cult is essentially a popular retention of the “ancient black goddesses such as Artemis, Cybele and particularly the Egyptian Isis.” (Begg 1985 referred to in Metzner 1993, p. 5) (n 13)

Freud cast the European split between spirit and nature in psychological terms, especially the Protestant version of the Christian myth where heaven or the spiritual realm is obtained by conquering the body and overcoming “our ‘lower’ animal instincts and passions.” The natural self includes bodily sensations, impulses, feelings and instincts. Freud denied the spiritual and transpersonal realms. For Freud, consciousness and culture is attained only by ego consciousness struggling “against the unconscious body-based, animal id,” the seething caldron of the unconscious full of constraints and distractions. In this view, there is an inevitable level of discontent in culture because of conflicted relationship with the natural in us, and by projection, with the natural world. (Metzner 1993, p. 6) (see Appendix A)

There were many crosscurrents which complicate the picture of a dualistic split in the dominant collective consciousness of the Europeans. Hildegard von Bingen, an 11th century Rhineland Benedictine abbess, “spoke of viriditas—the greenness, as the creative power of God manifest throughout the creation.” For her, “‘The soul is in the body the way the sap is in the tree’—in other words, the soul nourishes and sustains the body, instead of having to rise above it or struggle against it.” (Metzner 1993, p. 7) “The greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history,” St. Francis of Assisi, “tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures.” (White 1967/1971, p. 6 quoted in Sessions 1991, p. 110) The sophisticated philosophy of the 17th century Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, has a modern ecological base with a spirituality some compare to Zen Buddhism. Spinoza drew upon ancient Jewish pantheistic roots in an attempt “to resanctify the world by identifying God with Nature”—human and nonhuman. He found mind (or mental attributes) throughout nature and used the developing science of the time to help him attain spiritual self-realization and deepen an appreciation of nature. His pantheism influenced “some of the leading figures of the eighteenth–century European Romantic movement (the main Western counter cultural force speaking on behalf of nature and against the uncritical and unbridled enthusiasm for the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions).” Spinoza also influenced the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (father of the “deep ecology” movement), and Albert Einstein. (p. 112) Calling himself a “disciple of Spinoza,” Einstein expressed his admiration as well for Saint Francis and upheld “cosmic religious feeling” as the highest form of religious life. (Einstein 1942, p. 14 quoted in Sessions 1991, p. 110)

Spirituality associated with the natural world did not begin to remerge in Christianity until the Romantic Movement in the eighteenth century. (Ryley 1998, p. 228, 229) The English Romantic visionary poet and painter William Blake wrote: “the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged.” Blake believed the Church’s forceful presentation of an abstract mental deity had ruined our abilities to directly perceive spirits everywhere—in nature, places and in cities and towns. (Metzner 1993, p. 7) (see Appendix B: William Blake and the English Romantics)

Notes and Bibliography

The article you just finished reading is an excerpt from Dennis Merritt's:

9781926715421.jpg
The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe
Jung, Hermes and Ecopsychology in Four Volumes
We keep forgetting that we are primates and that we have to make allowances for these primitive layers in our psyche. The farmer is still closer to these layers. In tilling the earth he moves around within a very narrow radius, but he moves on his own land. —C.G. Jung

 Volume I:  Jung and Ecopsychologyir?t=fkp-dpa-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=192671542X presents the main premises of Jungian ecopsychology,offers some of Jung’s best ecopsychological quotes, and provides a brief overview of the evolution of our dysfunctional Western relationship with the environment. 
—ISBN 978192671542 Available December 2011

Volume II:  The Cry of Merlin—Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologistir?t=fkp-dpa-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715438makes the basic premises of Jungian ecopsychology more convincing and understandable by illustrating how they evolved out of Jung’s lived experience. 
—ISBN 9781926715438 Available April 2012


Volume III:  Hermes and the Cows—Hermes, Ecopsychology and Complexity is an exegesis of the myth of Hermes stealing Apollo’s cattle to be used as a mythic foundation for Jungian ecopsychology with Hermes' wand as its symbol. 
—ISBN 9781926715445 Available Sept 2012

Volume IV: An Archetypal View of the Land, the Seasons, and the Planet of the Insect explores the environment, with the Midwest as an example, using traditional Jungian and Hillmanian approaches to deepen our connection with the land, the seasons, and insects. The Dalai Lama said how we relate to insects is very important for it reveals much about a culture’s relationship with the psyche and nature. 
—ISBN 9781926715452 Available December 2012


Dennis Merritt, Ph.D., LCSW, is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over twenty years of participation in Lakota Sioux ceremonies have strongly influenced his worldview.


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ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715551Another New Fisher King Press Jungian psychological publication!

Gathering the Light: A Jungian View of Meditation

by V. Walter Odajnyk

Foreword by Thomas Moore

Publication Date Dec 10, 2011 - Advance Orders Welcomed. Also available from the Pacifica Graduate Institute Bookstore.

Originally published by Shambhala in 1993, Gathering the Lightir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715551 is a significant contribution to Jungian psychology and to research concerning the relationship between psychological and spiritual development.

Gathering the Light remains a groundbreaking work that integrates Jungian psychology, alchemy, and the practice of meditation. It is one of very few, if not the only Jungian book that demonstrates that the alchemical opus is not only an analogy of the individuation process, but also a depiction of various experiential stages encountered in the course of meditation.

Gathering the Light compares Western and Eastern images of the goal of alchemy and of meditation practice; it offers a psychological interpretation of the Zen Ox Herding pictures; it argues that in essence both psychological and spiritual development consists of the withdrawal of projections; and the appendix offers a critique of Wilber’s mistaken view of Jung’s conception of archetypes and provides a critical review of Thomas Cleary’s translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower.

About the Author
V. Walter Odajnyk, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst, and serves as a Core Faculty member and is the Research Coordinator for Pacifica Graduate Institute's Mythological Studies Program.

Product Details
* Paperback: 264 pages
* Publisher: Fisher King Press (Dec 2011)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1926715551
* ISBN-13: 978-1926715551


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Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, and a growing list of alternative titles.
  • International Shipping.
  • Credit Cards Accepted.
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