Relationships make us ill or can cause us to heal, grow, become stronger. People interactions are loaded with a complex mix of ambivalence, toxicity, good energy and exchange, and many times a confusing combination of emotions. There's a dynamic between people, something bigger than either person, a mysterious third force, energy, dynamic.
DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY: IDENTIFICATION AND CONTROL
Paul Budding
The Concept isn’t Real Life
When Jungians fall out they are not helped by their concept of "Shadow". The reason for this is that they blame the person they are arguing with for shadow projection and then the person they are arguing with says "No! You are the one who is shadow projecting!" Moreover I have seen this played at on the International Association of Jungian Studies (IAJS) discussion list a few years ago. I dare not name names but
I have been working in the field of creativity for over thirty years. First, as a minister in a liberal denomination, I used dance, poetry, and art in all aspects of programming. Second, my doctoral dissertation explored the transformational power of art for individuals and communities, both secular and religious and was based on using stone carving as a means through which that transformation could occur. At that time, my work was based on process theology, self-psychology and subject cent
Breaking the Spell
James Hillman wrote: “The way to ‘solve the mother complex’ would be not to cut from Mom, but to cut the antagonism that makes me heroic and her negative.” He was implying that in the mythology of the hero that is so central to popular culture (and which I contrast to the archetype of the Warrior in Chapter Nine of my book Madness at the Gates of the City: The Myth of American Innocence), behind every hero is a child struggling to separate from Mother. Behind the dragon he sla
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, intersu
Part One: Spells and Curses
The Scottish Rite Temple, San Francisco, 1988: I remember the first time I heard Robert Bly tell the story of Iron John. I remember when the hero learns of a key that can unlock the cage that imprisons the wild man. And I remember the groans that escaped from a thousand men upon hearing that the key was under his mother’s pillow.
We all knew intuitively what this was all about. On average, we were aged around forty, just entering midlife, charter members of the Baby Bo
Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond (Mark Winborn, Editor) is now available for purchase. Shared Realities 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 identif
American psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton identifies our very human tendency to ignore difficult realities and overwrite them with thoughts and beliefs that are more palatable as "psychic numbing." This allows our ego to distract itself enough that it doesn’t have to engage with inner and outer voices and images and movements that go beyond the mainstream consciousness (in Shulman-Lorenz & Watkins, Toward Psychologies of Liberation).
When we witness instances of ecocide (ecological suicide) in the w
Traumatized people need hope! Their life depends on it. Without hope, the psyche flounders, atrophies, may leave, die out. When psyche dies out, we're left literally feeling lifeless, loveless, soulless. It's a sad situation; but, a remedy is in the offing. The god of hope, Hermes, stands on the sidelines, awaiting our call.
Soul needs to be open to hope. Mind needs to be open to hope. Soul is the deep unconscious, a profound repository of hope. Mind is that which we know about self, feelings, me
This excerpt from A Mid-Life Perspective: Conversations With The Unconscious begins Part One following the Prologue:
The Mid-life ProcessThe mid-life transition begins with a confusing influx of unconscious...
Part Two
Montreal Photographers Make Food Dangerously Alluring. Take A Bite At Your Own Risk. – Magazine advertisement
What a perfectly silly, ambiguous and terrifying word, both a combination of “sacrilegious” with “delicious” and also implying nearly unlimited commercial possibilities! Only in America! (more on that below.) The word has been part of the lexicon at least since Homer Simpson uttered it in 1994. I invite you to goggle it to see the vast number of places and images where it has appe
Sacrilicious!
Part One of Two
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe. But at least I’m enjoying the ride.
– TheGrateful Dead
Denied access to our cultural consciousness, the goddess Aphrodite has cast a spell over the diminished imagination of Western culture, reappearing in images of the female body. Since we can no longer find her in ourselves, since we can no longer embody her in art and ritual, we search for her in one of the few places she is allowed: images of the erotic.
And she calls us t
III International Congress Body Wisdom Spain "Vital connections: the Essential Function of Fascia in Movement and Structure", June 6-7, in Benicassim, Spain
I will talk about
Hypertonic tissues keep wide areas of human experience underneath the threshold of consciousness. When they acquire an optimal resting tone, possible with efficient alignment in the gravitation
The other day I found these words in my heart, wanting to be written:
Barcelona, May 1, 2014
In a few days it will be Buddha Sok Ga Mo Ni’s birthday. As this joyous occasion is drawing near, this year, Queen Maya keeps coming to mind.
In my work as a DFA practitioner of Somatic Pattern Recognition and Archetypal Pattern Analysis, I have the chance to observe the patterns that evolve out of the early conditions of my clients’ lives. Since humans are born before gestation is complete, it continu
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| Marqués de Riscal Hotel |
This last Sunday the Curriculum Committee of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco offered an intramural event for members and candidates on Contemporary Issues in Archetypal Theory in which several members and board members presented different perspectives. The concept of “archetype” is an ancient one with roots as far back as Pythagorus, Plato and Aristotle. Goethe took up the concept again in the late 1700's and 1800's, which greatly influenced Carl Jung in the 2
Transformation is not linear. Imagine it like a mandala forming, but if you were looking at it from above, it might appear as a boiling caldron, each bubble blooming into existence to form a place in the mandala. The moment of the blooming is an awareness flooding, a new feeling opening, or perhaps alchemy happening. The mandala as transformation, becomes the love. Like nature, it is chaotic and unpredictable and yet still forms to an incredible, beautiful rendering of the soul. The human mythol
As I write this essay (April, 2014), I read that even though the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that it is unconstitutional to bar consensual sex between adults, twelve of the fourteen states that had anti-sodomy laws at the time have refused to repeal them(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/anti-sodomy-laws_n_5187895.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices). But let’s get back to the question of pornography.
The release of tension through masturbation, presumably the goal of pornography, has
Hearing Voices
Waves of Awareness
II recently had the good fortune of standing at the shore of the Pacific Ocean. The water was crystal clear, I could see through the waves, the light illuminated the water and I was entranced. Partly, of course, that euphoric feeling is due to the ionization of the air as the water and the air particles combine. But that is too scientific, too analytical perhaps for the feelings of peace and tranquility that permeated the miles of almost empty sand, sea and sky.
Not only did
