"Despair is the only cure for illusion." ––Alexander Lowen

People get trapped in despair when their despair is incomplete, when some thread of illusory hope is still retained. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality–it is a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it. (Phillip Slater, Earthwalk, 1974)

Despair is incomplete when we still believe in the possibility of an illusion.

B

In honor of current events in Egypt, an excerpt from a recent work of mine:

“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” (Griffin, 1992, p. 8).’

 Like many of us in western culture, I am aware of an underlying and ongoing search for meaning in life, looking for roots and a sense of groundedness in which I can locate myself and come into greater understanding and relationship with b

New articles posted to the Fisher King Review

Animus Aeternus  “The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman’s ancestral experiences of man—and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being.” —C.G. Jung
Inextricably enmeshed in the life of every woman is a constellation of autonomous energy that Jung called animus, her masculine side. As a woman develops psychologically, animus changes, appearing and reappearing as child or adult, lover or enemy, king or slave, animal or spir

I think you will like this description of a 12 year old introvert (5-Observer in the Enneagram system)

by my extern, a student at the University of California in Berkeley. It's funny. This is a guest blog.

http://ewagele.wordpress.com/

Goodday to everyone here,

My name is Karina Grijzen, and I live in Holland.

(English is not my native language, please forgive me in case of weird sentences)

In my work I'm known for being able to bring to motion what is stuck.

I have my master in child-psychology, during my studies I started working in a private school for state-exams as a teacher. I learned to become a teacher from a warm and caring perspective. Later I worked at a small and innovative democratic school where I developed lessons (

Just want to call attention to my blog The Legacy of Henry Corbin which should be of interest to many participants of the Alliance.

Hi all,

How wonderful that this community is expanding so rapidly.

I had the good fortune to hear Dr. Daniel Rottman, president of the New York Jung Foundation and a member of the faculty of the Assisi Institute, speak on the archetype of love in December at the Jung Center here. I expect to be posting some new thoughts on my Living Story blog about story and love, based on my experience with the story groups I facilitate, which have been inspired by his talk.

Meanwhile, I've posted a short fairy

Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How a Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, has a superb column on the Psychology Today website this week. It’s a critique of David Brook’s New Yorker essay on neuroscience and psychology.

Lane makes this point:

What’s striking about… the article… is the idea, articulated most forcefully since the mid nineteenth century, that our social forms have evolved imperfectly to fit our biological and evolutionary needs. That principle certainly is not news. The problem i

Shadow makes us attracted to a certain job and organisation. We utilise our talents in a job and also a piece of our shadow.

Shadow is what you don't want to be or what you admire. Unconsciously we are attracted to a job and organisation because of our shadow. Something inside us, attracts us to exactly the place where we can grow. We prefer to show a mask to hide our shadow. In Jungian terms this is our persona.

Shadow influences our relationships. We are attracted to other persons because of our

The D’mba headdress of the Baga people of Guinea West Africa was first recognized and recorded by Europeans in 1886, yet definitive understanding of D'mba remains elusive.[i] There are several reasons for the enigma surrounding D’mba’s meaning and function. First, the Europeans that initially encountered her relied on the Susu people of the region to name and describe her. That is the reason why she is still referred to by the name of Nimba, which is the Susu word for “great spirit,” and why she

Ancient Egypt taps into the power of the mind’s eye. With its soaring pyramids, sacred tombs, complex hieroglyphs, ancient temple walls, legends of exotic pharaohs, and colorful pantheon of gods, it is easy to be captivated by the landscape of a culture that fills the imagination with its richness and depth.

Though C.G. Jung traveled extensively in Egypt, he never published a condensed work on his experience and analysis of the culture. However, it seems clear that the breadth and depth of one of