Blogs

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Blog One:  Series Introduction

America On the Couch: How To Understand the Stories Driving Us

By Carol S. Pearson

I’m writing this blog series for those who, like me, are worried about my country (the United States). I suspect it is not news to you that our two-party system has devolved into an endless cultural civil war that makes it difficult to solve the urgent problems we face. As the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, demonstrated, some p

Part 1 – Framing the Message

Most American men above the age of sixty who learned about masculinity by watching John Wayne movies as children are familiar with this melody without knowing its name, let alone its history. Here it is.

Recognize it? The tune is called “Garryowen,” and it has been featured as a military marching song in several movies, including The Fighting 69th, They Died with their Boots On, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Long Gray Line, Little Big Man, Son of the Morni

Hello Depth Psyhology Alliance community!

I am reaching out in hopes you might be able to connect me with potential participants for my research study.  I am studying how the experience of working with depth and transpersonal psychology methods changes an individual’s day-to-day experience in meeting the challenges of ADHD.

I am in my third practicum year of an MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality, and Transpersonal Psychology with Alef Trust / Liverpool John Moores University. I am also training in

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. – Benjamin Franklin

I was married 18 years, two kids, unfulfilling work; alienated from society, heritage, creativity and former spiritual interests; never cried as an adult, rarely felt either joy or anger; had a cynical, judgmental, self-deprecating sense of humor; was more like my father than I knew, needier for maternal for affection than I knew.

Then my wife had an affair with

Part One

Na na na nana na, nana na na na nana na na…

Why does  The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down continue to move us over 50 years after The Band first recorded it?

The fact that so many people continue to debate its meaning online (see links here, here, here and here) is a mirror of America’s ongoing uncertainty about the motives of the Civil War’s opposing sides, of its resolution and of its meaning for our time. In other words, the war (and the Viet Nam war during which The Night was composed)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U74BEkyZjPz-j3K3qfaAODsTaXBU1c86SIl2TYLd_aM/edit?usp=sharing

Happy New Year

Peace + Love Linda + Darlene

January is the time to clarify intents for the year. Notice that I did not say “make resolutions.”

For most people, resolutions are well meant, but often not achieved in practice. That is because it is widely assumed that we will accomplish them by willpower triumphing over what we actually want to do. Too often, resolutions are what we think we should do, perhaps in response to messages from others or from the media.

I don’t know about you, but my life has been enriched by partnering with a dear

Part One 

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Part Six

A myth never says what to do; it points out where the difficulties will arise. – Ginette Paris

The past isn’t dead. It is not even past. – William Faulkner

At this point things get far more complicated, just as they do in the unconscious mind. Pelops and Hippodamia had many children, but his favorite was an illegitimate son, Chrysippus. Hippodamia convinced her own sons Atreus and Thyestes to murder him. Pelops banished them, and Hippodamia hanged herself. The exiled brothers went to Mycen

Part One

In memory of Robert Bly 

A little rest for the wounds – who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.) – Yehuda Amichai

Why do some stories stay with us over long periods of time? All the classic stories (Dante, Shakespeare, Melville and, of course, the Greek and Bible myths) deal with universal, archetypal themes that live to some extent in every human heart, every society and every family. Mythic fi

How old is the habit of denial? We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know…For perhaps we are like stones; our own history and the history of the world embedded in us, we hold a sorrow deep within and cannot weep until that history is sung.  – Susan Griffin

I am convinced that we would solve many things if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs, which perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief…The chiefest sanctity of a temple is that it is a place to which

Part One

My point…is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally. ― John Dominic Crossan

Two events in late July and early August of this year (2021) seemed very significant for me. The first, on July 28^th, was the death of Roberto Calasso, best known for his 1993 retelling of Greek Myth, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony.

It’s a difficult book, and I

Have you ever been in a bookstore and suddenly felt a tug toward a certain book? I’ve come to trust that as everyday magic. C. G. Jung called this phenomenon “synchronicity”, which means meaningful coincidences.

A few days ago, I was in my local library with a lovely, precocious, avid reader. I felt a book call to me, but assumed, since it was in a section for 9-14-year olds, it was likely meant for her. Wishing not to presume, I asked her if she had read it. Without looking up, she said it was b

Whenever a group, society or nation strongly believes in its own moral righteousness, superiority or entitlement, the collective shadow is present. In regards to cultural self-development, the shadow work definition defines shadow traits as usually undesirable ones based upon race, culture, politics, religion or other qualities that are disowned by a collective mass of one group and are placed onto another group or population. This communal phenomenon can exist from small groups (e.g., sports te

Some ideas to help you better identify and work with (withdraw) shadow material.

You may often be fascinated by finding images seen in the shapes and textures of clouds. Is that the profile of Gandhi or a rabbit? The well-known Rorschach inkblot psychological test works in this manner. How do you get from that cluster of clouds or blob of ink to a distinct image?

When unrecognizable images are shown to you, your conscious mind cannot logically figure them out. In order to make sense of the image y

For those new to the topic or wanting to solidify your understanding.  A basic overview.  

Depth psychology deals with unconscious feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. It can also be seen as the psychology of the soul. In practice depth psychology seeks to explore the underlying motives behind our behaviours.

Although depth psychology is usually associated with the founding psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung, it is found in the post-modern schools of thought of Gestalt, Archetypal and Imag

Jung and the Archetype of the Wounded Healer

“We could say, without too much exaggeration, that a good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply consists in the doctor’s examining himself, for only what he can put right in himself can he hope to put right in the patient. It is no loss, either, if he feels that the patient is hitting him, or even scoring off him: it is his own hurt that gives the measure of his power to heal. This, and nothing else, is the meaning of the Greek myth of the

Part One 

What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? – Theodore Roethke

Divide us those in darkness from those who walk in light. – Kurt Weill

Dionysus was the ancient Greek god of wine, drunkenness, masks, frenzy, ecstatic joy, paradox, suffering, tragedy – and madness. Wherever he appeared, he subverted the classical Greek consensus of reason, exalted discourse, and refined culture. He posed annoying questions upon king and philosopher alike, tore down the walls of the isolat