People are looking to find their way spiritually. I used to believe that religious guilt and fear were the primary culprits in thwarting spiritual growth. Now, as I've treated hundreds of individuals who've freed themselves from oppressive religious pasts, I see that one thing really holds people back from spiritual freedom: inertia.

Religious nightmares bolt a stuck psyche out of inertia. A patient reported, "I've gone to the same old church, listened to the same old dogma, and it's where I've b

As the year 1994 began I was prepared to translate the lessons I had learned from depth psychology into my work as a city planner in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  Perhaps the single most important lesson I had learned was to reframe the question that city planners first ask when embarking on a project.  That question had already evolved during the course of my lifetime in a positive way.  (Warning: Huge generalization coming.)  In my youth the question typically had been "What do experts think is the

Words from Aaron Kipnis

Your Readers are Waiting!
 

After receiving Pacifica’s first Ph.D., my heavily revised dissertation was published by Jeremy Tarcher, Inc. Knights Without Armor was well received and opened the doors to four more books: Gender War Gender Peace, What Women and Men Really Want, Angry Young Men and, most recently, The Midas Complex.  Many chapters, articles, films and speaking engagements also resulted from having had the good fortune to be supported by the radical academic fre

Coming Home 2015: Poster Session Presenters

Ginger Swanson, MA (Depth, 2010)

The Other Woman: A Journey to the Whole Woman

Although she has been with us for eons, the other woman’s true identity has been all but erased from existence. She has been buried in the shadows of society’s taboos and burdened with carrying negative projections of an ill-begotten stereotype. Using Carl Jung’s theories of the archetypes and complexes, the researcher explored the lived experiences of other women portrayed in

Guess Who's Coming Home?
Your Classmate-Authors!

Here are the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni that have
answered the call and are confirmed for our Alumni-Authors
Book-Signing on Friday evening!
 

Dennis Archambault (Myth 2010)
         Androgeny JOY
        Odyssey Dreams
 
Lois West Bristow (Depth 2009)
         Death Comes Not as a Stranger
 
Brad Chabin (Depth 2011)
         Adolescent Males and Homosexuality: The Search for Self
 
Craig Chalquist (Depth 2003)
        Terrapsychology:  Reengagi

What Coming Home Means to Me

As a current 4^th year dissertation student, “Coming home” to Pacifica is a welcome break from the often isolated experience of research and writing, and it is a fabulous way to reconnect and reground myself to the very place where my research ideas were spawned. Coming home gives me the opportunity to reconnect with the essence of Pacifica, friends, staff, and some of my favorite professors. There is nothing quite like returning back to the place where my journey firs

According to Medical News Today, a study out of Ohio State University has found that men who took “selfies” were more likely to exhibit psychopathic traits when compared to control group.

In 2014 the posts for this blog focused on the ways in which I began to view the world from a terrapsychological perspective, with my last post describing a 1993 conference entitled "What Makes a City: Myth and Maps" which my wife and I organized to begin community-wide discussions of this perspective.  In 1994, our work gained national attention and also led to an idea for a project that would apply the perspective to issues of riverfront development in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. 

The n

Often there is an unconscious belief that we must hold some part of our selves hidden. Sometimes it is our woundedness. We believe that the scars we carry are grotesque, unseemly, best to keep hidden. What we often don't understand is that these wounds are connected to a deeper aspect of our self that does NOT want to remain hidden. We fail to see how our wounds temper us, give us depth and wisdom. Instead we remain caught in the horror, resentment, anger, and shame of the trauma that birthed th

Pacifica Graduate Institute

Dissertation Students…You’re Invited!

Turn Your Dissertation Into A Book, Article, or Published Work!

Renowned Depth psychological researcher, teacher, and co-author of the celebrated The Art of Inquiry: A Depth Psychological Perspective, Elizabeth’s  Nelson, PhD will be providing a step-by-step Dissertation Workshop on how to effectively turn your research into a book, articles, or published work!

Current Dissertation Students Attend the Workshop - Reduced Rate of $25

A

Events Open to General Public

• Friday, January 16^th - 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.  - Meet our Authors & Book Signing, PLEASE RSVP

   

   

• Saturday, January 17^th - 10:00 – Throughout the day  -  Art Exhibition ~  Mythic Threads, Art, Healing & Magic in Bali w/Pam Bjork

   

   

• Saturday, January 17^th - 7:30 p.m. -  Santa Barbara Premier of Finding the Gold Within - PLEASE RSVP

Reception and Meet n’ Greet following Screening of Film.  “Finding the Gold Within” follows six African American young men from an after school prog

Step in to the New Year! Introductory offer, three 90 minute sessions for $175. Skype or phone available.

www.archetypaldreamworks.com

PGIAA Proudly Announces the 2015 Recipients of the Wendy Davee Award for Service and the Chancellor's Award for Excellence

Award Ceremony to be held Friday, January 16^th
at 2015 Annual Meeting -“Coming Home”

 
We are honored to announce the recipients of two annual awards presented by the Alumni Association in partnership with Pacifica’s Office of the Chancellor.  Our recipients will be honored during the Association’s upcoming Annual Meeting, “Coming Home”.  Plan now to join us for The Chancellor

Life seems at an end. We're going to give up, thrown in the towel, we say. There's nothing more for me, we  go on. Lights out, a voice inside echoes.  When emotions are troubled to the point of despair, things are stirring in the mind. Something's cooking in life.

There's no way around the lights going out. It's going to happen. When it does, it's time to go still. A patient said, "When I began therapy I was suicidal. Everything was gone. There was no hope. It's taken time, but I learned to see i

This title seems taken  right out from the world of Utopia. I said seems. What would it take for our world to start on this road toward happiness for all? For the last 3000 years we were presented different theories, religions, recipes that, we thought,  would eventually allow just that: happiness for all.

Now in 2015 we have to agree; it didn't work.

I do not need to paint the world as it is now as we all know the picture isn't pink, unless I attribute this color to cancer.

We have to pause again

Carl Jung’s Funeral Sermon given by Pastor Werner Meyer

Psalm 8: How majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Children and infants praise you.  When I consider your heavens,     the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the w

"A Toast Heard 'Round the World"

On New Year’s Eve, we invite all Pacifica Alumni to join in “A Toast Heard ‘Round the World” – a celebration honoring Pacifica, its alumni and our Alumni Association. This celebration will expand beyond our campus and reach out to our global community. Raise a toast with us this New Year’s Eve. Tweet, Facebook or Instagram your dreams for the Association! To join the toast or for more information, click here:

www.toastpacifica2015.com
 

Gratitude an

Over the years I have often wondered why Jung rarely if ever wrote about Dostoevsky. How could one of the most preeminent psychological thinkers of the 20th Century fail to have recognized the greatest psychological thinker of the 19th Century. Freud was certainly aware of him. Did Jung either consciously or unconsciously elect to omit the mention of Dostoevsky in his writings.  

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/200/3/181.full

I don't have a definitive answer to this question. I do have some observa

Variation On A Theme By Rilke
by Denise Levertov

(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

For weeks,

A Truce for Christmas

This past summer marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, or “The Great War.” Within two months, it had devolved into the stalemate we know as trench warfare. The opposing forces established a line along the Western Front extending from the English Channel to the Swiss border that would not fundamentally change for the next four years.

The armies settled into a perpetual clash under the most barbaric and miserable conditions: soggy, frozen trenches, const