Blogs

I took a trip to Istanbul soon after I finished my coursework for grad school. The first thing on my list of things to do was to visit Hagia Sophia. All I knew about it was that it was that it was a church. I was thrilled that I was going to see a historical building associated with Sophia, who was a main character in my dissertation. I couldn’t wait to get inside the church to see all the symbolism around Her. Much to my surprise when the country was invaded they installed Islamic images, the C

Halloween, Masks and Your Shadow: What’s Jung Got To Do With It?
 by Effie Heotis, M.S.

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious".

Like a haunted house in a good horror movie, shadow work can be scary. However, it holds a key which can unlock our unconscious minds, allowing us to become more at peace with ourselves and with others in the process. The shadow, if not called on, is that scary thing that...

http://www.pathstothepsyche.com/blog/

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

Greetings -

Thanks for the invite to join, Bonnie! I am currently working on a vision tentatively called: 

Integrating the New Mythology: A Poet-Crash Vision for the Planet 

As a primer, please enjoy my interview with Bonnie

And these current pieces from PlanetShifter.com Magazine & openmythsource:

Mythologists, Mystics & Magicians in Transition: 18 Interviews from the PlanetShifter.com Magazine Reservoir 2010 – 2011. Source Directory #3

sound symbols, archetypes & the power of myth: an alchemic journ

            Since the patriarchy is giving way to a new sense of equality and partnership between men and women, I don’t want to give you the impression that The Hunger Games is only about the new feminine Hera.  It is also about the new masculine Hero.  Uranus in Aries is waking us all up to a new sense of identity, a new sense that we are all the heroes and heras of our own destiny.  And that destiny involves being there for each other, with respect and ingenuity.

            I was going to us

Beliefs about who we are, what the world is like, and what we can aspire to in life, arise out of the continual flow of sensations in the body that are not reflections of present experience but of the initial conditions of our lives.  Although these sensations seem

Jungian analyst Murray Stein writes:

“Steven Herrmann is one of those rare individuals who can brilliantly bring intellectual prowess and visionary depth together in a graceful dance of prose and poetry. In this work he presents the many cross-overs and parallels between two similarly gifted thinkers, C.G. Jung and William James. A comparative study of these two giants of modernity is long overdue, and Steven Hermann is perfectly prepared to cover this match in all its splendor.”

Murray Stein, Ph.

     Filmgoers may have laughingly dismissed Godzilla, the Teenage Werewolf, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the 1950’s, but nobody laughs at the real-life monsters we see on television every day in the form of terrorists, genocidal dictators, and political leaders who incite divisiveness and spout nuclear threats. We get it. Dystopia is us. Our problems are caused by humanity’s psychological and spiritual ignorance, and they will not be resolved until enough individuals acquire more m

We stand on the brink of an epochal shift in consciousness. Just as our forefathers stood on the steps of Independence Hall and proclaimed their independence from their Father, the King of England, we are on the cusp of a historically significant moment. Our forefathers sought freedom by the sword. Our freedom will not come by way of the warrior and fear, but by the cup of truth and love.

When the immigrants streamed by boat toward Ellis Island, they were gr

Hi All,

I'm making a documentary film about ecological adaptation and the transformation of modern myths from the limitless growth of free market economy to the archetype of loving home and taking care of the planet (which i frame as depth psychology in terms both ancient and postmodern).

Please watch the trailer at startsomegood.com/clnc

If this inspires you, please donate - pledges being at just $5 and every person that joins this community becomes part of the new story we are building together.

VON FRANZ: I met him when I was eighteen. And I began in the year later in ’34: I began analysis with him.

We went out there to the tower, and out of the bushes suddenly–we were standing around, kind of, you know awkwardly, as one does, not knowing what was going to happen–and then out of the bushes came a man, and I was deeply impressed by him.

I thought he naturally, he was a Methuselah because when you are eighteen you ‘think a 58 year old is ready for the cemetery.

He told that story which you

A recent seminar on Jung and Steiner and their contributions to an evolution of consciousness, held at the C. G. Jung Institute in San Francisco, was well attended by individuals schooled in both camps. This seems to be happening more and more: finding the common ground of these two men's great works.

Although contemporaries, Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner never met. And although they did not have much good to say about the other, they shared a common philosophical ancestor, Wolfgang von Goethe. (R

Play is the highest form of research.– Albert Einstein

If it is important even for our survival on the planet to relearn re-entering the Mystery of the Present, what serves this end?

This question is one I contemplate this season as the dark comes before 5 in the evening and stays well past 7 in the morning. Mystery crackles in the fire I build in the wood stove, glows in the candlelight on the altar, sparkles in the Christmas tree bulbs we put on the little blue spruce we brought in for its sec

Some of the reasons I am willing to suffer knowledge of my participation in climate change.

When I think of the best approach to the issues we have created in our environment, I think of the old Buddhist adage: Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Detach from outcome. The problem lies in being so overwhelmed that we cannot show up to pay attention. Then we deny the truth, effectively participating in a horrible outcome! It is critical that we are not paralyzed into denial by our fear.

In the re

After the Tucson lecture and workshop, April 4-5, 2014, Friends of Jung, Tucson, Arizona ,
The Environmental Crisis: Birth of a New Consciousness?

Goethe:"sublimely towering, wide-spreading tree of God" Strasbourg Cathedral, from Wikipedia

In my story of how after nine months of some pretty intense psychotherapy my patient and I decided to end our therapeutic relationship for a more emotionally and spiritually honest coupling that leveled the playing field, even in its telling, I break a taboo. The publication of my account of what it has been like for my husband and me to live with this history for twenty-four years has elicited the predicted ire and scorn from parts of the psychological community.

The evolution of a therapy relat

The vineyards are quiet; the nights, cold; the goats, rowdy with too much rest. This is the time to sink into the sofa and seed yourself with Spirit, whether that be from meditation, dreaming, or from reading. These books are some of my own reading that I have gotten a great deal from this season, books which relate to Biodynamic farming and spiritual development.

My friend Katherine Presley recommended Tanis Helliwell's Summer with the Leprechauns:A True Story. When I started reading the book, I

Some topics are so controversial we cannot discuss them. Jane Davenport Platko’s In the Tracks of the Unseen: Memoirs of a Jungian Analyst brings one of those topics into full view: when the doctor and patient fall in love.

While we psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have thorough discussions as to why these kinds of relationships are problematic, we seldom have open discussions about what happens when they seem to work. Those who have entered such relationships rightfully fear judgement.

I will