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Part Three -- History and Myth

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. – Andre Gide

As both American history and American mythology have shown us, it is always easier to blame others – dark-skinned people or dark-web conspiracies – for our troubles than it is to admit our own complicity. Chapters seven and ten of my book discuss what I call the Paranoid Imagination, tracing it backwards to the roots of Christianity and forward to the very beginning of the American Republi

Psychologist, author (The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief) and ritual leader Francis Weller has evolved a useful psychological concept.

The Predator is a very common internal voice that means us no good. Sound familiar? It wants us to fail, setting impossibly high standards and then shaming us for not attaining them. Indeed, its message is that we never deserved peace, love, health or fulfillment, that the world is not interested in any gifts we might offer to

When someone asks, “How are you?”, you might say, “Great!” or “I’m good” or “Hanging in there” or some such, and leave it at that. But if you are talking with a friend, loved one, or anyone who seems truly interested, likely you might share an anecdote about why you feel the way you do. For example, you might say:

• I left my house at the normal time, just sailed along listening to great music on the radio, and got here early. Now I’m here with you, and that’s nice, too.
• I’m nervous. I’m on the way

Part One

To really understand our stubborn and increasingly dangerous attachment to the myth of American Innocence, we must become familiar with our heritage of what I have called the paranoid imagination, which combines eternal vigilance, relentless anxiety and literalistic religion with contempt for the erotic and tolerance for sadistic treatment of the weak or marginalized. Why these last two features? Because what we will not allow ourselves to desire becomes a vector of judgment, fear and ha

In America’s fevered, paranoid imagination the “internal other” as drug dealer tempts the good citizens and leads them from the clear air of the palace roof down into the basements of sin. But the terrorist, the “external other,” wants to tunnel under the walls and destroy the palace itself. Since long before 9/11/2001, the fear mongers have been in the lucrative business of reducing rational human beings to quivering children, willing to trade their celebrated freedoms for a thin promise of tem

Lately, perhaps more than at any other time in recent history, Americans find themselves in a full-blown epidemic of “othering.” We are obsessed with cataloging the qualities of those individuals and groups who appear to embody everything that we cannot accept about ourselves.

Pick one or more: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Latino immigrants, transgender people, African-American teenagers, anyone at all from the Mid-East. Trump supporters.

But it is important, perhaps critical, to understand that w

 I continue my reflections on my spiritual pilgrimage to Peru in July 2018 in this latest blog post -  200 Steps to the Principle of Gratitude 

http://ow.ly/GT1J30mbnQ

Part Four

Myth is conveyed – and consumed – in narratives and images. So it is important to understand our most fundamental mythic image. The American obsession with individualism has been built up and buttressed by three centuries of stories, repeated in thousands of variations, of the lone, violent hero.

All societies evolved versions of Joseph Campbell’s classic “monomyth” — except America. Whereas the classic hero is born in community, hears a call, ventures forth on his journey and returns sa

Part One

An earlier version of this essay was published in 2013 as the introductory chapter in Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism, published by the Praxis Peace Institute.

You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself. – Ivan Boesky

This is America. If you’re not a winner, it’s your own fault. – Jerry Falwell

Free money makes the rich strong and wise, while it corrupts poor people, making them stupid and weak.– Lewis Lapham

In most parts of the world, the terms “libertarian” and

In this interview, scholar and professor, Les Lancaster, discusses the origins and aims of Transpersonal Psychology and compares and contrasts it to Depth Psychology, both of which have been highly influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung.

He also delves into the connection between science and the transpersonal, suggesting we simply must recognize that there is something more to our world than the purely physical if we are to engage in the work of spirit and soul, and to reap its m

Part Five

Whether they are uttered by Trump or by respectable media pundits, false equivalencies typically come into use in order to marginalize progressive alternatives when actual counter-arguments to them would be unconvincing. Here’s the logic:

A is the moderate opinion acceptable to those in power.

B is a progressive alternative, which gatekeepers ignore.

C is a loony, right wing conspiracy theory.

Eventually, public pressure forces the gatekeepers to address B.

When they can no longer ignore B,

August 27, 2018 Culpepper Blog: War, Loss, and a Self-Directed Life: An Archetypal Study

In an earlier post on this site, “Projective Drawing and the PMAI: Helping Autistic Students Gain Greater Self-Knowledge”(January 23, 2018), I introduced a method of combining the House-Tree-Person drawing with the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator as a way to assess and develop the five social-emotional core competencies with students. Readers of this blog are encouraged to review that post for more detailed

Part One

In January 2013, Chuck Todd, chief White House correspondent for NBC, addressed a conference of professional vote-counters. His audience included sales reps for voting machine and software companies, as well as several state secretaries of state. Todd ridiculed critics of electronic election machines, saying that they must be paranoid to think that anyone would deliberately alter election results. Earlier that week he had tweeted: “The voting machine conspiracies belong in the same categ

Rituals of Sacrifice: The Archetypal Roots of

Multi-Generational Trauma in the Americas, Part II

In our previous blog on the archetypal roots of multi-generational trauma in the Americas, we looked at how we might trace the roots of contemporary issues via a depth psychological lens. We examined the idea of there being links between early genocidal violence in North America and the genocidal violence perpetrated by the Nazi regime in Europe in the mid twentieth century. We also looked at the tra

By Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson[i]

Many of us in our lives face a crucible or severe test at some point, but for the most part, it is thankfully not played out upon a public stage.

Not so for companies and brands. Often, due to circumstances they either invite by their own actions or are subject to for undeserved reasons, beloved brands and the leaders who guide them are put to the ultimate test, and how they react becomes their defining moment – for good or for ill. Something similar can be

Just Published by Fisher King Press

Jungian Child Analysis

Jungian Child Analysis brings together ten certified Child and Adolescent Analysts (IAAP) to discuss how healing with children occurs within the analytical framework. While the majority of Jung’s corpus centered on the collective aspects of the adult psyche, one can find in Jung’s earliest work clinical observations and ideas that reflect an uncanny prescience of the psychological research that would later emerge regarding the self and

11:00 A.M. – I leave Sebastopol in a good mood, after a wonderful poetry salon and a great breakfast with close friends. I have plenty of time to attend to today’s projects: get home, check the chickens, clean up, review the poems I might want to recite this evening during my KPFA interview about Rumi’s Caravan (www.rumiscaravan.com), meet another friend for coffee at 3:00, go to the Finnish Hall in Berkeley, park the car and leave posters for the Noah Project evening event, then walk up Univers

Many years ago I sat on a stool in the Art barn at Esalen Institute painting a paper mache mask. I’d originally signed up for some sort of contemplative workshop, but found it too cerebral and ended up here.

I painted the mask magenta and then decided to paint a vine of flowers on the side. As I slowly drew a long vine down the side of my mask–getting into the feeling sense of the vine’s graceful, elegant beauty–I found my hand being moved by something Greater than myself.

I was no longer directin

We are really proud to offer this FREE PREVIEW to this brand new online course with John Lee author of The Flying Boy, The Anger Solution and many others.

Let us know what you think.

Enjoy,

Steve Stein

https://courses.wisdomfeed.com/p/the-anger-solution1

When life feels like a drag and events are depressing, it is a good time to lighten up. For that, we can call on the Jester. You may know this archetype best in the comedian, the entertainer, the party planner, the cruise director, the satirist, the practical joker, or the friends or colleagues who always crack you up.

The Art of Lightening Up

I’m serious by nature, perhaps intensified by working in the field of depth psychology (where I feel as if I should show up like Freud or Jung, looking wis